Happy New Year 2025

Happy New Year!  I am excited for 2025 and so proud of how far we have come in the 2 years since our lives went upside down!  

I could have thrown in the towel, sold our house, moved in with family- basically quit on myself and on Áine.  I didn't.  Instead, I figured out how to be a single mother with MS while our world fell apart and put if back together.  Not in the same way, not in a way I ever thought possible, but I did it.

I think it is easy for people to forget or even know that I have MS.  I do everything other parents do.  I do the laundry, I clean the house, I shop for groceries, I pay the bills, I maintain my accounts, I take care of the house inside and out, I get my child to school, I do homework,  I manage the family schedule, I walk the dog,  I work, I run.  I'm not very good about cooking but aim to be better.  Recipes are exhausting.  Doing all of this alone make it understandable for people to forget or not know that I have MS.  

As I am writing this at 11:08 AM, I am already feeling tired.  My eyes feel like they are ready to cry just from being awake.  This is a common feeling I have.  The fatigue feel like it wants to come out of my eyes.  

When I became suddenly single and on my own this time, I did not have the same amount of support I had when I was on my own before.  I wasn't sick enough.  I had HSCT and thank God I did.   I am in such a better place with my health and can do all of these things, but it is still not easy.  Being a parent is exhausting, being a healthy single parent is exhausting, being a single parent with MS is I don't know. I don't know what it's like to be a healthy parent having been diagnose with MS 15 months after Áine was born.  I would love to know that it is like to always feel normal and healthy as a mom.  To not have to apologize to my child because sometimes I can't go on anymore.  

Even feeling like this, I have made a life for us.  We are happy and mostly healthy.  We have lots of friends around us and of course, we have family.  Despite some people questioning how I'd be able to keep the house, with no job, take care of Áine and our dog, Lilly, manage the house, and take care of myself, here we are over 2 years later happy.  I am doing it. We are doing it and in 2025, we will keep bringing joy into our lives by making conscious choices to do so. 



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