Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Growth Intro

Growing Pains: I had my thyroid ablated (demolished on purpose with radioactive iodine, because my heart was racing too much with Graves Disease), and would like to lose weight. I'd like to be active again. Before 2008 when my thyroid became a noticeable issue to doctors, I'd hike, I'd bike, I'd kayak. Many a morning was out on a lake before setting to the books to do homework (I'm a late-bloomer hoping to finish my BA in "The Arts and Human Development".....art therapy is what it leads to). Many an early afternoon years previous, while my boys were in grade school, I'd bike 10-12 miles, sometimes 20 on the weekends. Many days of the week nowadays I'm either fighting for a 'normal' day or bedridden. Well: normal is re-defined too, and, how much should I accept as 'the new normal', and how much should I keep looking, searching for as many ways of health as possible....


Growing Pains: Like many humans I am avoiding the 12-step Horticulture-Addiction Program. I LOVE to grow things~! I love gardening. And though winter is hard, I've always had an average of 80-100 houseplants, one of them a cherished banana tree. Yup, here in northeast USA, upstate frigid-cold-New-York. Yup, in our dining room.


Ah, Growing Pains: this usually refers to the pains that teenagers go through in physical growth. Well each and every woman who births a child.....grows...., and changes, from the moment a child is conceived within her. As soon as her body has been invaded by a beautiful alien, less than a year later, her ears, eyes and smell; her time, her thoughts, her planning, her *heart* and soul, have changed and will continuously change. As a teen (because I'm tall), I'd awake in the middle of the night holding in screams from the pains in my legs. Now I'm as tall as I'm going to be, though not as smart as I hope to be, not as kind as I need to be, not ...done growing. And right now, with two teenage boys of my own, one getting ready to go to college--a senior in high school---and the other just weeks away from fifteen and a freshman in high school: well, we're all going to keep growing through our growth-pains.


Help me grow in the right direction!