Wake Up and Live!

Bob Marley said: "Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you're riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!"


I've always been known as the person who runs from a fight. Whether it was a couple of kids fighting it out at school when I was young or if it was the man and wife who lived next door who would scream at each other and knock over furniture until the cops showed up. I was never the one to stick around when things got heated. 

I don't keep a great many friends around me. I have one really great friend with whom I've been friends with for nearly 30 years.

Sometimes, it seems like friends are more work than what I'm willing to invest in. I figure, if they are true friends, they will stick around. After all, friendship isn't something that should have to be a lot of work.

I have a life that is full of college classes for both my husband and myself. When I have to juggle that and four growing children, I find it hard to try to deal with the stress. 

While some people have the fight or flight response to stress, I have the freeze response. 

The website stresstop.com says: 

"THE FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSE has got a new name. It's now called the fight, flight or freeze response. Stress experts around the world are adding the word freeze to the name in deference to the fact that instead of fighting or fleeing, sometimes we tend to freeze (like a deer in the headlights) in traumatic situations. The freeze response works differently. When we're overwhelmed by an attacker and we perceive that there is NO HOPE of surviving we tend to FREEZE."

Every since I was a little girl, I have always had this way to freeze in stressful situations. 

I've always attributed this to a time that I don't remember. When I was just a little child, two to three years old, I had a couple of serious accidents that nearly killed me. If my father, who had been a volunteer fireman, were alive to tell you, he'd probably tell you that I, indeed, had died.

The first time, was by drowning. My family found me face-down in the family swimming pool. They pulled my lifeless, grey body out of the water and I had no vital signs. My father, continued my resuscitation because my mother was insane with panic. Eventually, after many breaths and compressions, he brought me back to life.

The second time, was when I was hit by a motorcycle. My brother had been riding down the dirt road in front of our house, when I ran out as he came by. The accident split my head open like a melon in the back,  tore a gash down my thigh, broke both of my collar bones, and finally, sent me into convulsions.

I feel lucky to be alive, and while I don't 'remember' what happened to me in my waking mind, I feel that my subconscious does remember. 

I believe that there is a part of me that remembers the seconds before getting hit, that it remembers the panic as I gulped water into my lungs.

When I get stressed, and I feel panicked, my heart rate does not raise nor do I get high blood pressure, instead, my blood pressure lowers, and I go deep within myself where things are calm and mellow.

Some people may think that I simply don't take life seriously. Take, for example, my husband; who says that I joke too much when I am stressed. The reason that I do that is because if I did not laugh and joke, I'd probably cry. It's another one of my coping mechanisms. 

I have brought this to attention because a sister of mine commented on my blog today. She rebutted things that I've posted, and of course, she is angry with me. 

I can not please all of the people all of the time, and I also can not agree with every person all of the time.

This blog is purely my take on my sister's adoptions and all of the things that have occurred since I have found one of them.

I have tried not to be ugly or mean, I have merely tried to tell the truth as I have seen it.

So, in order to keep my sanity, I have deleted her comments, and I've decided to move on with my blog regardless of what has been posted.

And as Bob Marley would have said, I am ready to: "Wake up and live."