February 8, 2012-Volume 58: Alone Again, Naturally

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired Girl- Volume 38: Alone Again, Naturally

This week, in honor of the upcoming Valentine’s Day, I am going to share my thoughts about romantic love, what I have learned about myself through romantic relationships and why I have come to feel comfortable being alone. I want to also share what I have learned about the importance of loving yourself and how that differs from feeding your ego. Bear with me, I found I had lots to say.

I have discovered that I do know how to love and love fully, but some do not. The reason I can now love fully is because I know myself, love myself and can keep my sense of self and identity while in a relationship.  I also know how to give of myself and recently, have learned how to receive. I used to think I had to work really hard to be loved, to carry all the weight of the relationship, to do all the giving. I did this because I feared being abandoned and thought that was how I kept love. But, in the past few years I have shifted my mindset to acknowledge that I myself as my authentic self am lovable and I do not have to try so hard to make men stay.  It has been a work in progress to get to the place where I can truly say that I am whole and authentic ad I bring all that to the table. I have also learned that those who are not whole or authentic or who are still working on past issues tend to love, but maybe not fully and not in a way that is right for me. When you go all in, know what that means and are able to give of yourself and accept what others can give, it can feel overwhelming for romantic partners. And for me, that is OK. Because if they are overwhelmed or not able to sustain a relationship with me, then they were not the right person. And love has nothing to do with that. I have been loved by people who still made the choice to leave the relationship. 

Love is not all encompassing, it does not conquer all, and it takes more than what we label as love to make a romantic relationship thrive. I have also learned that romantic relationships don’t miraculously occur like they play out in movies. The reasons people enter them and sometimes feel connected and in love are a matter of proximity, accessibility and availability, and maybe timing.  We will meet many people that are right for us at different times. Studies have proven that relationships are driven by proximity. So if someone moves around the block from you and somehow plants themselves at your house most days of the week, eventually, if both are single (or maybe not even single) a romantic relationship is likely to develop. It is not a mystery or magic that this happens. Hence the office romance or what I call spouse/partner swap where a man dates one of his ex’s good friends or vice versa.

So people will be put in your path, by choice or by chance, some will be right for you others will not and what is important to remember is that you can say no (even if you haven’t gotten any in a while). But that takes a strong sense of who you are and what you want.  And I have learned not everyone knows the answers to those questions.

Loving yourself is truly important. That means having respect for yourself, knowing what you are worth and understanding how you want to be traded. I think people mistake feeding their egos with loving yourself. Feeding the ego is a selfish act that is somewhat narcissistic and has insecurity and a bit of self-loathing at its core. And being able to love yourself and be loved means, as many authors speak about, losing your ego. It is about having a full cup or a full bucket as Tom Rath puts it and filling the buckets of others with what is overflowing.

The most important thing I learned from my last relationship is that my visual impairment played no part in its failure. That was something I somewhat feared, that men would not want to date a woman with a visual impairment, but that was not the case. What I learned was when I devised my four basic questions (1) Do you love yourself and have the capacity to give and receive love? 2) Can you communicate your needs, wants, fears, hopes and dreams? 3) Do you know yourself and can you be real and authentic in a relationship? 4) Can you make a commitment and stick with it in rough times?) I forgot an important one, do you want and can you take a role in raising a young child, because I have one of those. Not everyone wants to do this and sometimes they may not realize it at first. I think in the next years, if I choose to date at all, I will allow more time to pass before I introduce my daughter and maybe I will ask more questions. Since it is still fresh, I am still processing how I will do things differently, but I know I will. Having to come up with a way to explain why someone she thought was going to be a part of her family was never going to see us again was heartbreaking. One thing that will not change is the work I have done to be able to forgive and release partners without anger or animosity. Doing this means I do not build up any baggage.

