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JoAnn MacCready's avatar

I turned 60 during this pandemic. I never thought I would live so long. I have done so many hard things in my life I have lost count. Each time I was sure I would never survive. It started at my birth when a woman decided I was not going to be part of the life she planned. I fought to thrive. It continued in a dysfunctional family of alcoholics who had so many demons, a child not of their blood was just so much baggage. I nursed a very broken alcoholic woman with cancer at the age of 10. I was a parent to a child who was the sunshine of his parents soul. I was “wife” to a man in way over his head with a sick wife and a job that came and went with the winds of each election. I was 12. I managed to get through high school because it was the only safe space but peers who live a normal life didn’t recognize in me the life they led. I had no friends, we had no money for experiences of normal childhoods. No one came home with me because a child of an alcoholic never ever chances that. Too much risk of exposure. I married to escape at the tender age of 19 to a person just like the one I left. We seek what is familiar. I had a child in time and that was the biggest turning point in my life. I knew I was NOT a going to allow my child to endure the childhood I had. I left with the clothes on my back and a pail of dirty diapers. He begged me to come back. He threatened to commit suicide. I offered to help him because I just didn’t give a shit anymore. Like a mama bear my child came first. I endured. I got a job in the non profit sector at minimum wage. I did something terrible. I confessed my sin and paid the price. Then the gods decided I needed a break and I met the man I would spend the rest of my life with. He was and still is my rock. We endured. We parented two children and raised them to be fine men. I taught them how to be empathetic and loving men to anyone that came into their lives. Life wasn’t done with me though....I got sick with Multiple Sclerosis just at the time when I felt I was going to survive. The changes it wrought in my life have been enormous. It has stolen so much. I remember one day sitting on my bedroom floor after falling and I was crying and wailing about my lot in life. The “why me” was strong that day and many others. My husband says to me “why not you?” I felt I had been slapped. He said “ you are strong, you are resilient, you are smart and we will deal with this”. It was the “we” that got me. I knew I would endure, survive and he would be with me the whole time. I stopped crying and pulled up my big girl panties. I guess what I am trying to say is that women can do hard things. We do them over and over and over, every damn day. We know how to get up and keep going because we have no other choices in life. Our kids are the big motivation, but I also think we have an inner strength that is invincible. The biggest trick is realizing that we can endure. That we have the inner strength needed to do hard things. I still have days when I feel I can’t go on, that this is the last day I can get up, and show up. Then I do. It always surprises me. This disease has made me realize what is really important in life. It’s not things, it’s not what we have or what we “do”. What is really important is the small flame of love we have for ourselves that makes everything else possible even when it is terrifying. We need to teach our littles to keep that small flame alive even when all we really want is for the flame to go out so we can rest.

You are an inspiration to women and to your children. A few years ago my youngest son was home from two tours of Afghanistan (that experience nearly blew out my flame) and was settling in to a home of his own. The pressures of doing this alone were telling on him. He told me that he now recognized what we went through and the sacrifices we made to raise him and his brother. That admission was the single most important affirmation that it was worth it. Someday you will get that same affirmation from your two. And it will have all been worth it. Hang on. It’s worth it.

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Jan Loomer's avatar

All that AND making all of us feel safer, more informed & unified. Thank you! For your words, your spirit, your passion & your heart. You certainly have made a difference in my life. ♥️✌🏼

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