Having had a day and a half to think since my day with my eye specialists I'm more relaxed in my thinking about blindness. Knowing that I will lose more sight is less frightening than spending the last 2 years not knowing what was causing it and how bad it would get.

Life won't end, and I'll still be me. Yes, I still have some worries, and I'm getting help with that. I can still have a terrific life, one that I enjoy and that is fulfilling. It's not quite the one I planned. Who knows? It may turn out to be better.

Jennifer Aniston once said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Everything you want is just outside of your comfort zone. Everything you could possibly want".  Wise lady. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. How it is easy to give into fears, to live a safe life inside of a routine that gives comfort. I get that. Sometimes when bad things happen, and they do happen, that safe little routine can mean keeping sane. It gives a place to be where mind and body can deal with traumas without added stress. I've been there, when each day I would wake up and reality would feel like getting kicked in the gut by a mule. Just surviving from minute to minute was all that could be done. That's when the comfort of routine and ritual is needed most. Using the special coffee cup, saying prayers a certain way, closing your eyes and counting to 10. Those and so many other things get us through so that time can heal and give new perspective to life and events.

Now, I'm breaking out of my routines and rituals. Taking those steps, and some of them are scary and seem overwhelming, toward a new stage in life. Whether or not I do it I will still be blind. It would probably be easy to hide in my little world where it is safe. I wouldn't enjoy it, I'd be enduring from day to day.

 I want to have a life with no regrets, where I look back over it and think that it was so much fun that I never want it to end. I can have that life. I know that with all of my heart and soul. That each and every moment can and will be filled with delight. That I'll never want to go to bed because each day was so special that I don't want it to end. That every morning I wake up excited at the thought of a day filled with wonder. That's the life I'm going to have, the one I should have lived all along.

Lately I've been reflecting over the lives of family who have died. The lives that they lived, their hopes and dreams. The way that others remembered them, the love that carries on forever. This is part of my changing, understanding the legacies of caring, of loving others and ourselves. The dreams we have for our own lives as well as those we have for our futures. Of wanting the best of love and health and happiness for our children and our grandchildren. Remembering the dreams of childhood where we thought of our lives when we would become grown ups and parents. These things all make up my thoughts of life, of living, of celebrating each day, no matter what occurs.