The circle of life
Parenting is a circle. Some days the circle is leisurely. No demands and everyone is well. Then in a flash it’s a full race putting out fires in the circle.
This was an apt description by a beautiful lady who was stretched between two opposing caregiving demands. Her child in hospital and miles away but constantly on the telephone her demanding parent needing reassurance that she was not abandoned.
I truly believe that I can help you right now, no matter where you happen to be in your journey.
I am a lifelong learner and I was certified as a life coach by The Life Coach School,
September of 2018, previously I have spent the past 30 years learning
and embracing different modalities of self-awareness, therapies, and support. All have led me to the present and to launching my business and aligning with my passion to always be helping others.
There is nobody who I have coached that has not been helped or enlightened, I think everyone can learn new tools to help themselves.
I embarked on this journey of becoming a coach because it has
always been my goal to help people and I finally found the best way I can to do
that as a coach.
Will it ever be the end? Remember in the first instalment, my mother, who is a generation younger than my MIL, still lives in our home. Admittedly, she has been her twenty-five years and has not required any sort of long-term physical support except the occasional broken foot, twisted ankle and other such ailments that keep her from walking her beloved Schnauzer.
The empty chair, the empty suite, no pitter patter of tiny feet, the nanacam is off and the meals don’t need to be on time. We miss her, our children have only known a life with her present. Fortunately, they have grown and one is away at university, while the other is adjusting to the changes in routine by becoming more independent in many ways. Life as we used to life it daily has changed and nothing will ever change it back. This is the part where we get to count our blessing. Our beloved Nana is still living, we can still see her whenever we want and no matter where she is physically, mentally she is just different now.
Over 20 years ago a series of interesting circumstances led me to become the scrap-booker I am now. The first was when I was in my 30’s and visiting my grandparents in Eastern Europe, I had an opportunity to ask my grandfather what one regret he had in his long and interesting life. His response quite surprised me, he regretted he did not value and save his family’s photographs when war forced him from his home as a young man.
The second occurred after the birth of our daughter and the beginning of my dearest friend’s home-based business with the MLM Creative Memories, a paper and album based scrapbooking company. At first, I wanted to support her success and after my first finished album I was hooked. I knew I was fulfilling my artistic passions in a way that was creative as well as archival. It reminded me of my grandfather’s words and his regrets.
It was pretty soon evident that my MIL was losing much of her short-term memory and any slight change in the well-established routine of years was not good. We managed to keep our lives as normal as possible for our girls, include the whole family in events and enjoy our time together. Soon it became more and more difficult to leave the house for any length of time for fear of not being on hand if needed. We installed a nana cam so that we could watch her in her living and dining room from anywhere. We had family members also keep tabs especially when they were about to phone her in case she was napping so they would not wake her abruptly.
This system worked for quite a while, and we all managed to maintain our freedom and sanity to a limited degree. The shifts in memory decline were often very subtle and like expecting a baby, it was a gradual change over months and months. I know for some people who only visited infrequently the change was more dramatic, but we all survived in this bubble.
