Healing

If you've been a follower of this blog for a while, you know that dates on the calendar mean a lot to me. I can be rendered unable to function, stricken by sadness, from a particular date. September 13th is and may always be my worst day of the year. The day my beautiful baby died (can it really be almost 8 years???) in my arms. December 17th--Allie's birthday. April 4th--my father's death. May 3rd--the day the world stopped when we heard our baby might have leukemia. There are also those happy dates in my life that bring immeasurable joy too. 

So, you would think that August 9th would be a new added calendar date for me to get anxious over. August 9, 2011, I walked into a courtroom and finalized my divorce.

I didn't realize I had past the one year mark of my divorce until the day after because I was having too much fun that day with the people I love most in the world.

A former coworker of mine let me use their family condo last week in Rockport, TX.  The girls, Boyfriend and I made a seven hour drive down to the coast.  It wasn't always a perfect vacation and had it's moments of stress (hi, we took a toddler on a road trip.  Enough said), but it was a good week overall.

On the day of the one year mark, we took the girls to Corpus Christi for what ended up being my favorite day of the entire summer.  We spent six hours at the Texas State Aquarium.  The dolphin show was first up, completely soaking us head to toe!  The girls were a mess of giggles afterwards and we spent over thirty minutes watching the dolphins in the underground viewing area.  Sissy was most fascinated by the otters.  The kids had Boyfriend and me in tears laughing so hard watching them play at the splash pad.  At one point, I tweeted that my cheeks hurt from smiling so much.  Dinner afterwards was perfect.  Maggie hugged me throughout the day, declaring it the best of her summer.  She thanked us profusely for taking her and even willingly went to bed early, tired from the day's fun.

It wasn't until the next day as we were driving home that I started thinking about all that I need to do before I go back to work on August 20th.  I was thinking of everything that I need done with the house, the Heroes for Children 5K, play time with the kids, etc.  I began mentally preparing my to do list as I was driving (poor MM had to work on his laptop the entire drive down and back).  I wanted to figure out how much time I had left and thought hard about what day it was.  Then it hit me.  It was August 10th.  I didn't even remember the August 9th date.  I hadn't obsessed about it or allowed it to become another date that made me anxious.  I didn't notice. 

That, my friends, is HEALING.