I feel fine not being in a romantic relationship, even though I enjoy male energy. Relationships take care and feeding, they are messy and unpredictable, chaotic and turbulent. And for me, that means exciting. But for others, it is scary and so they retreat to the safety and comfort of being alone. For me being alone is not by choice but by chance. I am not alone because it feels safe or easier, nor do I choose relationships for the sake of being in them because I am afraid of being alone. I am alone because I have not found the person who can be my partner.  I am not sure when or if it will happen for me, but I know that the person will be someone who is whole, authentic, choosing to be fully alive, is in the second phase of life and is thriving and not just surviving.

Forrest Gump said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. To me, romantic love is like a box of chocolates. Except that I know that I like dark chocolate and I rather have it solid than filled with stuff (except for hazelnut or more chocolate). So I can see some of the chocolates are milk chocolates and those I can automatically toss out of the box. Then I can smell the dark chocolate ones to see if there is something like raspberry in them because you can always smell something super sweet. Then I can feel the ones left to see how solid they feel so I can be almost assured they are all dark chocolate or something fudge like and those I will bite. Guys, use a car analogy here like you can easily toss out all automatics and anything less than 200 horsepower. And sure you could drive a regular BMW or Mazda 3 but wouldn’t you rather be driving an M3 or M5 or MazdaSpeed3 (OK this was also my analogy).

So what does this all mean for others? I think I would repeat some of the themes I use all the time; be willing to take risks and let life ne messy, be comfortable with waiting for the right thing to come along, work on really loving and accepting yourself and know yourself and what you want in another person. Give yourself permission to be alone and know that it does not mean that no one wants you, just that you have not found it yet and that it has nothing to do with howl loveable you are or if you are deserving of love. Don’t settle for less than you want or deserve, because settling, as in a house, can cause cracks in our foundation and can eventually bring our house down. And step outside of your safety zone. They don’t call it falling in love for nothing. And falling again and again, just as in riding a bike or skating, is how we learn to be better at love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

February 1, 2012-Volume 57: The Second Phase of Life is a Lonely Place

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 57:

The Second Half of Life is a Lonely Place

I am in a new phase of my life: a phase where I feel good in my own skin, whole and have moved past my past. In the book “Falling Upward” Richard Rohr says there are two halves of life. In the second half, which we often see as a time of decline, is actually a time of reaching our full potential and giving in abundance. To get to the second half you have to go through the loss, pain and suffering of the first half of life until you realize the things you have built up around you are not needed. Not everyone makes it to this second phase. In this second phase, I have noticed that people either clear me out of their life or say hurtful things to me and I have also been clearing people out of mine. I know it has nothing to do with my faults or flaws (even though I have those).  It has everything to do with the fact that I am authentic, whole, healthy and confident. What I am learning is that this scares and intimidates people and seems to do so even more now that I have a disability. The second phase of life, therefore, is a lonelier place. The why of it and how I will use this phase to become more empowered are the focus of this blog.

My WTF of the week is actually the craziness that was January.  It began with the sudden exit of the man I thought was my life partner (more on that in next week’s blog), and included a fall while running, my mom in the hospital, a very anxious and angry child and ended with a shocking revelation that confirmed my suspicions a person who I thought was decent was actually dysfunctional to the core. January was both a clearing out and a wakeup call, and it almost broke me. Thank God it is over and I am hoping this month and this year is one of reinvention and transformation.

This week I can’t get enough of stem cells. The first stem cell trial for the retina is soon to be underway and they found no adverse effects of the cells on the retina in two test subjects. It is still in its early stages and expensive to be treated, but for me it signals the jump from animal to human trials and that is one step closer to me getting some sight back.

I have worked hard to be where I am emotionally. I have been through hard times and traumatic events, through pain and hopelessness.  But in the past years I have done the work to heal myself and make myself whole.  Doing that work was not easy, but it has led me to a new phase of my life. In this new phase, especially since my accident, I am open, willing to take risks and truly say what I mean and mean what I say. I have hard times but I overcome them.

