My blessings are many…

Since the day after my surgery back in July 2010 through the vast majority of 2011, it’s been the worst stretch of time in my adult life – I guess maybe my whole life as being a kid didn’t suck too bad.  But that same period of time has been the richest of my life as well.  I have been so blessed in that time and I don’t think I spend enough time counting my blessings. 

I am not the winner of the star bandster prize for shear weight loss – but as an emotional eater, I think coming through these 16 months being 40lbs down instead of 50lbs up is miraculous and without the band there’s no way that’s true.  There’s light and hope and promise in my life right now and I’m hoping that can help me concentrate on my weight loss goals in the coming days, weeks, months.  So I feel very blessed to have this tool inside me that’s helped me weather this storm without the absolutely certain weight gain I otherwise would have had.

This community is truly an amazing blessing.  I set out hoping to find a few blogs that could maybe help me learn more about this little thing I had put inside me since I have an idiot for a doctor.  I’ve some how lucked into not only finding the information I was looking for, but also finding some of the most amazing women I’ve ever met in my entire life.  I’ve been blessed with lots of new friends – people I could go and have gone to visit all over the country and the world.

In addition to this amazing community as a whole, I’ve met a few specific people with whom I feel so tremendously connected that I can’t remember my life without them in it – and I can’t imagine what my life would be like without them in the future. 

I’ve worked hard this year to remain open to the universe – ready to accept the lessons I’m to learn.  I do truly believe this part of my journey has been far more important than my current weight loss efforts and it’s that certain belief that’s kept me sane about the rest.  I think this year has been about emotional development and as Farrah just said tonight “sometimes you can just only do so many mental things at a time” and I’ve had a lot of balls in the air that take up way more than their fair share of my pitifully inept emotional energy.  I’ve met some amazing people this year that I not only connect with because they are fun and funny but who also happen to be far, far, far more emotionally wide opened than I am and I have learned so much from them.  I’m still far from where I think I need to be, but these emotional lessons I’m learning have been blessings heaped upon blessings, and the fact that these amazing people are ready, willing, and able to keep being right there with me as I continue to try to learn more – to try to become more open emotionally, more able to appropriately access my emotions is the biggest blessing of all. 

I don’t know what I must have done in some past lives to have been rewarded with these amazing new friends this year, but I’m damn glad I did.  To find open minded, beautiful, emotional people who accept you for you who are, who can laugh with you and cry with you, sing off key with you while very drunk, and still accept you for who you are – every bit of it – and more than that – love you for who you are – flaws and all - It’s a damn beautiful thing.

My family is a blessing.  I have two amazing boys who remind me every single day what true beauty is.  They are fun and loving and smart and mischievous and funny and witty and flat out insane and I couldn’t imagine anything better than knowing how much they love me every single day.  I have a husband who loves me, who wants to figure out the road back together, who’s working hard to make that happen.  I have a wonderful sister who loves me and supports me no matter what. 

My friends who have known me for years continue to bless my life each day with their love and support.  I don’t know how I could have survived this past year plus without the people who’ve known me all along who have been able to remind me who I’ve been all this time – what I’ve wanted all this time.

And then there’s Farrah – who probably fits in all the categories above.  She has a band and has answered countless questions.  She’s certainly family.  She’s wide opened emotionally.  I don’t have the language for emotions and she’s been my translator countless times – she translates easily between Read and emotions - or Read and others where emotions are involved.  She absolutely loves me no matter what I do, who I am, what I whine about – she can’t help it because I’m fabulous, of course.  But she’s that person in my life who knows where all the bodies are buried.  She knows me.  I was going to write further about that – but that’s it.  She knows me.  And she loves me.  She has an open and flexible mind – ready to hear me out, ready to tell me the hard truth if I need to hear it, ready to go behind my back to point my husband in the right gift direction.  Ready to laugh at me or with me, or both – whatever might be appropriate.  And I truly can’t remember my life before I met her and there’s no way I could imagine my life without her in it.  It would be a dark and lonely place.

So – here’s to the next year.  I hope to be able to move forward with my weight loss – but if instead I continue to move forward with my emotional development I’ll absolutely consider myself truly blessed and successful. 

I thank each and every one of you who has given me pieces of yourselves this past year, I hope to continue to earn your love and trust as you have already earned mine.  Mine is a truly blessed life.