Monthly Archives: April 2020

Grateful

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During this time of pandemic, I have had to dig deep to find my gratitude, which generally is not how I roll. I spent some time reading through past blogs to find my center, and this entry seemed most appropriate to share this week. It is from two years ago, but the sentiment applies 100% to the current situation in NJ and beyond. As always I am thankful to former students, especially Dani, for inspiring so much of my writing. Enjoy this entry from June of 2018…

Life is hard and it always throws unexpected curve balls our way. One of my amazingly awesome former students has had a pretty rough couple of days, and she made a post on Facebook where she countered every negative thing that has happened with a reason why she was grateful as a consequence. My head was full of thoughts about her: how proud I am of her, how much I love how much she is like me, and again, more pride. She also got me thinking about my own life, and I can honestly say that there is never a time when I am not grateful.

This is Dani. She makes me so proud and I love the special relationship we still share years after she graduated from high school.

This past week was a frustrating one for me as well and so in the spirit of my Dani’s post, I will share very much in the same way she did. If you can’t find gratitude in each and every situation then I feel sad for you. For example, I participated in the Spartan race last week, and as a result found myself with 2 sprained ankles and couch-bound, which is NOT how I spend my time.  Instead of sulking about it, I found gratitude in the fact that I did something on my bucket list. My body may not serve me perfectly all the time, and it may not look exactly how I want it yet, but I am still grateful for all the things that it allows me to do despite 15 years with MS and a recent battle with breast cancer. I am grateful that I was able to raise awareness in this very unique way, and not just for myself but on behalf of the many, many MS patients that can’t.

I was banged up and disappointed in my performance, but I was so damn grateful for the amount of support I received from friends, former students, and family. It reminded me that my circle is small but mighty, and I felt so much love in every single text, phone call, Facebook post, and however else I was contacted. How could I possibly not feel gratitude with all that love and support surrounding me?

The thing about feeling grateful is that it’s not a forced emotion. It comes when you change the way you look at life. Usually you find it when you’ve been through things that make you see how lucky you are despite the obstacles that life throws your way. I can say that truly feeling grateful has changed my perspective on absolutely everything that I go through. I have always been the glass half-full girl, and when gratitude is added to the mix, appreciation for life and the lessons we learn along the way is taken to a whole new level.

Life isn’t easy, especially when you are first adulting, and that’s one of the reasons I am so proud of Dani. She can look beyond the icky stuff and see the beauty of each situation, and she can articulate it for others who have not yet developed the ability to really appreciate what they have rather than dwelling on what they don’t have. There are so many reasons why she’s my “twin minus twenty”, and her Facebook post reminded me of just this one. My career may have ended abruptly and not in the way I had always envisioned, but like Dani, I am able to extract the good and be grateful for it.

She is a true treasure and I am endlessly proud of her.

I hope this will be my legacy from my career as a teacher. If my former students don’t remember a single word of the textbook Spanish that I taught them, I’m ok with that. But if they remember how I looked at life, not letting the negative overpower my world and they emulate that as adults, then I have truly achieved success as a teacher… because let’s face it, knowing how to make that lemonade is way more important in the long run, and that’s what I want them all to remember. Thank you Dani, for validating my life’s work. Keep on being you, and the world is yours!

Wedding Interrupted

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April 17, 2020. It was the 20th anniversary of when Bruce and I first said our “I dos”, just the two of us, at an adorable little chapel in Las Vegas. It was also supposed to be the day when we finally had the wedding of our dreams surrounded by our loved ones. Postponing this day (after over three years of planning) certainly is not the hardest thing we have endured… I mean he’s been there through it all with me: MS, the broken back, breast cancer, diabetes. We were so looking forward to the celebration of love and life spent with the ones we hold most dear.

So in love with this guy….

We spent some time in the afternoon taking pictures for our re-save the date cards, which was pretty monumental because for the first time in 32 days I actually put on clothes other than yoga clothes, wore makeup, and looked somewhat human.

Probably two weeks prior, an incredibly special friend (shout out, Coll!) suggested we have a zoom toast to mark the day, we took it to heart. We set up the call, and the response blew me away.

Me and my girl Coll in what has always been the typical photo pose for us!

So many of our friends and family dialed in to the call to share a toast with us at 7 pm, which would have been the time that I walked down the aisle to re-commit myself to the love of my life.

If you’ve ever been on a zoom call you know it can be a little crazy, and we couldn’t even see everyone who was there because we were scrolling between multiple screens. I was overwhelmed by the love and support from everyone there and it definitely gave me a renewed sense of spirit that I desperately needed to make it through this period of isolation.

So many loved ones….

And even more….

This entry is simply one of gratitude and appreciation for all who joined us. We couldn’t acknowledge every single person there, but know that we saw you and we felt your presence, even though it was virtual.

The hard core participants who wanted to be the last ones on the call!

