HTC wildfire

I switch from a regular LG cellphone to an HTC Wildfire S this afternoon. I wanted a smartphone. I was able to keep almost the same plan but they offered me to switch provider. I got to keep my #, which was very important. I got free long distance + early evening (17h instead of 18h from the former plan) but I had to pay the difference to keep callerID. For me it's very important because it makes me feel safe. My cellphone is my home phone and being able to trace who's calling me is helping me feel safe. So there was no question in my mind that I was going to pay the difference.

I was with a friend with whom I studied the first two years of my degree. She and I have a great connection. We had lunch, then went shopping for thing she needed and I was able to go for the phone. I was offered a smartphone when I got a cellphone but I was very sick and felt it was too stressful to try to understand a new system. With an older phone I had nothing to understand other than where were my options and contacts. Now a smartphone is a small computer and let me tell you it's soo much fun to play with it. I think i'll have a lot of fun with it.

I've been having a lot of pain in the past weeks, I don't know if the fact that I've been eating gluten/dairy again is influencing it. Maybe??? I seriously can't afford to eat gluten/dairy free. I need to pain to go away. I need to be PAIN FREE. I NEED TO BE PAIN FREE! I think hypnosis will help for that. I have faith.

Wordless Wednesday

Addiction

If you want to visit other people's Wordless Wednesday go there.

Therapeutic hypnosis

I've started doing therapeutic hypnosis (with a professional) to work on some issues and the good memory I'm working with is when I went sailing with my friends in 2007. It was an amazing feeling of freedom that I still remember to this day.

Has any of you ever worked with a licenced professional (therapeutic hypnosis professional)? Have you seen good results? The person I'm seeing says in the little time we've had I'm already doing good and I'm very receptive.

I'd like to hear about other ppl's experience with it.What is great is the anonymity of the web. :-)

Happy thanksgiving!

Happy thanksgiving to my american friends, especially you J, stuck living in Phoenix. I wish you were in Georgia with your family. I'll be giving you a call again today and tomorrow. Official Thanksgiving day is tomorrow irrc eh?

What are you guys thankful for? Even if it's not Thanksgiving for us, I'll play. ;-)


I'm thankful to be safe now.
I'm thankful to have people in my life who love me and that I love very dearly.
I'm thankful that my health is improving.
I'm thankful for my freedom (this isn't something I'll ever take for granted)
I'm thankful to be receiving Faith's professionnal help.
I'm thankful that people some people believed in me few years back and gave a chance. Their faith in me was a blessing and it helped me tremendously. It got me back "on my feet".
I'm thankful for my faith in God, for my church and for the friends I've met through my journey into catholicism. (even if it wasn't always peachy)
I'm thankful that I'll be working full time as soon as my degree is completed.
I'm thankful that I didn't give up even if I went through hell and back. I'm probably stronger than I think I am ?

Happy thanksgiving and may this day be filled with love and may you always know that you are loved. This sentence from the Gospel of Mark always brings me comfort, my spiritual "director" (I don't know how to call her, she's a lay minister with a Master degree in Theology) is the one who helped me discover how this excerpt of the scripture brought peace into my soul. I hope it does the same to you. Because I'm a girl, instead of reading "son", I read that I'm His daughter. :-) I'll quote both the correct scripture and the way I read it.

And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.” Mark 1,7-11

“ You are my daughter , whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.”

Have a great day, love and hugs!

Novembre 2011 update

I'm suppose to graduate at the end of the summer semester of 2012. Not very long ago I was contacted by someone from Human ressources at my Diocese. He wanted to know what were my plans when I'd graduate and if I were interested in working for my diocese in a parish (as a lay minister, doing pastoral care). I am interested and I have been interested for several years. I've been doing this degree especially for this purpose so when I heard there was a job waiting for me at the end of my bachelor degree I was thankful and thrilled.

It's been a crazy road in the past three years. Not only did had to move back in my hometown (which brought back a lot of tough issues) but I got very ill with fibromyalgia, adrenal insufficiency. It slowed me down and if it hadn't been from my doctor who kept pushing me to keep going, I would probably have stopped. It was unbereable last year. Seriously I could barely take a shower so imagine how painful it was for me to sit on a chair for several hours, trying to focus on what the teachers were saying and after doing the papers. But, by the grace of God I was able to pull through with some medication and some great friends who stuck by my side and my faith because without it I would likely have killed myself.

I hadn't been physically sick before this, well I had some issues but nothing compare to this. Chronic pain is insidious, it destroys your inside as well as your mental state because not only do you feel pain 24/7 but it also incapacitate you from doing what you were previously able to do. Before being ill I was running every fucking day, 5k a day. When I got sick I could barely walk to the bathroom and I gained 80lbs. Not cool. I wasn't eating more, I wasn't doing anything. Yeah my pharmacist and my GP told me that narcotics (morphine and oxycodone and all that jazz) made you gain weight (so did anti-depressant, cuz I tried 'em all) but something wasn't right. So finally after almost a year and a half of wondering what the fuck was going on, my doctor send me AGAIN late september for blood test and ding ding ding I suffer from hypothyroidism!!!!

Doesn't that explain everything? I didn't know shit about thyroid problem before I was dx'd but when I saw my dr in october and she had received my results and told me the "good news" that I had hypothyroidism BUT that it was really easy to manage. I started to take synthroid 0,05mg and 2 weeks after 40% of my pain was gone. And I had lost 11 lbs in 3 weeks. And I think I have lost more now. I will let my dr weight me again in december. I feel like such a fat ass. I was wearing size 2 pants and I now am wearing size 14 (they are big), in september it was size 16. So it's getting down. I hope to go back to at least a size 8. You know I hate the way I look now. I know it was the thyroid problem that caused my weight gain and also the meds and it also caused water retention but I was a tiny little thing and I feel like such a huge thing.

