Year Eleven and the Return of the Grief Train

I think people forget.  They forget that I am broken inside.  They forget that I lost a child.  Not literally. I mean, they know.  They just get used to me being me the rest of the year.  The woman who tries to live life anyway. The woman who works to have positivity.  In the past this time of year has caused me great distress.  In the past 10 years I have become more at ease when it comes to the loss of my child.  It still hurts.  It will always hurt.  But it is as part of me as my hearing loss or the fact that I have two arms or that I have 5 kids.

So this time of year even when I don't see it happening at first, the darker side of me comes out.  Little things start to show up kind of subtly.  My sense of humor gets darker, my frustration level goes up as triggers for my daughter's death become more and more apparent.  Maybe you know people like this.  Maybe you are one of those people.  These are just coping mechanisms.  December... January... February... March... then finally I can breathe.  I've worked hard to identify and acknowledge and decide if I want to deal or not deal with a particular trigger.  To get to this spot was a lot of work.  In the past, this time of year was just a free-for-all of emotions.  This past year, I've felt that I've really grown as a person.  I can usually see what is happening and I try to make a choice on how and if I am going to let it affect me.  Sometimes, it still catches me off guard, but I try to back track through it, and see how I can find it faster the next time.  I know this probably seems foreign to some of you.  But crying every day for 4 months and just letting out that dark side of me without any thought to what anyone else thinks or how they are affected isn't an option. That scares people. Truthfully, it scares me, too. There is no freedom in feeling flooded with emotion. There is no safety in feeling crazy.

This year, even I forgot. Here it is almost diagnosis day and I've been filled with emotions. I couldn't put my finger on it. Other events have been going on and I thought it was just that. My friend Cary, lost her daughter to a brain tumor and it's a lot of PSTD feelings we go through, especially when it's someone "close" in our journey. I've work really hard not to cry. I've lost that battle several times. But certainly not as bad as it could have been.  I've had people come up to me and tell me "they are concerned" and now my friend posted that I've seemed negative lately.  Yeah, maybe a little.  Nothing like I've been in the past.  In the past, I'd be so stressed that I wouldn't be able to do anything but lie in bed and watch netflix or sleep or yell or eat.  Just knowing this day was coming.  The cycle was beginning.  Leading up to Emerald's birthday.  This year she will be gone longer than she was alive.  I can't even type that without tearing up.  But as another friend suggested, I don't have to allow those feelings to bounce around in my head just because they are there.  I can allow them in when I want them in and I can tell them to go away and come back later.  I do have control over that. The fact, that I didn't connect Sofie's death with the beginning of Emerald's journey this year is both kind of liberating for me as I work down the grief journey and at the same time (only other people who have been in this place will understand) I sort of feel guilty for forgetting about Emerald, like it wasn't important. To get off track a little, I don't think Emerald would mind.  She quite literally wanted me to be happy. She said so. So yay?  "Finally!" she is probably thinking.

This whole grief thing has been quite a journey.  It's not over.  It won't ever be over.  Be gentle with me.  Like I've learned to be with myself.  If I'm a bit impatient or seem frustrated and it doesn't seem like me, then realize that it IS actually me.  It's me coping with a pretty shitty event in my life.  And please know that I've come a really long way in finding happiness and trying to make sense of it all.  Because it's my life.  Oh and if I make a post that's kind of obnoxious and I'm trying to be funny... Well, that's just who I am.  <3

One Year

I've started off 2016 74# pounds lighter than when I started 2015.  It's pretty cool.  I can't even begin to explain the benefits I've found from losing weight and changing my way of eating (diet).  The benefits range from the need for my asthma inhaler a lot less to an increase in self-esteem.

When I started off last year, I decided to make a change, not just in my diet, but in my thinking.  I decided to celebrate every pound I lost by posting publicly on Facebook.  I did this because, I thought it would help me stay on track.  I would be publicly holding myself accountable. That worked.  I didn't realize that so many of my friends and family (and even their friends and family!) would be watching.  I was prepared for some backlash and eye-rolling.  But you know what happened? No the backlash and eye-rolling!  I became an inspiration to myself.  Which in turn has inspired other people.  My Facebook posts may revolve around eating and losing weight (along with kids, derby, politics and things that amuse me!) but there is now a lack of the self-depreciating posts that I used to have, I didn't have a lot, but I had a lot more than I deserved. Humans mostly learn the best if they feel safe and loved.  For some reason our culture as a whole seems to teach us that we don't deserve to feel safe and loved from ourselves.  We apologize for being ourselves! Let me tell you, you're awesome and deserve to be your own biggest cheerleader!!  So if you are trying to learn a new derby skill or you are trying to start a new way of eating, you should be gentle with yourself. Expect that you are going to make mistakes. Expect that you will eventually figure it out. If you need help, don't be too proud to ask for it. Give yourself props for just trying. Each time you do this, your are reinforcing the positive part of learning.

I get posts in my inbox now, asking me how to get started, if a recipe will fit into macros and the best ones...thanking me for posting my progress and how they have seen a difference in themselves and how me publicly posting about my change of lifestyle has made a difference to them. 

On those days when I have on "fat goggles", those types of things inspire me back.  When someone posts that they lost 1 lb, I feel over the moon for them.  Because, I know first hand the struggle sometimes to lose just one stinking pound.  I know the tears and the depression I felt when I was doing everything that I had been taught in nutrition classes and it didn't help AND I WAS STARVING. 

I'm so happy that I decided to share my journey. I'm not sure if I would have been as successful had I not, if I would have continued to fear publicly failing (which is code for publicly learning). Thanks for being there for me! 

 

Practice is for Practice.

A few months ago, I went to another skater and expressed concern that I was "holding others back" during some practices.  I was told to "keep trying, practice is for practice".

I thought about it, and that's totally true.  It's not just practice for your individual skills, it is practice for everyone, both individually and as a team.  So when I skate with a newer skater or someone I wouldn't prefer to skate with, I try to keep that in mind, and give feed back while we are doing a drill or whatever that helps them be a better skater.  And sometimes, it feels like it is at the expense of my own personal practice time.  But it isn't.  It is Anja getting to practice being a teammate and leader.  And I absolutely get out of it, what I put into it.

Every time you help a less experienced or someone who has trouble with a particular skill you are good at better their skills, you bring the whole team up.  It makes you look BETTER on the track.  Every time you make someone feel comfortable being able to practice up to their best ability, you win, they win.  We win as a team. And the opposite can be true.  Every time you decide that you don't like that person for whatever perceived or actual issue you have, and let that affect your attitude on the track, you, them and the team all lose for a second.

I've been really lucky that I have gotten feedback and encouragement and help from really great skaters, and honestly, I've gotten really great advice from skaters who are less experienced or don't really even like me.  I appreciate all of it.  Because if I am a better skater and teammate, then our practices are even better/harder because I am a better opponent during practice, which will in turn make everyone better skaters. When my teammates are better skaters, it helps make me work harder to be a better skater.  We are all connected.  Because it's a team.  We don't win games because our jammers know how to break down their own teammate's walls. We will win games when we teach our blockers how to stop us and we have to think differently.  We do this by learning as a team. 

Our individual skills on the track matter.  But derby is a team sport.  Our team skates at least twice a week for 2 hours, more if you are travel 11 months out of the year.  At a minimum you have roughly 192 HOURS of practice time.  If you are having trouble taking a two minute jam with a skater you don't like, or you feel isn't worth your practice time on a 15 minute drill, or whatever, the problem isn't them.  It's you.

Because practice, is for practice.