I found some old blogs sitting forgotten in drafts. I should leave them there, you say. But I say nay, I will toss them out in the flotsam.  The short ones made me laugh.  Abrupt beginnings, promising so much, and delivering nothing! Forgotten and discarded.

Much has happened since I wrote these, but I thought I would give them a small life on the blog.  Some are just a few sentences. Almost poetry. The last one is a full blog that got buried in the clatter of real life.

I find this beginning sentence quite funny:

“O Lord what foolishness, or how a middle aged woman heals herself”.

That’s all there was. It was titled Fast and Nap. ( Jan 2016)

Or this start in March 2016:

“Life is surprising and unpredictable. That’s the good part. We don’t know what will happen, and more importantly. we don’t know how we will react when things happen. I am one year into full time menopause. It is really hard to remember when…”

That’s all there was.

Or Riding the Waves:

“There is nothing more challenging than marriage. And by marriage I mean a pair of people who have decided to mate for life. Stick it our forever more.

After 30 years I look back at my 20 year old self and think about how easy it was to be in love and to look forward and wonder.  The key to a good marriage I suppose, is always seeing your spouse as the age when you fell in love, and always…”

I probably interrupted the writing to spend time with my husband!

Or this one, from 2016:  The Blogger Returns,

“It has only been a year since I last blogged but it sure feels like I have aged more than a year. There has been sea changes and I am scraping along in a cautious and exhausted body. I feel like half the woman I was and in some ways I am. I have dropped so much weight that my body resembles my twenty year old slim self but with scars, wrinkles and sagging skin.

I know I can look at life as a struggle or a celebration so while I am concerned about the weight loss, and seeing a variety of health practitioners, I also see this transformation as a return to my pre-baby life. Joe and I had eight years of love and adventures and arguments in the streets before we had babies, and this body looks more like that person. And that’s alright. With this skinny person comes a person who argues more and is more politically active, and that’s alright too. I don’t need the comforting big boobs or the soft weight of maternity in this next stage.

I find the loss of my parents continues to resonate, deeper and sounder. It makes me feel lonely. Our family bond, tenuous as it was, the siblings clinging to sayings or memories that only superficially linked us to an ever changing past, has rotted out. Like a wooden structure left for years without care or stain, we have become a slippery unreliable structure. If we ever were the family that supported each other, it was before the parents broke up. Afterwards it was clearly a chaotic ‘everyone for himself’ environment. And that remains.

I have been surprised by unexpected events, unexpected behaviour, and disappointed by sudden realizations that  people I thought liked me were just putting up with me.  I have spent more energy than I should have in stupid jobs where no one appreciated my work or my integrity.  I have missed my two eldest children as if parts of my body were missing.

But I can turn this all around and truly be grateful. I was lucky to have work and I have worked hard to keep my remaining job and make it work for the long haul. I have not given up and I have learned a huge amount and I am glad to have a job where I do learn skills. I am so happy to spend every spare minute with my youngest who is becoming a teen and still likes to spend time with me. We have a lot of fun. I am grateful that I was and am able to support my husband as he recovers from the long and painful death of his father. I knew my husband well enough to know ahead of time that supporting him would not be as simple as patting him on the back as he cried  (I am the crier).

So in conclusion, let’s not call it a year of depressing realizations, weakness and ill health but a metamorphosis. I look pretty good, who cares if it is because I can only digest the healthiest of diets. And my tired red eyes just add power to my presence. I have a job, something that I have wanted and needed for ages.  Joe and I have our beautiful home and our precious children. And I am still rug hooking and even still writing that novel that I put away for a while due to lack of energy. I spent a day in Moncton chanting at a Women’s March with my youngest and leading the chant!

I am up for the fight, and we do need to fight. Sometimes I see my body’s degradation as the signs of aging towards death, which they surely are, in the long run. But they can also be seen as a transformation to a new stage that could be long and full of adventure.  I am cleansing my liver and my spirit and myself”.