Anyway, there's not much I can do other than taking care of myself and working on myself. I've been doing that for a little while. There's some things I need to work on to be happier and to be at peace with myself. It's not easy to do but when you do it with someone you trust, someone competent. The person (who helps me through my journey) is a professionnal, but for the sake of this blog I'll call her Faith, because she's always had faith in me. I always give nickname to everyone from my real life. I really believe the name Faith suits her a lot. Especially with our history together.

This weekend I have a 2 days session on how to celebrate funeral services. (either as an ordained minister or as a lay minister which I'll be) I have asked to do this session because I would like to be able to celebrate funerals, either at church or at funeral homes.

I've lost a friend today

It is sad, I have lost a friend today. I'd send an email to a long time friend because it'd been a while since I'd heard from her. She send me an email back today telling me it was not an accident that she was not on my facebook friend's list anymore and that I hadn't receive any news from her. She actually read something about me and without an explanation she decided that she couldn't be friends with me. She said she didn't judge me BUT..

But what? Do you have any clue what really happen? she doesn't She doesn't know the context in which the incident took place but she made her mind without knowing and that is someone I've helped through numerous storms in her life without ever judging but she has made a judgment based on something written "hors contexte" as we say in french without knowing anything else.

My heart was broken this afternoon over the email and over my friend's words but right now I am angry at her. Who does she think she is to pass a judgment on me? Who is without sin can cast the first stone. Jn 8,7

I send back an email 30 minutes after receiving hers. She hasn't replied, I don't know if she will but I do believe I've lost a friend. I pray for her and I'm asking God to help me to forgive her for being so ignorant on something she know fucking nothing about. If only she knew what she was talking about. She passed a judgment on the most painful times of my entire life.

Sometimes people are not who we thought they were. I forgive her but I won't forget and I don't think I could ever trust again but I forgive as of my heart is not full of anger. I offer all of what is inside to Him, my Beloved.

The need to sleep

The weirdest thing that has been happening to me in the past few months is the need to sleep more. I need at least 10 hours of sleep a day when not more. I slept probably more than 16 hours last night but I got up at 4h30 am and I feel ok, rested. With fibromyalgia it is something that doesn't happen a lot.

I started last thursday ritalin to be able to focus, to fight against what is called "fibromyalgia fog". It's many neurological symptoms that make you almost unable to do anything but sleeping. It has helped right away but in the next week, I'll be trying to find the right dosage: I started at a lower dose, 10 mg in the morning and 5 mg at lunch time. No later than this because it could affect my sleep but as of now it hasn't because when it's passed 12h30, I don't take the 2nd dose.

Anyone else dealing with fibromyalgia? I take several medication and the pain med is oxycontin and it helps a lot, gave me back my life, this combined with anti-depressant and several others and keeping me active. This for me is fantastic and almost a miracle because for several months I was bed ridden and could barely walk. I will start to go to the gym next week (it will open next week at the local college, it is less expensive) and do cardio and weight training 2-3 times a week. I want to lose weight and get back in shape because it helps with the pain. It will help me get ready for the winter. I am scared because last winter was very very difficult for me healt wise...

BTW thanks to my friend Vixen, I'm happy to be back. I have been reading your blog and your DIL (it's on my google reader) even if I wasn't commenting... Much love to you 2. xxxx

on being single

In november 2008 I wrote what I'd realise about being single and almost three years later it hasn't changed. I feel the same, I am confortable in my own skin. I love men but I am just too broken inside to be in a relationship. (at least I don't pretend not to be and screw up someone else) I hear you say that I should go in therapy and you know what? I've been there more than 4 years and I have healed my wound but there are some that cannot go away and the best way to remain happy and sane is to know your limits and needs and mine are my inability to be in an intimate relationship. It was screwed up and cannot be repaired. So instead I am (and I have been) offering God my life. I am and will be devoting my life to His service and to the service of those in need.

It is kind of strange to go back in the past and read what I'd written, without going in any details. :-)

two and a half years later

This is a much due update, I've kept this blog private but I've never read my posts in the last years, things were good and bad at the same time. When they were good, they were very good. When they were bad, oh my, they were bad.

I'm a full time student at Big Bad University in City A (2 hours away from me) but I take all of my classes in the city I reside in because my Diocese has implanted a School of Theology and pastoral care affiliated with Big Bad University because their reputation is excellent. So our professor are either Lay minister with Master's degree or with PH'd in Theology and sometimes it's professor from BBU that do come from City A. It hasn't been the opposite (us having to go there). There are 40 000 students in BBU's campus but we're never more than 50-75 and I've been the only full time student. Our School of Theology and pastoral care was implanted in 2004-05. It is quite recent. Anyway, I'm glad it has allowed me to stay in my area but the other side of the medal is that in a small institution you have less classes available and when you're full time like me, you end up taking more online classes than you'd like.

I've been very very ill with debilitating fibromyalgia, it all started a little more than 18 months ago and since then my life hasn't been the same. It took my dr and I several months to figure out the right medication that would take the severe pain away but we finally found it and it's not as bad now that it is under control. What I have to fight is the "fibro fog" but I started this week a new medication "Ritalin" to help me focus and concentrate on my school work and be able to read. The past 4-5 weeks were too bad.

I think I'm going to be blogging again. I hope people will be reading me.

xxx