Thankful Thursday (July 7, 2022): Flowers

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m still feeling rather sad, a bit depressed even, today. I try to tell myself it’s okay. I’d even say it’s normal. I mean, attachment loss sucks.

This is not the post for me to whine about that though. I don’t want to. Rather, I’m going to try to find something I can be grateful for. I’m therefore joining Thankful Thursday.

Today, I felt rather unmotivated, but pushed myself to leave the home anyway to go for a walk. I took my phone with me. It was a cloudy day, so the right weather for taking photos. Somewhere in the neighborhood, we came across what my staff said are some kind of hydrangeas. There were pink and white ones. I actually got to touch them, which was cool.


I still want to learn to do some photo editing with help from my staff. On one of these, the staff did some cropping within the Photos app, but I do have other editing tools too. In any case, being able to photograph these flowers and appreciate their beauty by touch too, is truly something I’m grateful for today.

Because today I share a flower photo (or two), I’m linking this post to Cee’s Flower of the Day too.

Gratitude List (August 27, 2021) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Can you believe August is almost over with already? I certainly can’t. Today I thought I’d do a gratitude list. I’m joining Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT), as well as Thankful Thursday (a day late) again.

1. I am grateful for French fries. On Sunday, the staff decided to get those delivered to the care home. Of course, I had a very spicy snack called mexicano with it.

2. I am grateful the volunteer handymen came over to my room on Monday to put together the new desk I bought at Ikea two weeks ago. At first, it was a little too high (the legs are adjustable in length), but the handymen had been struggling to get the legs to cooperate. For this reason, I was hesitant to ask them to adjust them. However, once they’d figured out how to work the mechanism, it was pretty easy. I am so grateful to have my new desk now.

3. I am grateful both my assigned day activities staff and home staff are back from vacation as of this week.

4. I am grateful my CPN is back from vacation. I am glad I had a good discussion with her on Wednesday.

5. I am grateful to be making progress in my creative endeavors. I am quite perfectionistic, so have thrown a few of my polymer clay pieces in the bin, but without failing, one doesn’t learn, right? I am also grateful for all the constructive feedback I receiv in Facebook groups.

6. I am grateful my polymer clay alphabet stamping set arrived. I had had it on my wishlist for a while, ordered it on Monday and it arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, a part of it was missing. One of my staff went after it and the store just replied that they’ll send the part that is missing.

7. I am grateful for summer fruit. My day activities staff, who lives near the supermarket my care facility normally buys from, was asked to get some stuff (buttermilk, I think, yikes!) on Thursday and she asked me what else I wanted her to buy now that she was going to go get groceries for us anyway. She bought peaches and strawberries and they were delicious!

8. I am grateful to be able to put a smile onto people’s face with my handmade gifts. Like I may have mentioned, my day activities staff got a present from me. So did a fellow client, who had his birthday on Wednesday. He had the hugest smile on his face when I gave him his hand cream.

9. I am grateful to live in a free, developed country. All the news about the Taliban having taken over Afghanistan makes me so grateful that I’m not and have never been in a war zone.

10. I am grateful the government are so far not putting the country into lockdown or tightening any measures despite COVID case numbers being on the rise again.

What are you grateful for?

Thankful Thursday (July 23, 2020): My Care Team

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! How are you all doing on this warm Thursday evening? I’m doing a lot better than I was earlier this week. I could actually do an early gratitude list, as there’s more than one thing I’m grateful for. A simple list wouldn’t do justice to how huge these gratefuls are though. Let me share. I’m joining in with Thankful Thursday.

First, I still need to update you all on my appt with my nurse practitioner and CPN on Tuesday. It went better than I expected. The outcome is that my nurse practitioner is going to talk to the psychiatrist and see if he can find us a psychologist to do trauma therapy and work on our emotion regulation issues. I don’t remember all the details of the meeting, but at one point, I/someone in me blurted out that we’re in Facebook groups for dissociative disorders. I quickly added that really that’s none of my nurse practitioner’s business, but still we feel a lot of shame surrounding this.

Then on Tuesday evening, a discussion erupted on Twitter about the ISST-D’s guidelines for diagnosing and treating people with dissociative disorders. There’s this article from 2001 that’s still being used to weed out alleged fakers. It uses such things as being open about your DID or trauma to people other than a few close confidants, showing no obvious shame when talking about your trauma, being in support groups for DID, etc., as apparent proof that you’re fake. Now I must say I’m still conflicted about going the actual trauma/DID assessment route, but this did trigger us. However, my support staff are on my side.

We were still recovering from the shame about all this when we heard the main good news I was planning to share here. I got a higher care profile allocated to me by the long-term care funding authority. I still can’t quite believe it, but I’m so happy. The application hadn’t gone out till last week, but this afternoon, my staff got a call that it’d been approved. I’m still waiting on the letter in my government inbox confirming it, but this is really good news. I now have the highest care profile for blind people in the long-term care system.

