Gorgeous post from thinkingpinkx2!
For Love of Pink
I dream in feathers~fairy dust, sunshine and light~
Beautiful…
friends…growing…flowing…sharing…hanging out…together on the vine ❦❦❦
Friends from thinkingpinkx2!
Blooming
This is so beautiful…
Belinda Your Flower Bloomed Today
I saw star dust and twinkles
I saw shimmers of light
carried to me by
the Angels
that protect
you in the night
Belinda Your Flower Bloomed Today
it was a beautiful sight to behold!
Broken Shoulder, Crippled Girl…No More
Broken shoulder, crippled girl. Always in pain, always aware of every muscle and every bone, every bump in the road, every slight movement which jars her shoulder.
I know her. She is safe, familiar and predictable. She is not who I was, but she is who I have become over the past ten years. It started so innocently, shoulder pain I couldn’t manage. Then, two botched shoulder surgeries, rotator cuff torn twice, arthritis, the shoulder of an old woman. A fall off a porch which completely tears the rotator cuff off the bone. The doctor’s assistant says, “Your arm is f—–and she does nothing. Orders no tests, has no solution. She says, “Why bother, we know it’s destroyed.”
Broken shoulder, crippled girl spends thousands as she visits three more doctors in three different states and they politely tell her that they can’t help her. Two more doctors in Florida. (Four states total.)
One doctor she turns down, she doesn’t trust him and he is arrested a short time later for Medicaid fraud. Doing unnecessary operations. Good instincts.
The other doctor says he can help her, but she will never lift her right arm above her waist again. He shows her a device bigger than both her shoulder joints! She actually considers it and schedules the surgery because at this point, she would allow a doctor to cut her arm off.
Then her husband, God bless him, he says there has to be a better solution. He does research on the internet and he finds a doctor he thinks she should consider. He shows her the doctor’s web site and they watch the surgery together, the same surgery she would have on her right shoulder. She calls the doctor’s office and expects the usual run-around (fax us all your medical records and we will let you know if the doctor will see you) but she is given an appointment for the next week. When she meets the doctor, he says he not only can, but he will fix her shoulder and she will have complete use of her right arm again.
Hope, barely visible for so many years, hope rises like a mist in her soul. Surgery with the doctor who promises she’ll never lift her arm high enough to curl her hair again is cancelled.
Hope rises like the bright orange and peach rays of a sunrise over the Oklahoma prairie.
But wait. What will happen when her shoulder is fixed, no longer a crutch to lean on, an excuse to leave herself out of life, too hurt to move, too aching with the pain to even want to breathe, who will she be when that is gone?
She never asked to become the crippled girl, it just happened, but she did her part, learned to adjust, learned to live in constant, agonizing pain. Even a living Hell, if it is home, even Hell can become the place where you learn to live. When you are stuck there, you fix the place up, do the best you can and you own it. Where did she live before the pain, who was she before she became the broken shoulder, crippled girl? When did she become this handicapped woman?
It was a slow process from there to here. One bad surgery changed her life and then another to fix it made it even worse, the pain became unbearable, but she had not chosen the pain.
She didn’t want the pain, she searched for doctors to help her and she visited doctors in three states and not one doctor would touch the mess.
So, she lived with the unbearable, she adjusted, she compensated, but she changed.
She has never quite given up the hope, even when the hope was a ghost she could not touch, years of chasing a dream that if one doctor could cause the pain, maybe, just maybe, another doctor could find a way to take away the pain.
Now, here she is, miracle of miracles, on the edge of being fixed after so many have said no. Now, one young doctor has said yes, I can help you. Young enough to be her son. As the day draws near, she is excited but she is also afraid.
He tells her he will do a reverse shoulder replacement. He will return full use of her arm and now she is hoping, hoping with all her heart, with every breath, hope shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow and all the glimmers in her soul, hoping that it’s true, praying that he can do what he has promised.
Yet, pain has become a way of life and she knows from experience, he could actually make it worse. Plus, if you take away the pain, what will replace her obsession? Who will the broken-shoulder, crippled girl be when she is a girl without a mission? Her mission for the last ten years has been simple. Find a doctor who will fix her arm.