As I have become stronger, people have left my life. Recently one of my closest friends said to me that I was intimidating to many people because I defied their expectations. My positive attitude and my ability to be successful and happy in the face of my challenges scares people who expect to see me bitter or sad or not able to hold it together. “You make it seem effortless”, she said, and that is truly intimidating. What is interesting is that it is not at all effortless. Every day is challenging, every day is hard. I have just learned how to figure out how to be my best self in spite of the challenges I face and I have also learned how to fake it when I need to.

Another interesting thing is that people who are not whole or who are struggling with their own self-worth or negative self-image either feed off my positive energy (until they realize they need to do the work to make themselves happy) or feel somehow threatened by my confidence. While I have bad days and sad days and angry days, through it I have a strong sense of myself and I am confident in my abilities.  Recently I have had people make comments about my blindness that have surprised me. They will say things like “why are we asking the blind girl what size that is” or “I did not know you could take pictures” or a general statement about what I should not be able to do. Again, I defy what people expect and that somehow makes people uncomfortable. And even in jest, calling me the blind girl is an example of “when you label me, you negate me” in action.   

In this second phase of my life it still hurts or angers me when people exit my life or make comments to somehow make me “less than” or place obstacles in my way to see if I will stumble. But, it is through that hurt and pain that I become empowered to do better and greater things. It is what propels me to take the risks I take and challenge myself in new ways. This year I will write my book, sing and drum with a band, complete some 10K races and a triathlon and dance with an adult contemporary dance troop, even though I have no formal training in dancing. And if I don’t do all that this year, then I will do some things next year. And if I fail in those things, so be it, at least I tried!

I am in a great place, even though things around me are sometimes terrible and tragic. In that place I am open to all possibilities and not knowing the next steps of my life is not really scary at all, but exciting. I can create what I want or just let the Universe do its work.  And it mostly does not feel scary being alone although I do wish there were more people in my life who I could have deep conversations with who are moving toward wholeness and authenticity and have integrity. One of the affirmations I am doing right now is allowing my need for integrity and authenticity to be met. For now I have a small circle of those I trust and that is fine.  And I know that I am a force of nature and I can be unstoppable, and for that I do not apologize. It was a long and hard road to get here and I am not going back. Onward and upward!

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

January 18, 2012-Volume 56: The Mother of Reinvention

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 56: The Mother of Reinvention

This year we decided to focus our third annual women’s event on reinventing yourself and transformation. In preparation for the event and what I am going to say, I have begun thinking about how reinvention has been a major part of my life.  The ability to reinvent myself in the face of change is what has made me strong, focused and confident.

I am not unique in that way.  We all have reinvented ourselves; maybe without knowing it or defining it as such. Every time a major life change happens; career change, marriage, divorce, relocation, illness, etc., there is an opportunity for reinvention.   I say an opportunity because reinventing yourself is a choice.  It is the choice I have always made, but I could have just as easily gotten depressed, stuck, and resentful or given up. I have those feelings, but something always compels me to move forward and to try and clear out the negative thoughts and energy.

The work of reinvention happens on the inside. It involves having a clear vision about our purpose and what we want in life, convincing ourselves that we can walk down the path toward our vision and having the ability to have faith and take some risks to walk down that path even if we have not worked out all the details. I think the two key concepts, for me, are faith and risk taking. I am grounded in the belief that I can change the world and I have a purpose and I am willing to move forward even when I have no clue what the path looks like. I step out on the limb and hope to hell it does not break. But, if it does, I try and have a safety net to catch ne.

Eventually, with a vision and purpose in mind, the belief we can move toward that vision and our willingness to let go of the past and actually change, we can begin to take action and translate those changed on the inside into changes in our behavior and how we live.  The key here is a willingness to let go of the past. Letting go of the past not only means forgiving and forgetting, but realizing that there are only a few things you can control in life and the rest is a thrill ride. It also means letting go of old beliefs, habits and messages that we have ingrained in our beings from childhood. And that takes work.