I was feeling a bit disconnected when I heard the news. Like I said, I still can’t quite believe it, but it’s such amazing news. I’m so glad my staff were so perseverant that they actually applied for this.

Looking forward to hearing what you all are grateful for today.

Thankful Thursday (May 14, 2020): Dancing!

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been feeling kind of depressed lately. Or rather, less non-depressed than I was over the past month. I’m not sure how “normal” feels, being that I’ve struggled with depression off and on (and mostly on) since childhood. I was finally thinking I could be inspired and motivated for a while, but that while has stopped now I think. I hope my creativity and motivation return soon.

When I shared about my mood on an E-mail support list yesterday, some people responded by saying I could focus my attention on what I can do rather than what I can’t. Like, even a day without blogging mojo was frustrating me, even though in other areas, I’m pretty much my normal self. I’m still honestly pretty active. I’m not sleeping 15 hours a day. Okay, I slept nearly 12 hours last night, but I barely got eight the nights before. So as sort of a pick-me-up, I’m joining in with Thankful Thursday and the reason I’m thankful today is my level of physical activity.

You see, I reached my goal of 10K steps today! If this doesn’t prove that I’m fine, I don’t know what does. I went for two longer walks during the day and a short walk in the evening. I’ve also been “dancing” some. By this I mean walking in place and swinging my arms while music is playing. I have absolutely no sense of rhythm, but so what? I put the Cardio playlist on Spotify on and just moved. I honestly really loved it.

Besides getting me active, this helped me discover new music. You know, I normally only listen to classic country and some other oldie stuff. I can’t stand most of the workout playlists on Spotify, but Cardio was an exception. I loved it! Here’s one of the songs I listened to several times.

Do you like to dance?

Thankful Thursday (March 26, 2020): My Staff’s Approach to a Meltdown

Posted on by Astrid

Today I’m having a really hard day. I found out this morning that my husband is not allowed to visit me for the duration of the COVID-19 situation. Only in exceptional cases such as when you’re terminally ill can you have a visitor. Well, I guess I’m grateful I’m not in that situation.

During this time of day activities at the home and the chaotic situation that ensues, I’m struggling a lot with basic mistrust. As I explained to my staff, including the behavior specialist, some weeks ago, I’m finding that I experience a lot of distress due to past trauma. I’m pretty sure I suffer with significant attachment issues and am acting those out towards the staff now that I’m beginning to feel slightly safe. I mean, there’s a part of me who says that if the staff truly know me, they’ll kick me out of here or abandon me in some other way. I guess this part is giving the staff a hard time because they’ll ultimately abandon me anyway so I’d better push them away first.

As such, this afternoon, I had a major meltdown. I was watching a video on the Center for Consultation and Expertise website about a man with mild intellectual disability who had a lot of challenging behavior. The way in which I could relate to him, triggered me. I tried to tell my staff, but couldn’t and then I threw a glass to the ground.

Now here comes the reason I prefixed this post with Thankful Thursday: my staff were amazing about it!

My assigned support worker, who happened to work on my side of the home today, called another home for a staff to come over. This was a staff who had also worked in my home previously. She hugged me and took me to my room to talk while my assigned staff cleaned the mess.

This did further trigger me, but it was a good trigger. I mean, in the psychiatric hospital I would’ve been secluded or kicked off the unit and basically abandoned. I had tears of gratitude and sadness at the same time because of how lovely my staff handled this situation. My assigned staff even said maybe we should watch the video together sometime so that I could point out in which ways I relate.

Now here’s hoping my behavior won’t escalate further. After all, then I may in fact be abandoned. My inner critic still says that I’m making up all the factors behind my challenging behavior and it’s all just attention-seeking and abandonment is exactly what I deserve. Regardless, I’m so extremely grateful for my staff!

Thankful Thursday (May 30, 2019): My Mother-In-Law

Posted on by Astrid

It’s Thursday and I haven’t blogged in a few days. I’m feeling the pull of depression worsen and that’s not helped by the fact that I still am not done with the long-term care application process. My husband, in-laws and support staff try to remain positive, but I’m having a really hard time of it. I haven’t updated my list of alters on this blog in a while and several have recently emerged. Some seem like they’ve been around longer, but a recent disappointment in the care application process caused us to split again too. I don’t know whether that’s even possible or it’s a sign of us being a fake dissociator, but oh well.

Thursday means it’s time for Brian’s weekly Thankful Thursday blog hop. I only participated once before and that was when I’d just seemed to lose hope that my situation would ever improve. Because the long-term care laws would be changed in 2021 to allow the mentally ill access, I said that by then everything would fall into place. It looks more like that than ever now. Only thing is, I’m pretty sure I can’t hold on that long. But I digress. This post is supposed to be positive.

