I’m not one for big New Year’s resolutions, but after being off work for 2 years due to my Multiple Sclerosis, I was determined to get myself together both physically and emotionally.  Don’t get me wrong, I have an amazing life with a wonderful husband (of 36 years), 3 beautiful children, 6 amazing grandchildren and a dog that follows me around like I am a movie star and he is the Paparazzi!  But this great life of mine requires me to be at my best and I have such a long way to go, I hope you will ride along with me!

But really, how did I get here?

I have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis for the past 15+ years and in 2015, I finally took my neurologists advice and recommendation to stop working so I can focus on my health and having a quality of life while I still could.  This was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made and one of the hardest things for me to hear.  When did it become that working became my world?  I know how it happened….. it crept up on me very slowly!  I loved my job!  I was important in my job, they couldn’t make it without me (or so I thought), I was important in my community, if busyness was a sign of success, then I was a rock star!  I didn’t take coffee breaks, rarely ate lunch, ran back and forth from one meeting to the next, worked at night and on the weekends from home, even looking at my calendar when I wasn’t feeling well to see if it was a good time to take a sick day.  I know I’m not the only woman that falls into this trap.  Can anybody else resonate with that?

What I didn’t see was that I was allowing my work to define me, I let work consume me. This was ok for a while until I began to get sicker and sicker and weaker and weaker.  I found that I was unable to find any balance between work and my home life, I was so tired at the end of the day that all I could do was plop on the couch and didn’t want to see anyone or do anything not even my family.  I remember sitting in a co-worker’s office at the end of a particularly crazy year and saying to her that there is no way I could handle another year like this last year. I knew something was going on with me physically but I didn’t know what it was and I never in a million years would have guessed what I was about to hear.  I will elaborate on that in another post but getting back to why I decided that 2017 was going to be the year I was going to get myself together.

I decided that I would give myself a year of being off work to get rested up and adjusted to a life without working and then I would focus on really getting back to what Raegan is all about.  I desperately wanted to get back to enjoying the little things in life, like watching the sunset from our favourite spot on the deck, like having water fights with our grandchildren, like spending time with my family and really being present when they talk to me. Like taking the time to take my dog for a walk along the beach.  Like camping with my husband and inviting all the grand kids if we want to.  Like learning how to shoot a gun, focusing on my golf swing, travelling, and just being grateful for all the blessings in my life. It was during that year, that I realized there are many facets to my life and that I wanted to find a way to celebrate and honour all of them and this is one way I aim to do it!

That’s all for now – life is waiting!