Every change brings opportunity, hence the phrase when one door closes, another one opens. What they don’t tell you is that sometimes you have to really look for the doors and many times you have to kick the doors open. This means you must be aware, present and confident. 

As a coach, I work with people to help then transition through life’s changes so that they see them as new opportunities. Through support and accountable I help people create a vision and propose and walk sown the oath toward it. Reinvention is not always easy and you may need help, but it is possible.  The alternative is continuing to repeat old patterns and feeling stuck, hopeless, and unmotivated.  Choosing to reinvent yourself is choosing to continue to grow and change. 

As a person I embrace reinvention and am currently in the process of another transformation after another life change. How I am transforming myself now and how I have in the past and what that life change was is probably going to be the focus of my talk at the event.  As usual I have no clue what will come out of my mouth. But isn’t that what makes life interesting.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

January 5, 2012-Volume 55: The Real Social Network

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 55: The Real Social Network

After going home and seeing my family and some of my oldest friends I began thinking about the importance of having a real social network of people who know you, and how that is different from the internet based social network. The people in my peer group and those that are older have a different take on issues of privacy and the need for face time. The importance of a close network of friends is the focus of my blog.  But first………………

My WTF of the week is weird children’s toys. I am convinced some of these toys are not only made to rob you of your money, but frustrate you to the point of exhaustion. We got the dancing chicken, Keepon, and it kept on for about 15 minutes and then my daughter lost all interest in it. I think the adults liked it better; especially the older ones so we decided it would be a great source of amusement in older folk’s homes.  The worst thing ever is these things called Orbeez. We got the Orbeez foot spa and jewelry maker.  The Orbeez are basically little grains of a colored sand like substance than, when soaked in water, grow into rubbery, slippery beads that bounce. What great fun tracking down bouncing beads. In the foot spa there are these rotating cups that dump the beads over your child's foot. I have no idea how this is soothing or relaxing in any way, but my daughter sat there for over an hour with her feet in the thing. The jewelry maker is a joke. Basically you plump up different colored Orbeez and put them into plastic locket things shaped like hearts or stars and put them around your neck. I was expecting them to harden or have a hole and mold into something, but they are just rubbery, slippery beads. I must admit a genius invented these things which are really most appealing because they get bigger in water and thought how many different ways can we sell these.  If I am going to make things grow in water then Sea Monkeys would have been much more amusing. I will say we are conducting an experiment with the Orbeez to see how fast they shrink back when placed in sunlight and if they can be rehydrated. This was not my idea; it was my engineer boyfriend’s idea. I could care less what they do-I just want them to disappear.

This week I can’t get enough of the fact my daughter is now 6 years old. How did this happen? I actually liked age 5 a lot and hope age 6 will be just as good, but she is getting that I am a big girl and do not have to take orders from you attitude so I am not sure how it will all go. She is having many birthday parties and likes to talk about this. The list for the friend’s party at the Mad Platter is over 30 and she keeps adding kids.  We had a huge turnout last year and once again I am paying per child so I somewhat fear the turnout this year. My daughter does not understand the Mommy is paying per head idea and I could not even get her to believe that there was a cap on the number of kids due to space. She told me there was a lot of room. I am not sure how I actually convinced her there is no such place as Disney World, but so far that one has stuck. I was adamant on the no gifts this year, although that has not always worked in the past. This year we decided to give parents an alternative by adopting a rescue gorse since we are having a my little pony party and it went well with the theme.  When they see those pictures of that poor abused horse they will donate and forget about getting gifts for Sadie.  She keeps negotiating that we can do the horse rescue and also have people give gifts but I am not budging and when she finally picked the horse she seemed OK about not getting gifts from friends. 