Her daily chores now are simple, manage to get showered and to get herself dressed, do a little laundry, clean a tiny corner of the house, survive, just survive, collapse after supper in tears from pushing her broken shoulder to its limit all day.
Sometimes she just barely manages to get out of bed and get herself showered, crawling back into sweats and a tee-shirt by 4:00 P.M.
Sometimes, that is the only chore she can complete in twenty-four hours.
She will need a new mission, a new attitude.
Is she so attached to the pain now after all these years or is she attached to the pain pills that she has needed to swallow in order to move her shoulder, to dress, to eat, to live? Pain pills that barely touch the bone scraping on bone agony, just enough relief to stop her from screaming aloud, to stop her from jumping off a bridge in total desperation.
If the operation is a success and she believes it will be, because Doctor Levy has looked directly at her and promised with words that touch her heart, then she knows the pain pills have to go away too.
Ten longs years of four pain pills a day. What has that done to her brain, to her motivation? Are you afraid broken shoulder, crippled girl? Are you afraid to be whole, free from excruciating pain?
Is pain addictive or are the pain pills you have counted on addictive? Are you still strong underneath the pain or has your spirit been damaged too? Are you strong enough to fight when the pain is stripped away?
You have been fighting so hard, for so very long, but you always knew the enemy. PAIN. Pain has ruled your life for a decade, so what will rule your life after your pain is gone? What ruled your life before the pain?
Writing. Will you write again, will the ideas pour out of your mind and once again stream into articles, will the keyboard return as your best friend and will it be an extension of your right arm again, an extension of who you are once more?
Yes, I think so. I remember that woman who would write day and night, night and day, write and write. Will she come back to me? Wait. I think I see her at my keyboard. Yes, that’s her, writing, inspired by a glimmer of hope, flirting with the very idea, the hope of becoming more than the broken shoulder, crippled girl. She will trust this doctor, take a chance.
Post Note: My shoulder operation was performed one week after I wrote this article in October, 2011. It was a total success. My surgeon was Dr. Jonathan Levy from the Holy Cross Hospital, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He used a prototype that allows full movement (his own invention) to replace my shoulder joint, in reverse. Besides a twinge now and then when I forget to exercise the arm or to take a break from the computer, my arm is healed. I’ve had 99% range of motion since just two months after the surgery. I have several types of arthritis, and I still have a severely damaged spine and a broken joint in my right foot, but the pain from each is bearable with one-third the amount of medication and this pain, while keeping me from wearing pretty shoes or walking any distance, this pain does not run my life.
Once more, I run my life. I finished a book that I started twenty-odd-years ago, the year after my surgery and now, once more, I write something every day. I started this blog after my surgery and then I met Michelle Marie and we started thinkingpinkx2.
The creative thoughts flow so fast that I cannot even keep up and yes, I am truly living once more, not just surviving.
Thank you, Doctor Levy. (First picture)
The two cuties in the second and third picture are my husband Jerry and my son Rick. Thank you guys, you are my heroes. Rick was in a serious car accident just two months before my surgery and when he flew from Oklahoma to Florida to help me out after my surgery, it was a miracle to see him walk in my door under his own steam. After what I saw him recover from, just having him with me gave me courage. But that’s another story…
Eyelashes
Eyelashes by Jeanne Marie
We choose a corner table in the cozy country restaurant, two grown women, yet…I feel that we are playing dress-up. Pangs of guilt and anxiety needle me. I had to sneak away from Mom to steal this time with my sister. She looks as guilty as I do.
My sister and I are two pieces of a puzzle, day and night, the sun and the moon. We complete each other. Years of clinging together through the dark nights, years of my father’s rage, my mother’s silence, dysfunctional machinery that welded ropes of love, hope and faith that even we have not been able to destroy.
It doesn’t matter how long we’re apart; we begin our conversation where we ended on my last visit, as if no time had passed. Once, after a serious argument, we didn’t speak for three years and still; when we made up, it was the same way.
We talk about how we are workaholics, always working for (or loving) men who try to control, use, abuse, manipulate, annihilate and dominate. She tells me that at least I always fight back and stand up for myself. It’s true.
However, we agree that I accept the abuse too. I just make a lot of noise and end up quitting or running away. I’ve never resolved the situations. My life is paved with unresolved relationships.
