Wyatt made it.  We are still surfing the miracle of no seizures.  We got the all-clear on his bloodwork and we still have to wait until March 10th for an EEG to measure brain activity. In the meanwhile, I have the happiest kid on the planet who had his first potato chip in 18 months and who got to eat the crust along with his pizza cheese. (he had been virtually carb-free)

As I tell my kids when they see me crying for joy:  ”My heart is so full it is overflowing through my eyes!”  I literally feel like my heart is busting out of my chest.  It is swelled with love, hope and fear, too.  I have to distract myself to keep from bursting and also to stop me from staring at my son.  If he is near bye, I am hyper-observing every blink of his eyes to be sure I don’t miss anything that could indicate that my dream is not true.  

I must say I look forward to this being our new normal so I can relax and enjoy it.

If my son, Wyatt, makes it through today without having a seizure, we will have been seizure-free for two full weeks.  In the almost-four years (March 2005) since Wyatt was diagnosed with epilepsy, we have only had a handful of seizure-free days.  Here, we stand with almost two consecutive weeks and we are wondering if we are in the midst of a miracle.  Two weeks of freedom is a miracle in itself and we have not danced the happy dance yet because we are awkwardly stuck between joy and fear that it won’t last.  When do you declare a miracle?

If you believe the biblical story of the Red Sea parting, there was a miracle in the moment and there was no worrying if the sea would close and drown them or if they would be safe once they crossed it.  In that comparison, my family is in the midst of a miracle.

If you want to take ‘A Course in Miracles’ definition of a miracle which is that a miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love, then I am not sure.  We grew to live with epilepsy, we feared it in spurts, we could find silver linings in it occasionally, but I don’t think I can say we loved ‘it’ enough to have found our way out of its pain.

But here we are, after a bout of flu and high fever which should have sent Wyatt into more seizure hell, free for two weeks.  The illness also inadvertently took him off his KETO diet.  We discovered accidentally that without Depakote, which we weaned over Christmas, he did not need the diet either.  He is now on 75mg of Zonegran and we will have an EEG in three weeks to see if he is only symptom free or truly seizure-free.

Dare I celebrate this miracle?  The truth is, we do.  And we still take it day by day and moment by moment.  I hope that soon we can ease into a greater expectation and hear that his brain has returned to normal.  And so, for now, there is nothing but gratitude.  Thank you.

Originally broadcast in my newsletter, Living Wisely, yesterday 2/14/09.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I summon the old adage; “You can’t love someone else until you learn to love yourself.”  Oh God, how I hated hearing that when I was a miserable twenty-something pining over the dearth of love prospects in my life. Similarly, a dozen years earlier, I remember my mother trying to convince me of my worth when I was in middle school. She was my mother, of course she loved me and of course she thought I was wonderful. That was her job and therefore that made her proclamation completely worthless. And now, I’m the parent, and I am faced with the task of helping my teen regain the wonderful self esteem they had just a couple of years ago.  How do I teach my kid to love himself?  How do I give him my eyes to see himself through?  How do any of us rekindle the spark of divinity and goodness we each have and make it the center of our being and knowing as walk through our life?

Believing it seems to be the hardest part.  Our beliefs come from having supporting evidence that something is true, so repetition becomes important.  We have to practice kindness and compassion with ourselves systematically before the belief starts to become habit and you begin to behave as someone who believes in their own worth and love-ability.  It becomes a matter of stacking the deck in your own favor.  You can look at everything that is wrong or you can look at what’s right and build on that.  This has been the basis for every business success and personal success story in my coaching work with clients over the last 18 years.

A friend of mine was repeating to me what she says to her sons: “It takes less effort to be ourselves rather than try to be someone we are not to fit in or like ourselves better, so take the path of least resistance” Being you is good.  Just like snowflakes, there really are no two of us alike so we might as well value everything that is unique about us and built our foundation on that.  When we are solid in our self-concept in a positive sense, we can define our lives by our own being and our meaningful interactions with people.   It is when we begin judging the value of our life through our accomplishments that we get into trouble.  When we measure by how many friends we have, how much money we make, what life-milestones we’ve reached or some other external notch, we can believe ourselves into a frenzy of unworthiness.  Even if the picture is rosy, we can still remain unloving towards ourselves.

