them sparkles

I spent my 35th birthday in the hospital. I'm currently writing this little post from my hospital bed, one week after being admitted. It's been a really rough year. As of right now, they're not sure what is happening with me. I came in severely dehydrated with incredibly low blood pressure. I thought it was from the harsh antibiotics I was on to treat the pneumonia I developed after leaving the hospital the last time. But even with fluids and different treatments, there's still things the doctors can't explain. I feel like a pin cushion at this point, I've been poked more times this week than it feels like I have in my life. My veins have gone into hiding and so any 'routine' procedure is anything but. Through all of this, the nurses that have been attending to me have been the most warm and compassionate people. Yes, they're here to do a job but they don't have to make you feel like they actually care about you. These ones do and I appreciate ...

Taking care of yourself is one of the best things you can do for you. In doing so, you will also be better to those who matter to you. I recently learned this the hard way. While I thought I was taking care of myself and listening to my body, I wasn't listening hard enough. I was letting my frustration and anxiety build up, thinking if I just pushed it aside, it would eventually just go away. It didn't. As a result, I actually ended being up off work for 7 weeks and in the hospital for one of those. My lupus had begun to flare up and it manifested symptoms I hadn't experienced before. Some so painful and/or uncomfortable, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Eventually, I developed a couple of blood clots, (pulmonary embolisms) in my lungs which, I'm told, has the possibility of being fatal. I've never been in the hospital before, other than to visit people. It was probably the scariest experience of my life. Through all of this, I got to see just how much people ...

I'm just going to leave this here. Worry about what is important. ❤

I had the absolute pleasure of spending the weekend in the mountains with some really amazing women. Before this weekend, they were my work friends. After this weekend, they are just simply my friends. We were brought together to celebrate the last few weeks of unmarried life for one of our girls before she flies across the ocean to marry her true love. I feel we learned more about each other than we all knew and we've grown a stronger bond with each other than we ever had. We shared a lot of laughs but we also shared some serious moments. We discussed some things that have been bothering me as of late and I realized that I wasn't the only one feeling this way. It was a huge relief. Before this weekend, I felt a little bit alone. Like I was possibly making more out of something that wasn't really a problem. But many of my concerns, were concerning to them and having people share similar feelings with you feels like they are helping carry the weight, it's not so heavy....

The other day, I was reminded of this quote by Will Smith (or so the internet tells me) and it has resonated with me since. In the last little while, I have had a harder time trying to stay positive because there seems to be so much negativity around me. You see it in the news, on social media and you hear about it through the mouths of the people you talk to daily. I've noticed that most of the negativity surrounding me personally is coming from people that are currently dealing with something upsetting in their lives. Whether it be that someone is ill in the family, they're having relationship issues or some other kind of unhappiness, these are the people that I'm noticing it from the most. I believe it's easier for us to distract ourselves with what is wrong in someone else's life than face what is bad or sad in our own life. It keeps us distracted. Perhaps why tabloids are so successful. In realizing this, I found my bit of sparkle. Both of my parents a...

For years, I struggled with my own negativity. I sought out the worst in every situation and I believe it manifested an illness within me. In 2014, I was diagnosed with Lupus. In the months leading up to my diagnosis, I was tired, achey, sick and just plain miserable. It took everything out of me, and my negativity was only making it worse. It wasn't until I was given a name for what was happening with my body that I had an "aha!" moment. Stress and negativity wore my body down, so I decided that stress and negativity didn't deserve a place in my life. Something changed within me and I realized that the things that most of us stress over aren't actually worth the energy we give them. From that moment, I decided I needed to stop worrying about things I could not control and I learned so much. I wanted to make a real effort to not give in to the negativity that others tried to rope me into. I learned to listen to my body and to take care of my health. I learned th...