Happy New Year, 40th birthday party & now Super Bowl...

Oh my goodness!! Happy late New Year & Super Bowl Sunday and now I can include Valentine’s Day. I can not believe it’s February already!!! I don’t know about you but the lack of snow so far this winter feels like one really, really long fall into spring. Part of the reason I loved Michigan over North Carolina, where my parents live (👋hi mom & dad) was the change in seasons. (Of course since starting writing this post and rewriting this we now have snow. Lol)

So in thinking through what has been happening here, the weather matches my mood/attitude in the dreary. We had a wonderful Christmas with family! I laughed so hard and felt the normalcy that comes in being with those who love you. As we creeped closer to the New Year and my 40th, unfortunately for my husband I got grumpier and grumpier. The kids thankfully don’t notice as much because of school.

New Year’s Eve was fun! I did manage to stay up until 12:20, then out! 


 I miss having friends over for New Years. I believe I said that same thing last year. Lol I’ve made some great gains in 2019 hopefully this year will be better! 

So back to grumpy Heather. I couldn’t quite snap out of it. One of the unfortunate things about having trouble speaking. Especially when emotional, which I never am. (Just kidding) I can’t quite share why I’m upset or crying, and that leads to frustration. Which is my crying button, frustration. Even a little frustrated and next thing you know I’m in tears. With my husband it’s worse because after 18 years together shouldn’t he be able to read my mind? Poor guy. I mean that. Life can be so hard for him. He gets to see the highs but he for sure holds my hand through the bad. I am so thankful for him!

Wait?!? Did I say 18 years?!? Yep! We, or I did math and double checked with him, we spent our 18th New Years together. We have had years where everything was moving so easily and years, many years where the start of a new year was so bad. Looking back this year was kind of rough. There are many years I would not like to go back to, but the comparison game I sometimes play really sucks life out of today. New Year’s night went very well. Spending time as a family was so wonderful. So the grayness of January was a little of a surprise to me.

I know I’ve shared about how my life is now what it is. Those words are definitely easier said than walked out. My speech therapist calls what I often get emotional about as a  living grief. I try really hard to not compare my before the accident self to now but in January that got very hard to do. I was already dreading turning 40 and then this grief tries to come steal my joy. 

Ugg...part of the therapists job is to prepare the patient for the future. For me it’s often not what they said right in the moment but how it hits after sitting in my head for awhile. I had a therapist tell me I’ll most likely have to start every day doing this exercise for the rest of my life. It took time but shortly after my 40th birthday party it hit me. The rest of my life?!? I had not thought that I would have some leftover junk to carry the rest of my life! Unfortunately due to my own naive outlook I had thought about the long term of the rest of my life!  First I had to face the fact that I am currently paralyzed and now I had to think of EVERY morning for the rest of my life doing certain things just to be kinda ‘normal’. Ugg...too much. 

Now I have had some outstanding weeks! Turning 40 didn’t affect that at all! Praise God! I was really worried it might. I will share some of the things I have done in the last few weeks.

(Rykes made this yummy cake Thank you Rykes) 

My 40th birthday party was awesome!!! I was completely blessed and blown away by the friends and family that came!! I slept for 2 days recovering from it. I didn’t get to spend as much time with everyone as I would have liked. Let’s be honest I would have loved to sit over coffee and cake with everyone for hours catching up. On one hand it was hard to think about a party that centered around me, so I’m grateful for a close friend and my mother in law that could run with it, and on the other hand I needed to see my friends and I knew this was a great excuse. My love language is gifts, so imagine how very loved I felt when the girls and I spent hours the next day opening gifts and reading cards! I felt and still feel so very loved!! Because it’s me I probably haven’t said Thank you yet. Please know I am sorry!THANK YOU!!!


So now to tell you the awesome things I’m getting better at! Speaking! I’m even very close to having my first phone call. I don’t think I’ve ever really been thankful for video calling before... but now seeing my face might be super helpful. I think I’m getting louder. Right now without trying my voice is a whisper. If I really push it you wouldn’t need to be standing on top of me. Lol I can actively push down and pull up my left arm. My fingers still refuse to move but I have real feeling there. My nerve pain while still there has much more real feeling. Like, I know this sounds silly, but the hair on my back! I felt it move! It’s those weird moments where again you don’t know what you don’t know. I also daily cause smiles sometimes a giggle from my girls when I kiss them on their cheek. I can make the smacking sound almost every time now. A few weeks ago in the pool at physical therapy I stood up from a wheelchair in 3 feet of water. This one is so huge! My doctor is always telling me what can be done in the water can eventually be done on land. Which is an amazing thought when I tell you I jogged and jumped in the water too!!! I honestly had no hope of even thinking I might ever jog again. It was something I just wrote off as not happening. No 5K sticker on my car. Ok so maybe that’s still a little hopeful. But I no longer doubt God with this stuff. I stressed over 40 and my brain being done healing at that age, but the weeks following my birthday have blown me away!!

I still struggle with the way I think, but thankfully that is just a human problem. I am looking forward to 2020 with big hopes. I’m so thankful for new mercies every morning. Sometimes I go to sleep with the hope of this promise held tightly. Because sometimes life is hard and our outlooks get thrown through a loop. 

Hopefully it won’t be so little between updates! Thank you for reading!!


#TeamGavrilides

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