A Month in Reflection

Today, May 10th, is exactly one month to the day when I graduated from Schick-Shadel, and how did I spend it?  Well, nursemaiding to my sick daughters was part of it, washing the last remaining car signed up for the staff appreciation car wash was another, and it ended with attending the 7:00pm group session back at Schick this evening, topped off by staying for the gratitude session.  


What a month it has been!  The past couple of weeks have been personally challenging for me because I have been struggling with maintaining my worldly communication.  In lay terms, I haven't felt much like talking the past couple of weeks.  No, I haven't totally withdrawn, and I have kept up the lines of open communication with those closest to me, but the outward, more public talking has been a challenge.  


I think I did such a good job of expressing myself the first couple of weeks that I maybe ran short of fresh material?  Ha!  Nope, that's not it.  Honestly, I've been in an ebb of emotion.  Kind of a numbness of letting life as it is now sink in and settle over me for a while, and just not feeling real up to sharing about it.  I haven't even journaled for several days.  I've thought about it, but I've let those thoughts come and go and haven't been real diligent about keeping up that expression of myself these past two weeks.  


Don't get me wrong, I have been doing my work, but the work has been harder to do, if that makes any sense?  It's like I've hit a vein of really hard material below the soft loamy surface material that was kind of easy to dig into.  Now it's one painful swing of the pick axe after another, with only minor chips in the surface happening.  I can see and feel progress, but it's minuscule in comparison to the depths I dug up to now.  I imagine that this is pretty normal in the process of recovery and in the process of getting to know myself better.  Some things are bound to be easier to dig into than others and some times I am going to feel more like talking than others.


It is one month later though and I feel really good.  The sun shined today and I got to share another day with my family.  I get to check back into Schick this week for my 30 day recap treatment and I'm pretty darned excited about that.  I will get to see my sisters (the girlfriends that I made during treatment) again and we will get to share about our struggles and victories and I am really looking forward to that.