I know I should be writing about resolutions or goals for the New Year but I have done that and I never really write those things down. A better topic is my trip to Tampa and the fact I got to see my family and friends.  I saw my grandmother for the first time this year and she is doing better with her dementia drugs and seems really happy at her senior home.  Her roommate and she are close and she has formed a group of friends. The funny thing is that one of the women calls them the Latino Power Group and often shakes her fist and yells "Latino Power”.  I am thinking of getting t-shirts made. There are lots of interesting people at her home like the ex-priest who likes to go into people’s rooms and lay his hands on their faces to bless them, which many are not thrilled about. They also have a wonderful caregiver, Josepha, who puts jewelry and makeup on them, so they look great. My grandmother explains that she is the best Bingo player there and often wins. You get a dollar for each card so its big money.  I am convinced that having a network of people around her and doing activities with them has made her happier and more functional.

Speaking of friends, my high school friends had a gathering while I was home and all my best friends of 30 years were there (see picture).  I had not seen them in over four years. They asked me a few questions about how I was doing and how much I could see and then we quickly moved on to normal gossip and catching up. This included the “where are they now” on ex boyfriends and “do they look good or like crap” on people who were classmates.  We reminisced about how wild we were and how glad we were that there was no Facebook, cell phones or GPS back in the day.  My friends have all learned to track their kids through Facebook, but most don’t use it themselves. It always amazes me that after all this time and life changes my friends are basically the same people.  And I think that is really important, both that you can pick up where you left off and you know what to expect.

All my friends have kids and they were all there too. Sadie was the youngest child so she was the hit of the party.  All the kids gathered upstairs in my friend’s daughter’s room. There must have been 15 of them sitting in a circle playing games on a dry erase board and telling stories. My daughter went up there and only came down once to eat. She was having a wonderful time and all the kids thought she was super smart because when they asked her what was her favorite color she said “magenta”.  Most of them go to the same catholic schools we went to and dance at the same dance studios or play at the same ball fields. My friend’s lids are all friends and so the network continues in their generation. 

I somehow feel I am missing out on that, especially as I watched my dearest friends and their kids dote on my child. I know I will probably never end up in Tampa, but there is a part of me that would love to send my daughter to the Academy of the Holy Names and have her dance at Elsa Pardo or the studio of my childhood friend Lisa.  But I cherish the fact that my friends are still my friends and will be no matter what. There is nothing that can replace that.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

December 21, 2011-Volume 54: Is There a Book in all This?

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 54:  Is There a Book in all This?

This week I have been thinking, as I write my last blog of 2011, about turning these blogs into a book.  When I began writing my blog over a year ago I told myself I would write until the end of 2011 and then see what I had.  So now do I know what I have and if there is a book hiding somewhere in these weekly musings? That is the focus of my blog this week.  But first…………..

My WTF of the week is all the videos of that dancing robot chicken thing called Keepon.  My daughter loves this dancing chicken and I will admit it is cute.  But the original video of the Keepon is of the Keepon Pro that was developed and is used with autistic, Asperger’s and other kids with social and motor issues.  The mass produced Keepon available for just under $40 is obviously not going to perform as well as the one that is made specifically for use in therapeutic settings.  So the crazy thing is all the YouTube videos of people sitting their Keepon in front of a computer to see if it performs the same as the one in the original video.  Obviously it is not the same version so it is not going to perform the same. But there is something else that drives me nuts and that is the fact that they are putting the Keepon in front of a laptop computer and turning the volume up so that the sound is super distorted. The Keepon does not have a chance because it can’t hear the rhythm or baseline.  I have experience in dancing objects because I had a dancing palm tree in the 80’s.  And what I learned is that you had to put it on top of an audio speaker so it could feel the vibrations and pick up the sound. Problem is that no one seems to know what an audio speaker is anymore. The speakers in your computer or even the computer speakers you attach are not real audio old school speakers.  So that poor Keepon had no chance of doing his little dance. Unless he comes to my house where I have real speakers and an amp!