Today I am most thankful for my in-laws. When I got the latest disappointing news on Tuesday, my mother-in-law offered to pick me up from day activities. This was unrelated, but it couldn’t have been more coincidental. I spent the evening with her, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law’s niece, who temporarily lives with my in-laws. I spent yesterday evening there too, meaning I had to spend a manageable amount of time alone.

Today is a bank holiday and tomorrow, my day activities is closed too. Since my husband does have to work, I would’ve had to spend the day alone at home if not for my mother-in-law. She offered to come by in the morning for a cup of coffee and in the afternoon too for either tea or to take me to my in-laws’ house if my husband would be home from work late.

I am also thankful for my support coordinator and support worker. Next Monday, my day activities will be a bit short-staffed so I can’t go for the weekly Monday-morning walk, as there’s no-one to guide me. However, my support coordinator offered to come by in the afternoon to take me on a walk. She’s also been incredibly supportive of me during the latest developments. My husband said she deserves half a truck filled with Merci chocolates for all the work she does for me. And I agree. My mother-in-law deserves the other half of the truck.

Thankful Thursday (February 21, 2019): Meltdowns

Posted on by Astrid

Today is Thursday and I’m participating in the Thankful Thursday blog hop. I am thankful for all the wonderful people in my life, who stick by me even when I’m struggling.

We have been struggling a lot lately. On Tuesday, we were in an almost-constant state of panic. Our staff tried to comfort us, but it was hard. They were nice though and even though we were very distressed, they didn’t get reactive.

Then Wednesday didn’t start good either. We had to have a blood draw and the laboratory person was supposed to come to our home. She hadn’t told us at what time she’d come though, so I waited for an hour, not having eaten as instructed, and then left. I was in a meltdown already.

Later that morning, once at day activities, I was on the rocking lounger in the yard. The staff had said she’d come get me back indoors “in a while”. Well she looked through the window and saw me rocking nicely, but then when I wanted to get off, no-one saw or heard me. That’s when I melted down again.

And then, in the afternoon, my husband informed me that he wouldn’t be home from work till 8PM. My in-laws couldn’t have me eat at theirs either, so I would have to be alone at home till 8PM. I was in a huge meltdown again and ran out of the house.

Thankfully, a woman who lives further down the street came to me and calmed me and helped me find the way to my home.

In addition to being grateful for all the nice people in my life, I”m thankful for PRN tranquilizers. My husband has them in a locker, because I’ve taken two overdoses on them in the past. I hardly ever use them, so when I had used my last pill, I’d forgotten to ask my husband for a refill. Fortunately, he did yesterday. He reminds me that even though I hardly use them, I don’t have them prescribed for no reason at all.

Weekly Gratitude List (August 17, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

It’s Friday again. I don’t usually look forward to the week-end, but I love Fridays. They’re a wonderful day to reflect back on my week and remember what I’m grateful for. So here is my weekly gratitude list.

1. A stay at my in-laws last Saturday. My husband was visiting his grandma but, due to her cognitive decline, she would most likely not have recognized me, so I didn’t go. My mother-in-law took me on a walk with their dog and my father-in-law served us homemade pizza for dinner.

2. A long walk on Monday. At day activities, my group usually goes for a short walk on Monday mornings, but there’s another group who walk for like 50 minutes. An extra staff member was available last MOnday, who usually works at the group who go for the long walk but was at my group that day. She asked whether I’d like to walk with the other group while she was my sighted guide. I loved it in spite of a little rain. I really hope that I can regularly go walk with this other group. It depends on whether they think I need a one-on-one guide, which I don’t think I need.

3. Probably the last day for the year I could wear a skirt. Yesterday, the weather was good. It was warm, but not hot and there was a cool breeze too. As a result, I was able to go for another long walk with my support coordinator.

4. Managing half an hour on the elliptical on Tuesday. If I go on the elliptical tonight, tomorrow or on Sunday, I’ll also have crushed my five-day exercise goal. Not that I’ve been on the elliptical that often, but walking counts towards my goal too.

5. A good meeting with the Center for Consultation adn Expertise consultant on Tuesday. We don’t know yet what route she’s going to recommend us going re my care, as the next meeting won’t be till late September. However, I’m glad I was at least somewhat able to communicate my needs.

6. Walking around the day activities center almost with no help. On Wednesday, I asked the staff to accompany me on a walk around the building, so that I could see whether I can learn to do this independently. On my second try, I walked independently using my white cane but the staff was still close by. I’m confident that I can learn to walk this route independently. It’s only about a five-minute walk, but baby steps cunt too.

As you can see, most of the things I’m grateful for this week involve physical activity. I truly love this. I didn’t get to ten things of thankful this week, because I’ve been feeling a little off, but reflecting on the things I can still be grateful for sure does help lift my mood.

Linkign up with Ten Things of Thankful and Thankful Thursday.