Tag Archives: cancer

happiness

Avoiding sadness 

When I started this happiness journey it was my sincere desire to get to a permanent state of bliss. I naively thought that if I found something to be happy about every day I would one day be happy all the time. 

I’ve begun to understand lately that I need to feel the sadness. Pretending it’s not there and only focusing on the happiness means I’m not open to learn the lessons that pain beings and the strength that comes from that. I believe it’s important to shine light in the darkness and not focus on the bad, but in order to grow from it I need to acknowledge the sad times too. 

Sometimes life is just hard, some days have more tears than smiles, but every day is a gift. It really is. Feeling sadness also allows me to feel joy more intensely. 

Tonight there was an amazing sunset. I stood at the window with my mom and we watched it go behind the mountains. And that moment of happiness – it was a good one. 

Standard
happiness

Answered prayers

I have a cousin who has been quite sick the last few months. After many, many treatments and a hospital stay that lasted a few weeks, he sent a text today that his last scan was all clear!!!

This is the kind of news that just goes beyond happiness. I’m happy for him, for his family, for our family, just happy happy happy!

I know there have been people praying for him for months and months and I’m so grateful that the prayers were answered this way and that he gets to look forward to getting stronger and stronger.

Standard
Uncategorized

Terry Fox Run

Today Jenna did the Terry Fox Run at school. When I picked her up she was wearing her name tag that said she ran the run in memory of John Ramsay. Which of course made me burst into tears in front of the school. This public crying thing……

I was so proud of her for thinking to honor her grandpa in this way. Even though I write and talk about his death all the time I still spend an inordinate amount of time believing he’s still alive. So it always catches me off guard when someone does something  in memory of him. 

When I was Jacob’s age I was in grade 10 and going to a boarding school. We also had to do a Terry Fox run. Except ours went like this:

We were put in groups according to our dorm. My group took a turn off the road and hid in the woods where a bunch of kids took out their cigarettes and everyone sat around talking (and smoking – it was the 80s and apparently trying to tell a bunch of teenagers smoking caused what we were running to raise awareness of was pointless) for a while. After that we headed out to the road, walked a ways and then decided the fastest way to get back to school was to hitch a ride. Fortunately no one picked us up. 

Obviously these things are better supervised these days. It is a funny story to tell now, but if Jacob did this I would lose my mind. You would not believe the things that innocent and wide eyed me learned at this school. 

My happiness moment today was Jenna proudly running in memory of her grandpa. With a bonus giggle memory of being young and stupid. 

Standard