Today is my fifth anniversary of my diagnosis with a chronic illness. Over the past five years, this chronic illness has changed and shaped my life. Shortly after I was diagnosed, I gave birth to my daughter. Today I’m reflecting on how lucky we are and celebrating the fact that we are both alive and in a place where we can have excellent medical care.
Today I also read a story in the newspaper. We’ve been visiting our inlaws all weekend, and they get the city newspaper. I rarely get a chance to read it. On the cover of one of the sections was a picture of a woman surrounded by her adopted children. The discussion that followed was one about the backgrounds of those children, some left in dumpsters, others left wandering the streets as toddlers. Again, I thought about how lucky my daughter is: how lucky she is to be able to complain about the food that she eats rather than begging for food, how lucky she is to live in a community where she can play outdoors with friends rather than on the rough city streets.
Today I also played with my new niece and chatted with my sister-in-law and her family who are here from Sweden. They were supposed to fly home today, but volcanic ash has stranded travelers in airports across Europe. They are staying for another ten days at least – lucky us! Today I also chatted with my preschooler about our plans for a Costa Rica vacation next year. I’m diligently saving every bit of money I can to go on this trip of a lifetime. How lucky we are to even consider it. How amazing it is that we can even fly on airplanes over distances that took our relatives weeks and months a century ago.
Do you have a time in the day or a day in the year when you stop and feel lucky? We have a time before dinner when we have a short prayer, even though we are not religious. We have Thanksgiving, and we also have the day of my diagnosis, a day when we feel lucky to be here. I think that it’s important to stop and reflect sometimes on how lucky we are to be in the place we are and in the time that we live in. Even though life with a preschooler can be challenging at points, this reflection is good for a parent’s and a preschooler’s soul. It puts everything into perspective.