Meeting of the heart

I have a friend who shares this journey of addicted children with me. We see each other maybe twice a year, but keep in touch through text and phone inbetween...there are no words for how much this friendship means to me. We get each other. When we speak of having to acknowledge that our kids could die and accepting that fact and living with it, learning how to continue to live a joyous, happy, and free life DESPITE that fact... we both know that we know what that truly is like day in and day out. Other mother's don't talk about this stuff when they get together. They don't live with the possibility of their child's death hanging over their heads. If they are sleeping they don't watch for signs of breathing. We get that no amount of personal recovery or Alanon or prayers can take away the fact that there is always a stab of pain in regards to those kids in our lives who use substances to put themselves out of their misery. We go on and we work, we live, we serve others, we learn how to take care of ourselves and be relatively happy....but its always there in the back of our minds and this friend understands that.

We sat outside at a Starbucks and we laughed at what we must of looked like, because our mouths were in constant motion talking, we would cry, then we would laugh.....we joked that anyone watching from inside would think we were crazy and call the sheriff to come do a welfare check on these two crazy women outside of Starbucks.

Another friend called yesterday and left a voice mail. In that voice mail she spoke of her newly born awareness that her child had been trying to kill them-self for a long time with their drug use. It made me think of my girl who swears she has never been suicidal. Isn't chronic IV drug use the ultimate act of slow suicide though?

The yellow line is the hike route.

In the midst of these dark thoughts.....life goes on. I am thinking up what my big physical feat will be for my 50th birthday. I am leaning towards hiking Half Dome with some friends. Holy smoke please surround me.....have you looked at any pictures of that?

My son wants me to do Mt. Whitney with him...I don't know if that is even a possibility for me. The peak is at 14,300 feet elevation. Will I be able to breathe up there? I reminded him that only 50% of the hikers who set out to conquer Whitney are successful. My son, bless his heart, said, "Yes, but what if you are part of the 50% who DO make it?!"  I will keep you all posted....I may end up just going out for Mexican food!

I have a year to get in better shape than I was in last summer. We will see. Now I have put it out here....y'all will know if I don't make it!

Life is good despite the first half of this blog post. I love my girl. I love my family....I have a great family. In the middle of discussing these hard topics with my friend yesterday I was getting texts from Molly with her "upset" of taking her dogs to be groomed and then coming back to find one of them with a lopsided haircut. She shared her plans of going to the state fair to buy a fair corndog and funnel cake...."I will send you a picture mama!" I've got a 27 year old son who invites me to conquer mountain tops with him, and my little one who knows everything and can lead the way in all of her 12 year old wisdom...what would we do without her?! lol I've got my faithful old hubs who walks with me each day, tired or not, he never gives up on his family. Yes, life is good.

Annette