I have found reason behind my stroke gave me peace & strength in dealing with adversities in life. I now know that after I dealt with stroke in my life I am much stronger than I give credit to myself. I feel as long as we learnt some lessons from bad things in our life that experience has not gone to waste. we all deal with some good things & some bad things in life & when enough time has passed from the bad event you can find something good that came out of seemingly bad event in our life.

Asha

After Ray's stroke I moved into a new world. I wonder what life would have been like if we had continued on as we were sometimes. I know that the life I have has been enriched by the many people I have met since then. So on the whole I would say not better or worse just different. Kelli, love your response to life's challenges.

How is any experience not a good thing?

Some people have asked me if I could go back would I do anything differently? Which is a variant of your question. My answer is it has made me the person I am now, just like all my other experiences. More often than not I'd rather not have the do over, I would lose so many other things as well. I mostly enjoy my current life,yes as Sue said it is different to what it would have been without the stroke, but many thing I have now are also because of the stroke and I'm not sure I'd want to lose those things either.

Being a Christian,  I've always felt that it's part of the plan.

Knowing that and accepting that were two totally different things however. 

Three months after I became disabled, I was in charge of staff prayer at work; I worked in the library of a Catholic primary school. 

My choice of prayer was about truly accepting God's word. 

ie the line in the Lord's prayer:

Thy will be done...

I remember sitting in the staff room, everyone around me praying and there's me, crying. 

I realised that I hadn't accepted my new life as the life I was to lead.

So I grabbed the bull by the horns, quit my job and concentrated on me and my family.

I took on volunteering as a greeter when cruise ships came to town (I'm on hiatus for a while!), volunteer at the soup kitchen, attend mass twice a week, make cards for the nursing home...and most importantly I'm available whenever my kids need me.

We decided life was worth living.  

With the kids and my parents, went across Australia on the train, then went on a cruise to new Zealand and the bottom of Australia. 

We took the kids to Hawaii, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, jasper, Quebec city for a magical white Christmas and Lake Louise for new year.

Last year we went to Singapore. 

Not quite how I thought life would turn out. It's better than I ever imagined. 

These days my kids feel very privileged to have seen so much of the world.  Me too.

💚👑

On 10/18/2020 at 6:39 PM, heathber said:

How is any experience not a good thing?

 

Some people have asked me if I could go back would I do anything differently? Which is a variant of your question. My answer is it has made me the person I am now, just like all my other experiences. More often than not I'd rather not have the do over, I would lose so many other things as well. I mostly enjoy my current life,yes as Sue said it is different to what it would have been without the stroke, but many thing I have now are also because of the stroke and I'm not sure I'd want to lose those things either.

I get asked that about my life in general. Sure, there are loads of things I'd change but in doing so I wouldn't have my children and knowledge of things..

It's quite a conundrum sometimes

It's that thing about life moves forward whether you are ready or not so you keep going forward, dwelling on what was and now cannot be is a waste of energy you could be spending on making tomorrow better.  Chose to be happy.

4 hours ago, heathber said:

It's that thing about life moves forward whether you are ready or not so you keep going forward, dwelling on what was and now cannot be is a waste of energy you could be spending on making tomorrow better.  Chose to be happy.

 

Words to live by Heather. 

There are people out there who have a low opinion of me. All good in the fact my opinion of them doesn't reach great heights either.

But I've been trying to accept the fact there are people who have low opinions of me!

Not to get into details...their actions and words caused me to either react in a way they didn't like (family), or change how things are done (at the baddy club).

I need to accept and be happy.

💚👑

Janelle I know that you are a good and nice person, I hope that you can feel that about yourself most of the time too.  We will all have our lapses and will sometimes do things we regret or that hurt others (hopefully unintentionally, but yes sometimes you just get mad and do it anyway). This is life. When it happens you have to forgive yourself and then decide if you want to seek forgiveness from the other parties involved. If they can't or won't see past our occasional faults it's their loss not ours. Not always easy to convince yourself of this though, especially where there are family ties that mean you can't just refuse to be around those people who are not "good for you"

Tomorrow is a day with no faults in it yet, hang in there and keep working on it.

-Heather

14 hours ago, GreenQueen said:

Words to live by Heather. 

 

There are people out there who have a low opinion of me. All good in the fact my opinion of them doesn't reach great heights either.

 

But I've been trying to accept the fact there are people who have low opinions of me!

 

Not to get into details...their actions and words caused me to either react in a way they didn't like (family), or change how things are done (at the baddy club).

 

I need to accept and be happy.

 

💚👑

I can say I understand that emotion.  At the end of the day we have to be happy and think highly of ourselves. Easier said than done I know.  One thing I was taught during my cognitive therapy was those people aren't thinking about you all the time. They are living their life.. ( it took me YEARS to get a grip on that and I still struggle ) 

You are lovely in every way.  This work sheet was my bible. It's hard but worth it. Take one tiny step at a time. xxoo