A friend introduced me to something called Reverb10. It’s a website that, beginning December 1st, will send daily prompts for you to write about. It’s a chance for you to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. I’m late to the party so will likely not do all of them. I probably wouldn’t do all of them even if I’d started on time, but that’s another story.
December 1’s prompt was “One Word”. What’s one word that encapsulates this year and think ahead to next year – what word do I want to capture next year?
One word? Only one? There’s so many. The most recent I can think of is “heartbreaking” (because of Keith’s death). But I don’t believe that can justly sum up ALL of 2010. I think I’ll go with “life-changing”. 2010 was chock full of change. I learned I was pregnant in January. We had actually been trying, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. Things were pretty normal to start with and then I failed the glucose test. It was a official – I had gestational diabetes. I met with a dietitian and got an eating plan. I’ve been on diets off and on my whole life. I knew going into the pregnancy that something would have to change. I was 38 and very overweight – two things that put me in a high risk category. Surprisingly, the way the eating plan was laid out, it was the easiest one I’ve ever followed. And it worked!! My blood glucose was kept under control and I managed to lose weight. The baby was gaining and getting bigger while my weight was actually staying the same. Within a few weeks of delivery, I was down 20 lbs (I’ve gained most of it back, sadly).
The morning of September 8 was the next life-changing event. My water broke and by that afternoon, we had our sweet little boy in our arms! He was absolutely beautiful. His beautiful blue eyes and long, precious fingers, and his exuberant eating habits. He had a really strong grip and was trying to hold his head up when he was still in the hospital. He had a knack for losing the little ID bracelets they tried to keep on him. I stayed home with him for 6 weeks, recovering from a c-section and re-learning how to care for a newborn, learning his signals (hungry cry, change-me cry, sleepy cry), and figuring out the new routine. We had 7 years of the three of us and now there were four.
The night of November 18 was the next life-changing event, our sweet boy’s death. Brian tells the whole story in the previous post. It’s still very raw at times and, from what I’ve heard, there will always be times that it is raw. We’re now back to the three-of-us routine and have plans for our future. This leads me to the one word for 2011.
For 2011, I’m leaning toward sticking with life-changing, but without the heart-breaking aspect. Since Keith’s death, I have felt a strong desire to get back to my creative hobbies – cross-stitching and music – and to take better care of myself. I’m going to need to get back to the diabetic eating plan as well because I don’t believe the diabetes is gone. We also have an equally strong desire to get out of debt. We’ve been trying (I use that term loosely) for awhile now. After seeing what we were able to cut out and come up with in order to care for Keith, we have absolutely no excuse. We’ve been wasting money and it needs to stop. It will stop. At this point, these changes are things that, if we didn’t do, would be a dishonor to Keith. So, for 2011, life-changing in a positive way. 2010 had some wonderful ups and horrendous downs. I would be perfectly fine never repeating it again. At least the last part of the year.