As I’m writing this, it is late at night for this pregnant mommy. I don’t usually blog past 9 pm but I can’t sleep tonight. I am super-hormonal and very emotional. I liken it to drunken dialing. I’ve mentioned that a friend of mine said she can’t trust her thinking after 9 pm. For me I can’t trust my thinking after 4 pm and that’s when I’m not pregnant. So, unless some good comes out of this entry, perhaps I can find a way to make this blog to disappear once people read it?

My day was nothing short of an emotional rollercoaster. I started off my day in tears and ended it much the same way. I’m not looking for people to say, “Aww, poor Veronica…” but rather I say it for dramatic storytelling effect. “Ooh, aah”.

I found out that my mom is coming up to visit my sister, who, according to my mom, is “having a hard time with post wedding letdown”. I understand that concept because after all the planning of my wedding, I remember there was a letdown after it was all over. Wham! You get married and then it’s like “Now what?” I’ve been there, I’ve felt that, and I get it. And yet, at the same time I felt little sympathy for my sister. I was like “Oh, poor you and your newly married life with your new husband, it must be so hard” “What about me?” I wondered in self-pity. I feel like I’m on a never-ending boat ride on the Bering Sea. My nausea has honestly been so bad at times that I can’t sleep some nights. I wanted to say “Hey! I have three small kids depending on me and I’m sick!” I could definitely use having a mom around to help me get through, take me out to lunch, or help me get to the grocery store.

Wow! The self-pity really got a hold of me early today didn’t it? I broke down in tears when my mom told me she was coming up to be with my sister. All day I wondered, “Why isn’t my mom coming up to help me?” Then it struck me…. maybe it was because I didn’t ask her to? Oh, yeah, that.

Later on, my day continued on in a different emotional way. I spent an hour with a friend who is battling breast cancer. Not only is this friend battling breast cancer, but she is also seven months pregnant. She just lost all her hair last week from the Chemo and yet there she sat with me, pleasant, positive, and as graceful as she ever could be.  To look at her, even with a headscarf on, no one would ever know she was going through so much. She seemed so at peace with her circumstances and so accepting of what she is going through. I could not detect an ounce of self-pity.

After my visit, I began to wonder more about this particular friend. She’ll be 40 on Sunday and although I consider that to be quite young, she has gone through a lot especially in the past two to three years.

When she was 17 weeks pregnant with her now 2-year-old daughter, she found out that she was going to be born with Down’s syndrome. She and her husband decided to keep the pregnancy trusting that they were the kind of people that could handle such a challenge. In the process of making this decision she learned that roughly 90% of people who find out they are pregnant with a child who has Down’s syndrome terminate their pregnancy.

After spending time with this friend today, I couldn’t imagine her life, or anyone’s for that matter who knows this little girl, without her in it. She played so sweetly with my daughter Rocky and to be in her joyous presence was uplifting. My friend says often that it is hard to feel sorry for herself when she can just look at her daughter’s smiling, happy, little face. But she was right because in that brief visit in my friend’s living room I forgot all about my early morning troubles of not having my mom visit me and I simply enjoyed spending time with two wonderful people.

To be in the presence of someone who is going through cancer treatment with so much with grace, dignity, positivity, etc. was nothing less than inspiring. She’s just another person with the same hopes, dreams, and fears as she has always had but I was struck by how she lives each day without self-pity. When I found out she was sick I was really upset because as her friend, I wanted nothing more than for her to have an easy, wonderful, healthy pregnancy.

I decided that I may never know the answer to why good people are faced with such difficulties in life but perhaps it’s to help teach the rest of us and to help us let go. Already, I’ve been helped in a big way because I’ve seen this person go through two big challenges and not only survive, but thrive. She doesn’t feel sorry for herself so I don’t have to either. And I’ve learned that no matter what I’m going through in my life it can be overcome with the right attitude, the love and support of some great people, and perhaps giving myself a break by turning off my head and getting my sick, pregnant butt in bed at a decent hour.

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