I have to say that God knew what he was doing when he guided my spirit to my mother. She is the best person to mentor me through this life. I don’t see it everyday, but sometimes my heart opens up and I hear her. I heard her tonight.
My younger cousin and I both have fought Irritable Bowel Diseases. Mine was Colitis. Hers is Crohn’s. She and I are both over achievers, hard-working , educated, independent, responsible young women who have spent their twenties fighting against our bodies. And seems, to us, that as soon as The Lord blesses us with a great event, our diseases came along to cut us at the knees. When this happens, the first person we reach out to are our mothers. The second is one another. Somehow we both feel like our mothers don’t get it. They don’t get our frustration and don’t get what our lives have become. But as I’ve become a mother, I’m somewhat seeing it from their point of view. Seeing your child struggle & fight for their lives and win, you don’t want to hear them harping on small things. The problem is that we don’t see it has harping. It’s not about the small thing, it’s the big picture. It’s the fact that every time we turn around, it’s one more thing that we can’t do. The frustration comes from the fact that this thing came out of the blue and has ruled our lives in every possible way, and there was nothing we could do or not do to prevent it. It’s not like we smoked and ended up with Lung Cancer.
Today, my beautiful cousin was stopped by another bump in the road and called me while at her limit of frustration. And everything she was saying I completely understood. And I was determined to believe that our mothers were blinded by their need to fix everything that they couldn’t hear us. So I decided that I would make my case to my mother in hopes that maybe she would talk to my cousin’s mother and we could all get on the same page. But my mother changed my mind with a simple statement… “You guys take life too personally. As long as you don’t adjust to your situation, you are always going to be frustrated because you are fighting against yourself. Accept your situation and the things that go with it and work around it!” It made so much sense that I couldn’t even argue back. It’s so basic.
Okay, so maybe I won’t be able to stand on my feet as an Assistant Director from now on. Hell, I may not even be able to produce any longer because of the long hours and the stress level. But I can write. I can edit. I can photograph. So, I will write, and I will edit and I will photograph. So, maybe it’s time to invest my heart and energy in other things that I can do like this blog and my photography business. I can work from home and set my own hours and still be creative. It will allow me to continue to be a stay at home mom and be involved in Jax’s education as I have been. Who knows what I will feel like or where my body will be in five years, I’ll still have my connection to Hollywood. Perhaps then, when I am completely healed I can go back. Maybe by then I won’t even want to go back to production. Who knows? But why stress over it? It isn’t for me now. And it isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is staying alive. The most important thing is being healthy enough to take care of the little person I brought into this world. Sure I can sit here and say, “Dammit, I went to film school for nothing! I’m not living out my dream.” and allow myself to get frustrated & sad. Or not give that thought power and say, “So I should probably find a good graphic artist to redo this site, and save some money for the a new version of Final Cut Pro and Photoshop.” or “I guess Jax will have mommy at home for a little while longer!”.
These women my cousin and I have for mothers are survivors. No neither of them had the challenges of autoimmune diseases, but they had other stumbling blocks that were just as frustrating and hard to understand. They found a way around them. They are just trying to illuminate our path. At the end of the day none of us will truly be able to walk a mile in the other’s shoe because we have a different size and chose a different style…but we can learn from one another. There are examples and inspiration in everything. Sometimes we get so caught up in the negative that we miss the blessing and the lesson. It’s time to wake up to the blessing and learn from the lesson.