Acceptance

Although not catastrophic, my move from Kalispell was a significant personal change. I feel as though I've been viewing myself from afar for several weeks. I was in between worlds, one foot in each place, not ready to make the final leap. As a social worker, I could see myself moving through the stages of grief, incapable, or possibly uninterested, in changing the course of events or my reaction to them. Then, one day last week, I realized that I'd quite suddenly reached acceptance. I'm sure I'll continue to have a faint sense of loss, but there are many good things about my life.

1) Re-connecting with my husband - Despite the physical distance between us for so long, it never really negatively impacted us, but it sure is nice to see him walk through the door often, prepare meals together, have bagels and coffee while reading the Sunday paper, or just sharing the events of our days. Such simple things, but great things.

2) The trails - a whole lot of miles of them for me to lose myself. Best of all, they provide respite on the windy days. A brief set-back after a major toe against cast iron end table incident. It's slowly recovering and I'm running again.

3) Working in a high school again - I grew up with my father as teacher, coach, principal and my mom as our school chef. Our life was based on school seasons and bulletin boards, cleaning beakers, moving desks, serving food for basketball games, etc. I love every aspect of being part of that setting again, even in the role of therapist (minus the fee for service program, billable hours and paperwork) and am so thrilled to be in a place where teachers take an alternative approach and WANT the kids to be there. Plus, I have an office with red walls and student artwork - how crazy good is that?

4) New and old friends - So thankful Rebecca moved here before me. Her presence has helped in more ways than she'll ever know. Also thankful for the visit from Bernie and Diane. As Bernie said, anticipation for an event can sometimes outweigh the actual event - but not so for that evening. The hours of conversation and laughter with two people I truly admire was exactly what I needed.

5)Family - My niece turning one year old. The intuition and support from my parents. It just amazes me that they just KNOW, from miles away, nuances of how I'm feeling.

6) Health - The Milk Dud crisis has passed. You know you're in a funk when an entire carton (the big movie theatre kind) is emptied on an almost daily basis. I've now moved on to real food once again. My body thanks me.

I'm hoping to figure out the next phase of running soon. My first plan is to find an ART chiropractor to help work out some kinks from a major summer of adventure. Second, I think there's a Fat Ass 50k in my future. Third, this winter I'm going to try some snow shoeing and cross country skiing. We'll see what happens...