Thursday, May 16, 2013

Playing Catch-up with Ketchup

Have you ever noticed that we are sometimes too quick to point out the negatives, find the faults or not willing to admit when we are wrong?   As we age and mature we should get better at embracing the positives, but unless you have mastered Buddhism, chances are good you still falter every now and then.  I like to call this faltering a funk, and I'm in one right now.  The great news is, I know I'm here, I recognize it, and I'm embracing it.

All this self embracing has a lot to do with my brain playing catch-up or as I call it now, ketchup brain. You know when you take a Heinz glass ketchup bottle and no matter how hard you smack the bottom, it will not come out.  Well, I feel like my head needs a few good smacks to try and get the words to flow.  I can't remember names, certain words or even what I was trying to say. I could name all the plants in my gardens, now I just stare at them, hoping they will scream at me "I'm an astilbe, a pink one, I was here last year, don't you remember!!!!"   I've searched other sites on brain tumours and brain surgery and it seems to be a common complaint.  Another thing that is also common are people who don't have a brain tumour or who haven't had brain surgery tend to say oh it's just because of your age, it happens to me too.  Which is extremely frustrating to all of us who are living in this brain tumour hell because it's more then age "this" has not just happened to you. I did not have ketchup brain before any of this, it's embarrassing and I really wish I knew a way to speed it up.  Hence part of my "funk", figuring out just how much my life has changed since Bubblegum and Honeycomb took up residency.

So putting ketchup brain aside, I knew I was falling into this funk by rereading my last post on Mother's day, "The Unbreakable Bond of Motherhood"  I wrote something that is only partly true and it very unfair.  Yes all my biological family lives in Quebec and Ontario, yes I was raising my kids pretty much on my own and yes I do have a Foster Family here in NS who I don't see much off.  However, they have helped me in many ways.  First off,  they instilled the values in me that I teach my kids today.  Growing up as a child/teen in a house of abuse, I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for being saved at the age of 15 by my Foster Family.  My Foster Dad John, is the first man who I ever learned to trust, who showed me kindness, who walked me down the isle, who saved my ass when my mortgage fell through on the 11th hour.  He came into the hospital to see Haley and I when everyone else was scared to be around us because of the H1N1.  He brought Zack Popsicles when he had his tonsils out and he is the reason I got to spend my 40th birthday in Havana.  I can hardly call this "no help what so ever."  So as I said above about maturing and willing to admit when you are wrong, well this is one of them  I just had to knock some of the ketchup out of my brain to realize it.

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