Strength of the Past is Hope for the Future

Today Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America. For many he is the symbol of hope and change. I listened to his inaugural speech on FM91.1 in the WA state car as I drove to an assessment I had forgotten to prepare for. I was encouraged by the new Presidents words – reminders to bring strength from our past to face the challenges of today and build a society prepared to live in tomorrow.

My physical therapist, noticed that I was walk and moving with greater tension and timidity today. As I told her of friend and my tensions regarding her leukemia, she reminded me that I was healing. I am on the brink of health. My body and core is probably stronger than it was even prior to my TRAM surgery. Now I have a choice – to allow myself to experience wholeness, or to retract into weakness and victimization (betrayed by my body).

If I choose wholeness, I need to stretch and envision my body as whole, complete, and free in my movements. Not limited by fatigue, or perceived pain, and fear.

The mind is a powerful thing. It can lift you and transcend you into wellness, or betray you into believing you are not capable or strong and thus bring about disease and poor health.

Sometimes I find it challenging to be OK when I know people I love and care about are not...a personal boundary issue I suppose.

I am choosing to stretch, to grow, to be free in my movement and in my faith in my body and my faith in God. I can bring the broken pieces of my past, the patchwork quilt of my body, and use the strength of this experience to bring me confidently to the present and hopeful into the future. Like the butterfly that learned the hardest part of change was being willing to no longer be a caterpillar.