This week I can’t get enough of my new super sunglasses.  After losing my last super sunglasses, I broke down to buy a new pair because having quality sunglasses that are polarized and shatterproof are essential for those of us with blown pupils and retinal damage. This time I went with Maui Jin’s because they are the only company that has an anti-glare coating on the inside of the lens to prevent bounce back from sun coming in behind you.  My sunglasses are called shields because the lens is one big piece.  I thought they looked like glasses you would wear skiing, but was told they were actually trendy. My boyfriend actually said he saw one of the guys from the Black Eyed Peas wearing them.  Good enough for me. The sunglasses have a bronze lens for cloudy days and twilight and sunrise and they are awesome.  All those patents Maui Jin owns to make their super sunglasses also make them super expensive. So I asked every one of my family to contribute to the super sunglasses fund as my Christmas present. My hope is that I come somewhat close to breaking even. All I know is that the case had a clip on it and I may keep them attached to me at all times or put a microchip in them so that I can track via GPS along with a warning label that tells people I can find my glasses anywhere and will hunt them down.

After my accident I set out to write a book and ended up writing a blog. I did not know how long I would write or even why I was writing but I found it cathartic. Making the blogs into some kind of book had always been the plan but I never let it affect what I was writing.  Now, with 54 blogs and over 160 pages of writing I am wondering what I have and how it could be a book. So I will ask you, the reader, for feedback.

Here is what I am wondering.  Have I told enough of my story of the accident and the aftermath or is it unclear?  Do you need to know more about my life before the accident or have I eluded enough to that? Should I weave in my coaching type advice as I work out the chapters? I wonder what anyone would get out of reading the book-what is the main theme or message. Is it how to adapt to change and stay positive and resilient or is it how to deal with big life changes or is a story of adapting to a new disability or is it all that?

I am also wondering if I can really write this book without any background in writing or any real skill. I am of the mindset that I am going to need a ghostwriter to help me piece things together.  I think whoever that ghostwriter is should have some creative writing or journalism experience as well as a sense of humor and the ability to put up with me.

Many have suggested self-publishing. The thing to do these days is to write a book as a conduit to growing your business.  To me self-publishing seems like the Little Leagues. I am not publishing the book to grow my business, although that would be nice. I am writing a book because I think I may have an interesting and inspirational story and if that gets me on some major talk shows, so be it. I want to send my book to publishers and have a real publishing house publish it so you can buy it at Amazon or see it in a Barnes and Noble. It could be a small publisher, but self-publishing is just not an option. Maybe I am a dreamer but it is good to aim high. Really I would like to go on a book tour and do talks like former New York Housewife Bethany Frankel.

One day I may be getting to have a say in who plays me in the movie version of my book and that would obviously be my Facebook doppelganger Marisa Tomei.  It is actually fun thinking about who would play the roles of you and your family and friends in a movie.  I suggest just trying this for fun.  

So maybe, possibly coming to a bookstore near you in the future is my book, not yet titled. I was serious about the feedback and put lots of questions in the blog. So if you get bored during the Holidays, send me your thoughts.  Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Holiday!!!  And Happy New Year! 

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

December 14, 2011-Volume 53: Can You Really Go Home?

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl- Volume 53: Can You Really Go Home?

The week after Christmas I will be travelling to Tampa for the first time in over 4 years. During the past years my family has been coming to Columbia to visit and then the accident happened and travelling became harder, so I just never made it home.  I have mixed feelings about going home because this is the first time I will see my high school friends since the accident, and the first time I will see my grandmother in a nursing home.  That leaves me both excited and scared and that is the focus of the blog.  But first…………

My WTF of the week is the amount of time it is taking for my daughter to paint her ceramic gifts.  We have been to the pottery painting place three times and she is still not finished.  When did she get so meticulous? Last year we knocked out the painting in one trip.  This time she is taking 45 minutes per item and we had 10 items to paint.  She also refuses to let me help her in any way, so my job is to sit with her and help her keep on task.   She carefully makes color decisions and changes brushes often. She also insists on painting the entire item, even the bottom that will not show.  We are off to the pottery place one last time to finish the items. I am kind of sick of going there and to top it off last month we decided to have her birthday party there, so we will be back in three weeks for more ceramic painting. Whoopee!

