Still Hanging in There

While I haven't had the time to blog about it on a daily basis, I have continued to stick with my daily exercise un-routine. I vary what I do to include Oxycise!, Pilates, 2 hour long treks through the still-deep snow in the woods, Shimmy (belly dancing), Zumba, and other programs that look like they might be interesting and fun. 

I would like to report that I was immensely heartened on measuring day (at the one week mark) when I discovered that I had lost a total of 5 1/4".  I told myself that I wouldn't worry as much about the scale, because I know how radically my weight fluctuates from day to day, and even when I lost inches in the past there would be times that the number on the scale went UP.  So, while I did buy a scale in the middle of last week, I will not beat myself up at the way the numbers go so long as I continue to get a positive movement in my inches. (And by "positive" I mean that I am losing them!!)

On another front, I also continue to wade through my feelings of extreme guilt at leaving my babies behind in Kuwait. Just this morning I had a rather vivid and indescribably heartbreaking dream that my son, Omar, had a brain tumor and he was dying from it.  I'd been running around looking all over for him to finally find him and when I tried to wrap him in my arms, he pushed me away, angry. When I asked him why, he told me that he'd been thinking all along that I left because I didn't love him or want him in my life. I was immediately hit with the realization that that was the cause of his brain tumor and then I enfolded him in my arms and cried out over and over again. I woke up (and woke Little Bear and Daddy Bear, too) crying out in rending sobs.  

I'm not under any illusions. I know that I made the choices that I did and now I (and the ones that my choices affected) have to live with the results. That being said, however, I wish the adults -- I use that term liberally -- involved would show a bit of maturity and not poison my children by telling them that they are or were ever unwanted or unloved. That is the farthest thing from the truth that one can get and it only causes more hurt to those that said "adults" purportedly love. 


Life is about change. Sometimes change is difficult to swallow. Sometimes it hurts -- a lot.  But in the end, assuming the change was for the right reasons, change is a wonderful thing.