So, yes, loving yourself is the answer to loving all and having love returned to you tenfold.  If you cannot be compassionate and kind to yourself, you’ve missed the mark.  It’s take practice and mom can’t make you believe it.  You’re going to have to do the work to believe it yourself.  I hope to model it for my son as the strongest, most persuasive way for me to get it through his stubborn skull.  Isn’t it grand how kids reflect our weak spots? Sigh!

It’s icky sticky Valentine’s Day.  I don’t like it.  It holds no horrible memories for me, no early-life scarring or dating disasters and I am currently duly loved and cared for. The problem is I’ve never embraced this fabricated holiday.  It gives me the creeps.  It smacks of desperation.

There are those dear souls who feel unloved on this day and there are those whose efforts to demonstrate their love get disparaged for being off the mark.  There are yet others who feel let down by the anticipation of it all and this year, we probably can add vendors who are being made blue by those kept away from buying hearts, sweets and flowers due to budget cuts. Do we really need a day to commemorate love?  People don’t walk around all glowy like they do at the holiday season.  Love doesn’t seem to permeate the air—it seems that stress is the prevailing mood instead.  Who do we have to write to to get it off the calendar?  Hallmark?

I know this all sounds very negative and my cynic is seeping out everywhere, but you have to understand that fabricated meaning is not meaningful at all.  That’s what annoys me!  No wonder so many people struggle with this holiday.  The meaning is forced on us and expectations run high.  A day to celebrate love sounds good but the practice has become ridiculous.  Maybe it could be reinvented.

The day of love could be a challenge to all to show love and care without spending a dime.  A day devoted to random acts of kindness to those we know and love and to those we don’t know as well.  A day devoted to sharing of sentiments (OK maybe writing notes would still be allowed for those too shy to speak intimately) and offering our personal attributes and talents as the proof of our feelings.  A day of love could be a day where we spend five minutes (at least) imagining love emanating from ourselves out to every person in the world who needs it.  A day where we spend our energy on reducing suffering in the world.  Now THAT could be meaningful, maybe, if it appeals to you.  I wouldn’t want to force it on you, but I think I’ll give it a try.

It’s taken me a long time to acquiesce to blogging and social media.  Even though I speak and write about very personal topics and make a point to share the not-so-shiny sides of myself, I am a private person.  That may be hard to believe, but I really don’t like to share and publicize my every move, thought or desire.  I resent the voyeuristic side to our society that is into reality TV, My Space and You Tube. Not EVERYONE should be in ‘show’ business nor does everyone’s contribution to the public domain serve to uplift or improve the human condition.  Usually, it just shows us how far we still have to go as a species.

With that said, I have entered into the social media world and Facebook in particular is freaking me out.  I bounce back and forth between being glad to find so many lovely people who I’ve lost track of over the years and being uncomfortable with the nostalgia that it is kicking up.

Nostalgia by definition is a longing for the past and especially an idealized version of it.  As I connect with elementary school people, high school folks, college buddies, theatre-years cohorts and various and sundry other representatives of the chapters in my life, I find myself weepy.  Skipping through the pages of my past this way makes me fall deeply in love with everyone who has contacted me.  There is nothing but good memories, the troubles forgotten and made impotent by time.  I get weepy from being overwhelmed with gratitude for the people I have known and loved and for the journey that is my life so far.  I also feel sad.

My mother always told me that college should be the most care-free days of my life and I never listened because all I felt was the pressure of school.  Now, I can see how easy and fun those years were and the funky feeling is some regret.  If I’d known then how truly easy it was, I might have enjoyed it more! Facebook is putting my past in my face and making me see how I wasted a lot of time making life a chore instead of a fun ride.  Luckily, I married someone who has continued to teach me how to chill out.

The truth that Facebook is making me face is that I am longing for more fun.  I am starting by having a vino-break with the moms from the Irish Dance Studio tonight while the girls ‘Riverdance’ themselves silly. Any other suggestions? You can leave them on my Facebook wall!