This week I can’t get enough of once again trying new things.  I found someone who will give me individual lessons in jazz and will start that after the holidays.  Love jazz hands and would like to learn a number from one of my favorite movies “All That Jazz”.  And I am also getting hair extensions in January.  Not the clip in kind I have now, but the individual strands that last 4 to 6 months. I am really excited about having long hair although I am not used to it and may not be saying that very long.  Knowing me, most days I will find ways to put it up in a ponytail or some other twist thing. But there will be those times when I will make the effort to style it.  I am a huge fan of hot curlers and will be trying those out. It is so 1970’s, but who doesn’t love hot steamy curlers that sometimes burn your head. Lastly I will start my training to do a sprint triathlon which means getting back in the pool once or twice a week.  I have been talking about it all year and will finally take the plunge after the holidays.

This Christmas will be different for me.  It is the first time in 43 years I will not have Christmas Eve dinner with my family, and the first time I will not have my daughter with me.  Christmas Eve is bigger than Christmas day for our family so it will feel strange fir it to be just my boyfriend and me together that night. We have not decided what we will do or how to create something different. I am trying to view it as an opportunity to try something new, but at the same time I would like to eat the traditional Christmas Eve meal. Just need to muster up the energy to cook it.

On the flip side I will be going to Tampa the day after Christmas, the first time I have been in Tampa during the Holidays since 2004.  The trip will be filled with events and firsts. It will be the first time I have seen my grandmother in a nursing home. Because I have been at a distance it has been easier for me to deal with this because it is somewhat peripheral. But when I see her there I am not sure how I will react, how sad I will be, or how much I wish things would not have turned out that way.  And I know I have guilt for not trying to get home sooner.  But I know if my life was different and if I could have driven, I would have gotten there. But that is not my life so it is what it is. It will also be the first time my father, family members and friends will meet my boyfriend. I have given him the skinny on my family and will be doing more prep before the trip.  But how much can you really prepare people to meet your family. And of course your perceptions are tainted with memories of past visits home and are not really objective.

There will be celebrations too.  My niece, who eloped in Vegas last year, is having a vow ceremony. My dad is also coming down for the event, which is a rare time that my parents and extended family are all in one place. I think the last time that happened was after my accident and I have written about how swimmingly that all went. My high school friends are having a party while I am home and I will get to see them for the first time in four years.  They have been my friends for 30 years and I am thrilled to see them and their families. At the same time they are seeing the visually impaired Beth for the first time.  I am afraid of both my reaction and their reactions. Will there be awkwardness, will there be tears or will we just all be happy and gossiping as usual.  I really have no idea how I will feel until I walk through the door of the party and then I will deal with my emotions in that moment and with theirs as they come.  My hope is that they see that I am the same person, just differently abled and somewhat stronger.

Going home, when you have not been there in a while feels challenging and exciting at the same time. Coming home as a visually impaired person who will be seeing familiar places and people, but with new eyes is scary, but interesting at the same time. It is the mix of the emotions and the unpredictability of how I and others will react that has me on somewhat shaky ground.  But it is good to be on that type of ground so that you learn how to react in the moment to stabilize yourself. And that is what I will do.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock

December 7, 2011-Volume 52: The Nasty Winter Bug Kicked my Butt Again

The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl: Volume 52: The Nasty Winter Bug Kicked my Butt Again!

