Why I felt Great Here

Jason is doing a contest on his blog site My Angle. The instructions are to find a picture of yourself where you felt amazing and then explain why. I believe this is an excellent idea; and really doesn't need to be a contest! But, here is my submission.


This is a photo of my family taken on Thanksgiving Day 2007.





This photo is important because at this time, we were all together and had finally made big strides towards healing and feeling like a complete family once again.


To explain, in August of 2001, my oldest son died. The unexpected tragedy and trauma scarred all of us in the family.


For me, I lost myself in work and gained weight for the first time in my life. My husband and I felt guilt over the uncontrollable and were at odds for some time. Our daughter, who was 2 years younger than her brother, lost herself in schoolwork, overachieving and losing weight.


Our middle son was 8 at the time and had idolized his older brother. He began to experience severe panic attacks whenever any of us were out of his sight. Our youngest was a only 4 at the time, and had the least immediate reaction.

It took us years to take our lives back one step at a time. I finally decided to make big strides in that regard in June of 2006. I left a job that was killing me and returned to my old lower-paying job, which I loved. I joined WW and lost 40 pounds. And, I began a running program. In this photo, I am about 2 weeks away from running my first 5K.


My daughter was home from college for a break and had learned to ease up on herself a bit. Our now oldest son, had worked very hard to overcome separation anxiety, and had made it to a point of not needing medication anymore. Our youngest son was a normal kid again. My husband and I had forgiven ourselves for things we could not begin to foresee or control, and were more solid than ever in our marriage.


This photo is so important to me because it shows an entire family that worked hard to become a family again.