I talk about starting my hypnotherapy to quit smoking and how when I am under, I always end up in deep, murky moats, smoky castles with walls built from bricks of terror and abandonment. I tell her that they dumped a baby out of a shopping cart into the smoke and her eyes open wide. I didn’t know if it was Sue Sue or me in that carriage. It felt like we were the same baby. I start to cry and light another cigarette. Two years of therapy and I’m still smoking.
“I’m almost fifty and I don’t want to deal with my childhood anymore, I just want to be okay. I just want to quit smoking.” I tell her. Tears fill her eyes.
We order breakfast and settle in with our coffee, letting it soothe us as I light another cigarette.
We need to talk about Mom, the reason I’m home this time. Our oldest sister has already agreed to take responsibility for Mom when the time comes. I’d always planned to be the one, but find now that the time is near, I’m not able to take care of my own needs, let alone imagine caring for anyone else.
“Is she still able to take care of herself?” I ask Susanne. “Keep track of her medicines and her doctor’s appointments? She has cried wolf so many times that I don’t know if she is honestly too confused to function on her own, and even though I just spent a week with her, I still can’t tell. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Alice in Wonderland,” says my sister. “Alice in Wonderland. I have been Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party my entire life. Nothing is ever what it seems.”
She talks about the falseness of our “loving, nurturing mother.” A mother who nearly destroyed her by trying to be the man in her life, her father, her husband, her daughter’s father.
I cringe as she talks, remembering my sister trapped, pregnant, the husband to-be my mother drove away, how I helped my sister work and escape when she turned eighteen. How she ran away into a world crazier than the one she left behind and preferred it still.
“Do you remember when dad was ranting and raving and he used to tell us that someday we’d find out that Mom was the reason he was crazy? Well, he was so right. My life has been nothing but a Mad Hatter’s tea party.”
She has mentioned Alice a lot these past few days. It has been years since I heard about Alice, so I know there is something she needs to say.
“Don’t you know?” she demands. “Don’t you know that Mom is your father figure? The dominating male figure in your life? How could you go through years of therapy and never figure out that your inability to deal with men is her fault?”
I know by the frustration in her voice, that she has wanted to tell me this for a very long time. I start to cry. Her words cause my stomach to flop over, my heart pounds with panic.
My gut knows that she is right. I just can’t believe that I have never seen it for myself. If my sister is Alice, I must be Sleeping Beauty.
“With all the therapy you’ve been in, haven’t you ever focused on Mom?” she shouts.
“No. I didn’t. I knew what she had done to you, how she controlled you and kept you a prisoner with Danielle ‘till you were eighteen, but she never wanted me. I was always the one that could handle her. Now I can’t handle her anymore and I realize that when I thought I could, it was only an illusion, I never had control. It was all just part of the game. She controls me too.”
My voice is soft and teary. Her voice is shrill and full of angry emotion. Her pain is the lighter fluid that sparks our conversation.
She cries out, “I can’t handle being around Mom. When I’m around her, I start to pull all of my eyelashes out again.”
I am startled, shocked by the degree of my sister’s torment. Yet, as she speaks the words, she is touching her eyelids in a familiar way. I have seen her do it a million times. How could I have ever thought that she had mascara in her eyes so often?
She continues, her voice taut with pain. “Mom is not normal. She hates everything about babies and childbirth. She hates kids. She is so sick. You know how I eat so fast? Well, one day when we were eating she said, ‘Watch me eat. Watch how I chew each bite slowly. Eat like this. Watch me. This is how you eat your food. Look at me.’ It was awful.”
“When you were little?” I ask.
“No! I was forty-one years old!”
We sit surrounded by elderly couples who pretend not to listen as we talk about our mother, our childhood.
Do they wonder if their own children sit in crowded restaurants exposing family secrets?
I feel as if I should shush my sister because the details that are pouring from her mouth are dirty and tattered, personal, best left to a therapist’s couch.
Her passionate grief, the shrill horror in her voice, the way she touches her eyelashes as she speaks, all these things freeze my words.
I decide that she is the only person in this room that I need to be concerned about.
