Team Cheryle

I started reading up yesterday afternoon about the legend of the groundhog and having an early spring or 6 more weeks of winter.

If I understand it correctly legend, folklore, or our ancestors that came before us tell the story of the groundhog who came out of his burrow on a rainy day and decided to go about his business and spring came early those years. The years that he came out and the sun was shining his shadow would appear on the ground and he would retreat back into his burrow and we would have 6 more weeks of winter weather.

This normally happens in February. In a town call Punxsutawney in Pennsylvania. The resident groundhog even has a name, Phil.

The town of approximately 6,000 people located 84 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Has a celebration every February 2. That celebrates this event. The whole town gets involved, news coverage from all over comes to see if Phil will see his shadow.

Now, we will leave the controversy aside, of “Phil being ‘pulled’, ‘yanked’ from his cage I mean burrow. The towns people have an expectation to uphold each year with this ceremony and celebration. I am not an expert on this subject. I do not have scientific fact this is true or not.

As your going through life you have certain expectations for what you think your suppose to do or suppose to be doing. Tradition tells you this. Your siblings did this at this age, your friends do this. You look at yourself and say, “I am 16 years old I am suppose to be driving”. “I am 25 years old I should have graduated college and be getting married or starting a family” “I am…” I think you get the point.

I am going to share some real world life advice. Life is not a timeline. We all know “life is not fair” and “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your going to get”. Life is a chronological time line of years, not expected life events.  Why do we put these self imposed expectations on ourselves? Why do we force situations that happen to us that are round shaped and try to force them into the square shaped whole of life?

I spoke to one of my sister the other day (bet you did not know I had a sister huh? That’s a whole nother blog post) someone who is near and dear to my heart. We had a chance to catch up on each other’s lives. We talked about my accident, and what I have missed in her family over the past months. One of the things she said went sorta like this “you should write a book, the journey you have taken to finish school has been like no other, but you will finish”. I just smiled, and nodded my head but in the inside I was crying. I excused myself from the phone, since it was time for my doctors appointment. Told her I loved her and to kiss n hug the family from me.

After we got off the phone I went into the office for my appointment. I had taken my stocking , sock and shoe off and pulled my pants leg up so my knee and ankle could be examined. I was sitting on the exam table and I had about 10 minutes wait. No big deal, it gave me time to think about my day and what we had talked about.

I had been having high anxiety all day. I had been sick in my stomach so I had barely eaten. My heart was beating out of my chest with anticipation of the news I was about to receive. The physical exam and evaluation that would determine my immediate fate.

Most of you know my life moves at a speed most can not comprehend.  As Chris puts it I “burn the candle at both ends and in the middle” I always smile and say “I have no choice my family’s survival depends on me” I have a list of goals and a timeline of when I want them accomplished. I have held to that timeline for the past 9 years, since the day I decided I was going to “go back to school and become a nurse”. I laid out a “GRAND PLAN OF LIFE”. I even wrote it down on a bucket list. It used to hang in my office so I could look at it each day.  I have not let anything stop me from accomplishing my goals. I have hit roadblocks, speed bumps, and detours along my way but I’ve always found a way to kept going. I did have a major flaw in my grand plan of life, you see I did not account for the unforeseeable.

I have been progressing very well in regards to my physical and mental health. Each day I get a bit stronger. Each day I push myself to accomplish a new task or goal. I remind myself that just 3 months ago I was unable to walk and in a wheelchair. I have to remind myself that the accident that I was involved in was not a fender bender, but a major accident that required first responders to cut away my car to extract me. I have to remind myself of the bruises that not long a go my body was covered in black, purple, blue, brown and yellow. I still have a bruise on my leg as a constant reminder. I have to remind myself of the pain that I endured on that day and the weeks after. I have to remind myself, I have been back to work now for only 3 weeks, and I could not be happier. I am thankful for the opportunity to be able to be working at all. I have to remind myself that this is a marathon not a sprint.

I also have to remind myself of the goals I have accomplished:

• Learning to walk again progressing from wheelchair to crutches to cane to now no support.
• Learning to walk up and down  steps.
• Over coming the fear, anxiety and emotions of sitting in the drivers seat.
• Learning not to be so hard on myself and accepting help from others.
• Learning that life is unpredictable, and it’s destiny, fate or written on sandstones of what happens to you on your life’s journey.
• You may not always be able to plan out life’s events the way you want them too.

I have had yet another speed bump put on my path. I am on target and where my surgeon expects me to be in regards to healing. If I had just one injury I was working with I would be further long and back to full speed. Since I am healing two injuries on the same leg, that puts me on a delay. They are expecting that within the next six weeks I will be 100% full steam ahead. The severity of the sprain in my ankle takes longer to heal completely. I felt better hearing this, since the anxiety I had been feeling all day, was coming from me thinking that “I was not doing a good enough job” and “I was not pushing myself hard enough” in regards to my healing process.

I often feel that I am always letting someone else down, and that I can do better because that is what we are suppose to do, when we don’t succeed at something. Just another life lesson.

??What did this have to do with the groundhog? Sometimes you get an early spring and somethimes you get 6 more weeks of winter… ☀️/☃

It is simply a matter of perspective.

Happy day to all