I have always believed in universal signs, and this was a big one. We are ready to celebrate in person when we get to the other side of this pandemic and return to some sense of normalcy.

I’ll be ready to collect all the hugs at our re-scheduled wedding, if not before. Never have I appreciated a group of people more than now, and I just wanted to say it publicly. If we learn nothing else from being isolated from each other, let it be to never take life and love for granted. I sure won’t.

Because air hugs just don’t cut it in my world.

PS. Get ready for an epic celebration next year at this time! Guaranteed.

Quarantined Birthday

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April is generally one of my favorite months of the year. It is full of happy celebrations, including my birthday, Bruce’s birthday, and our wedding anniversary. Plus winter makes her exit, and spring does it’s thing, beautifully decorating our world with the blossoming trees and flowers that lie dormant during the winter months.

This year everything is different as we find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic and under a shelter-in-place mandate. My husband and I take this very seriously, as I am among the vulnerable, being immuno-suppressed due the treatment I take for Multiple Sclerosis as well as having the underlying condition of diabetes.

A FaceTime birthday celebration with my MS sisters.

We take it so seriously, in fact, that we are trying our best to social distance at home because when we need any supplies at home, he goes to the store while I remain at home. We don’t know who he could be exposed to while out so we sit at opposite ends of the couch and we are sharing our space very carefully. If he is exposed he would likely rebound rather easily while I could end up in the hospital fighting for my life.

Yoga and meditation have been my saving grace.

So I celebrated my 48th birthday feeling further isolated even in isolation. Bruce worked all day while I did yoga and meditated. I loved the birthday messages from near and far, and even had a few FaceTime birthday calls that definitely lifted my spirits. But still, although I am so very grateful for the technology that allows for virtual interaction, it could never be a replacement for the in-person, in real life, face-to-face hugs and celebrations that we all deserve to have on special occasions like our birthdays.

If you are a regular reader of the blog, you know that we had already postponed our wedding, which was to be on April 17th, and Bruce’s birthday will be celebrated in the same way as mine was.

My beloved Rankin Family singing happy birthday to me.

What’s most important is that we are safe and healthy regardless of the chaos happening in the world right now. I can only hope that this situation will make all of us just a bit more grateful for things like hugs, holding hands, and quality time spent with loved ones when things start to normalize. Those are the things I have missed the most.

So here’s the plan: let’s never take those things for granted ever! And everyone who has a birthday or any milestone event during this era of COVID-19 gets a do-over… a time to be together and appreciate those we hold dear, because there is nothing more important than that. Nothing.

I wore my birthday girl tiara all day (because I could) and I am so grateful to Bruce and the many others who tried to make my birthday as happy as possible during these chaotic times.

Be healthy. Be safe. Stay at home. Wash your hands. And know that we will get through this together, we just have to remain patient and vigilant.

PS. Check on your loved ones. Make sure they are ok. And stop hoarding toilet paper!

Shelter-In-Place

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Last week I shared how hard it is for me to continue blogging like everything is business as usual, when clearly it isn’t. But if I can come up with appropriate things to say during these trying times, then I will continue to do what I do.

What I know for sure is that social-distancing is the only thing that we can control and we need to be doing it religiously in order to take the pressure off of our hospitals because here in the NY Metro area, they are already overburdened to the point that floating hospitals are docked in the Hudson River and pop-up hospitals are being built in record time.

All of this can be so scary, and for those who suffer from anxiety like I do, those levels are off the charts right now. So what can we do? Well, I learned a very important lesson from a special former student, now a treasured friend this week.

I have written about Dani before, and I could write forever about how amazing she is. But what she taught me is that no matter how we are all feeling, when almost everything is out of our control, we need to find levity somehow during these trying times, and that’s what she did. She created a song parody, and using her beautifully angelic voice, created a video which she shared on social media. I know she wasn’t expecting the number of people who shared it and viewed it (over 16k as I write this), it gave us (me, her, her family, and her friends) something positive to focus on which is so important!

(Disclaimer: contains some “adult” words and themes)

I am especially proud of Dani, because despite her vocal talent, and despite the fact that she was in the musicals in high school, and has tried out for American Idol, in addition to performing locally for “Freehold’s Got Talent” and at places like Laurita Winery, she is modest and humble. She always thinks she is awkward, which clearly she is not. She had something to offer others, and she stepped out of her comfort zone to do it. I am so grateful to Dani for all that she has brought into my life,  but as an adult the student has become the teacher.

Lessons learned in this one instance:

  1. Laughter is great medicine for the body, mind, and spirit.
  2. Stepping out of your comfort zone to help others in any way possible is vitally important.
  3. Never doubt the power of your gifts. And Dani, your gifts are beyond valuable…. never forget that!

This girl… there are not enough words in any language to describe how much I adore her or how proud of her I continue to be.