For quite a while now I have been saying, “I need a day off,” “ I need to take more time for myself” and although I knew that and I could hear my mind and body screaming for me to listen I chose not to. I chose to push myself and continue to allow the stress to pile up without dealing with it. This weekend, the universe took the situation into its own hands. Seeing as I chose not to listen I was given a situation where it was impossible to not listen. I ended up having emergency gallbladder surgery. While I know this can be a common problem, I fully believe that this all happened because I have been not only leaving myself at the bottom of the “proverbial list” I haven’t even been including myself of the list. Between trying to work a full time job (one that has put more stress on me then I ever thought possible), taking care of my family and trying to build my business so that one day I can make it my full time job I taxed my body, and If I wasn’t going to listen to what it was trying to tell me then something was going to make me. 2 days in the hospital and now time off for recovery. Yet through all that while in the hospital I was still considering going to work the day after getting home. Even full well knowing I needed to take time for myself it was some thing I considered. Again I was stopped in my tracks, the pain was too bad for me to go back to work. So I finally conceded Tueday the kids were home all day because of a PD day at school which meant there wasn’t a ton of rest that happened. Wdnesday all the kids went to school and I was left at home to finally have some recovery time to myself. I took a big chunk of the day to reflect and reset. It is so easy to get so caught up in life that we forget to live it, we forget to do what makes us happy because we are so caught up in what makes us unhappy. It’s sometimes easier to deal with everyone else’s “stuff” than worry about our own and how we are feeling. I’m here to tell you that you can either choose to take the time and deal with it yourself or you will be forced to deal with it in other ways. I am unfortunately being “forced” to rest because I chose not to listen to that voice in my head that was telling me to slow down and take some time for me. After looking back and reflecting I’m choosing to be grateful. I’m choosing to look at this as an opportunity to reconnect with myself and what I need to do for myself because I need to be my best self so I can do what I love... which is helping others through energy work and friendship. I want to get back to being the happy mom and wife I know I can be but have lost through the stress. These past 12 months I have had some serious changes, and with change comes uncertainty and sometimes what we thought was going to be a good change isn’t what we expected it to be, but through it all we learn, we grow and we continue to put one foot in-front of the other hold our head up and try to do better for ourself the next day.