The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

It's amazing how having a big old stressers changes everything.  Things you thought were super important seem so silly and things I took for granted seem so precious and important.  I feel like I've been blind, and now I see. I was listening to one of my friends talk about weight loss and how to get her extra five pounds off and how often she things about it.  I looked down at my belly and thought, I can't remember the last time I even thought about my body or my wrinkles or my sagging places.  With a whole new set of much more pressing worries, physical appearance has gone out the window.  Not completely, of course; I still want to be look my best, but my best has changed.  My best is smiling.  My best is a good day where I can easily smile and laugh.  My best is a daily prayer of gratitude that we've gone another day healthy and well. Today, that changed.  Finn's been complaining of a pain in his leg since May and for about a week, he walked with a limp.  We had h

  We are going on ten months of looking for a job.   Last September, after a rather horrid ten months, John got the boot.  It was oddly and rather unfairly done, but a great relief to all of us.  Working at that company had become a puzzle that grew harder and harder each day until it was in fact, impossible.  The stress of it took a wild toll on John's mental and physical health.  By the end, he was neither eating nor sleeping.  He had strange episodes of racing heart and an inability to tell what was real and what was imagined.  I sat him down and told him I would use up every penny of our retirement and sell the house if it meant he could stop working in that environment.  And it may take all that.  And I still won't regret it.   When I feel rather sorry for myself, I remember what life was like for him a year ago and then I don't feel sad that I am once again digging through my closet to find a new way to wear old things.   In fact, there is part of me (small though it