“Why can’t you see the way that she has damaged you too, why do you think you never feel good enough? You had the same mother as me! You suffered the same things that I did. Do you think you escaped her mind games, her torture? Nothing was ever good enough for her; we were never enough for her. That is why you can’t deal with the men in your life, the same as me.”
My blind eyes are wide open now.
“We are so strong to have even survived, don’t you know that? We are both miracles. We are both so special, so gifted and she has not been able to destroy that in us. We are survivors.”
As we stand, we hold onto to each other for a long moment before we walk away with our heads held high. You can almost hear the people in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.
“Do you think we should have charged admission?” I ask her.
She laughs as she says, “Ya, cause then we could have used a microphone and sat in front of the fireplace.”
Ironic. When Dad was screaming, we used to hide in the old, unused fireplace in our bedroom.
I am grieving the loss of my sister even as we drive away from the restaurant together because I’ve learned that each time I leave her and fly home to Oklahoma, she will wipe me from her heart, erase me from her mind and that I won’t exist until I walk back in her door. I have to accept that it is the only way she can deal with her pain and her anger when I leave her.
Sadly, I know that one day I will knock on her door and she will not open it. She will erase me along with her past, leaving me behind as she runs away to another Mad Hatter’s tea party, an insane event that makes much more sense than her reality.
My baby sister Alice and me, Sleeping Beauty.
When The Kids Grow Up
I now have 14 grandkids and four great grandbabies!
I began writing at fourteen but when I started my family at nineteen, I think that the sterilizer vaporized my creativity. I figured that it had boiled away with the germs on the baby’s bottles. Occasionally, I’d have a poetic burst, but by the time I was twenty-six, I had three children screaming for my attention and my writing ceased.
I told everyone that I was a writer, but my kids kept me too busy to write. “When the kids grow up,” I’d say. When the kids finally went off to school, “prove it” anxiety set in. I thought about having another baby, but that seemed rather desperate. I had to face facts. It was time to write. I began slowly, but regained my confidence as the words poured from me. Poems began to accumulate and I’d read them to friends and family. In 1988 I bought an electric typewriter…
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You are going over not under because you’re an overcomer
from Michelle Marie
I’ll be here believing~
I’ll be here believing…from thinkingpinkx2
Happiness In Bloom
Perfect!
Think Pink…
Good Friends ♥ sweet friends ♥ Good Times ♥ sweet times
Today…
Running in Pink Heels
i believe in Pink
Visit thinkingpinkx2 for more! https://thinkingpinkx2.wordpress.com/
I Believe…
Sisters…
Flowers…Perfectly Pinkly Imperfect
under the Pink Trees…
This Pink tree grows in my yard…
Flowers…for you…
My flowers make me smile, especially since they grow almost year-round!
Flowers of Friendship
Another stunning work of art from my flowers by Michelle Marie…
Flowers of Light from Jeanne Marie’s Garden
Michelle Marie posted all the beautiful flowers I send her…thank you Pink friend!
The Milk Carton
Have you seen this child?
She was lost thirty-five years ago
She simply disappeared.
Her present status, I don’t know.
Should we put her on a milk carton
Or leave her to find herself?
Perhaps she is dead and buried or
Baking cookies with the Keebler elves.
Perhaps she dances with wild gypsies
Wild swirling dances that cover her defeat.
Are they bewitched by her radiance
Delighted by her naked madness,
Struck speechless by her insane
Howling beneath a winter’s moon?
The years have surely taken her
I don’t know where she went.
She used to live in my closet
Curled under the heater vent.
She was such a frightened girl
She seldom ventured out.
Could it be that she still exists
Although hidden from clear view?
You might catch a glimpse of her
When I smile at you.
Call her softly, do not shout.
She might dare to laugh…
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For Your Eyes
Butterflies flit around my face
morning does not stay
minutes turns to hours
as I duel with weeds and play.
I go out front and gasp
stock-still, in awe I stand
loving flowers of every hue
petals are caressed with hand.
Sun sets, splashing orange
and yellow across the sky
stunning, breathtaking
fiery colors fast-slipping by.
“Dear God, is this all just for me?”
“Child of nature, thumbs of green
butterfly whisperer, home garden queen,
send your pictures to Belinda’s eyes
and they will bless all who see.
by Jeanne Marie
Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie 
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