Last week there was no blog because I was in the bed, unable to move, running a fever and generally feeling like I had been run over by a bus.  The odd thing is that I was sick last year with pneumonia at this same time. Like many others, the bizarre weather changes and general fatigue that comes with prepping for the Holidays contributed to my susceptibility to the Uber-bug.  I always get sick between Thanksgiving and Christmas usually closer to Christmas.  I am beginning to think that I just hit the wall at the end of the year. That is the focus of the blog this week. But first………………

My WTF of the week is that I accidentally figured out how to make my zoom camera focus on my face.  I have had my camera, which is attached to a screen, for a year, but for some reason just figured out you could rotate the camera head 180 degrees.  So I managed to put the camera on me and zoom in on my face.  This was not a good idea.  I was stunned at how bad my skin looked and how wrinkled my forehead was.  Now I don’t trust any of those people who said I looked the same or looked fine and no Botox or other intervention was needed.  My daughter pegged it when she said I had 4 lines on my forehead and three were big and one was smaller and I could maybe get rid of those.  She also recently asked me if I could put on makeup some days when I brought her to school so I could win the prettiest mommy contest, which I was now losing. But she was sure I could possibly win with a little makeup on.  In the end I did decide to do Botox on the forehead wrinkles. It is my Christmas present to myself.  So when you see my next life coaching tip of the week on Monday check out the newly Botoxed forehead.  And I don’t recommend zooming in on your face, especially if you have not really seen it in detail for a while.

This week I can’t get enough of Holiday decorations.  My house is all done up for the Holidays, although there are still things to be done outside.  I am a Holiday decoration junkie.  I think it is all the things that sparkle and the color because I can see them. The same thing happened last year with the sparkle lingerie at the Victoria’s Secret.  I could have spent hours in the Hobby Lobby and if money was no issue I would have come up with a decoration scheme for every room, including the bathrooms.  I have to reign myself in from going “oh a shiny thing” and running toward it.  And I just keep picking things up and saying “that is fabulous”.  I need lights and sparkly things in the yard this year, so for the first time I am going to do the obnoxious light up yard things, maybe even the ones that blow up.  If I can find any kind of changing color disco balls they will be all over the house.  My other idea is to get a bunch of flamingos with Santa hats and string lights around them. That sounds cool-right. By this weekend, the outside spectacle of lights will be complete (and hopefully fabulous).

Every year I get super sick sometime in December. This has been going on for years and years no matter what I have been up to and no matter where I have lived.  I have memories of me being a kid and being sick around the Holidays. There was “the calamari incident” where I attempted to eat the usual Christmas Eve calamari and spent Christmas morning over the toilet. I have not eaten calamari since. Then there was the “Disney World Disease” year (think this was 1998) where I had to leave a vacation at the World after a day because I needed to get home and to a doctor. I had pneumonia and was in the bed 10 days. I watched the ball drop lying on the couch covered in Vicks VapoRub and hot towels. And of course last year there was the “Nutcracker Pneumonia Incident” where the stress of my daughter being in the Nutcracker and the exposure to a slew of parents and kids lead to her bronchitis and my pneumonia.

I think I have naturally adapted to the December illness trend by getting things done early in the Holiday season.  Usually all my decorating and shopping is done by December 1.  This way, if I get sick, I am still ahead of the game. Also there is the added benefit of not wanting to eat the Holiday treats because the antibiotics make me really sick and this leads to potential Holiday weight loss. And I have a great excuse not to attend Holiday parties. So, there is a silver lining somewhere.

I am beginning to think my body gets sick at the end of the year because over the course of the year I am high energy and usually going pretty fast without much vacation time.  So, I hit a wall much like the wall I hit daily around 3pm where I need a half cup of coffee to make it through the rest of the day. Maybe if the year were eleven months long I would be fine, because it is month twelve that gets me.  Next year I have decided to set a goal of not getting really sick in December. To do that I must take more vacation time during the year-I am thinking at least two weeks.  I am also going to work on getting better sleep which means going to bed before 11 and napping when I need it. I am going to take periodic breaks from working out so I can rest my body. I am going to be better at taking vitamins and eating well.   My hope is that by doing all these things I will be well rested and my immune system will be able to fight off the December Uber-bug. In the end it is about pacing myself through the year so I have enough energy and reserves to see the finish line that is December 31, and not from the couch.

Keep Moving Forward,

Beth (BLOVI) Medlock