Staying steady, that is my goal right now. To not gain weight during a Teale vacation from school has basically been impossible for me in the past. I eat stress. I am truly one of those people who understands the saying that stressed backwards equals desserts. I'm a huge sugar addict and when I'm stressed I reach for sugary treats. I think it got worse after I was diagnosed Celiac Sprue at the age of 39. I felt sorry for myself. I was being denied so many foods that I had eaten all my life, so the foods I could eat, I ate! This meant gluten free ice cream and safe candy and cookies or other bakery goods that I could make or buy gluten free. I was out of hand, mostly because I was mad. Being diagnosed Celiac came at a very difficult time in my life, I had lost my Mom. My Mom wasn't the Mom of the June Cleaver variety, she was more like the Roseanne Barr type. I had not appreciated her much of my life, but I don't think that is unusual, most kids don't appreciate their parents. It took my having my son and then my daughters, to finally appreciate her as a person. I had put her on a pedestal most of my life, not that I thought she was perfect, but I thought Mom's should be perfect and mine was flawed. I thought everyone else had perfect Mom's and I just got the short end of the stick. What I finally realized as a Mom myself was that she was a person, who had lived her own trials and tribulations. She had grown up in challenges that molded her and shaped how she dealt with things, she, like me, was affected by her past. My past wasn't always pretty, but I couldn't let it define me and I needed to move forward. One of the things that we all struggle with is letting go of past hurts, we hang on them, we let them eat away at our soul and we relive that pain over and over again. I'm not sure when it happened or how, but one day I finally saw my Mom as a person with imperfections instead of a Mom who had let me down. I started enjoying her good qualities and letting go of the ones I didn't like. She became my biggest fan as I let go of my resentment and anger for the past. Teale has been responsible for much good in my life, she has taught me much about forgiveness and she has helped others see me differently. My one sister in law has openly said to me that Teale is the reason she likes me. Before Teale she just couldn't or wouldn't let me in. As Teale's Mom she saw me so completely differently that she finally got to know me and discovered I wasn't the person she had perceived me as. I think that is the key to relationships, we perceive what we want, instead of the reality. I had judged my Mom all my life, forgetting she was human too and flawed by the life she had lived. So losing her so young, after I had finally started liking her, hurt, a lot. The same week I was losing my Mom to a stroke she had suffered, I got very sick. I lost about ten pounds in a week, because, and this may be TMI, everything went straight through me. I was spending more time in the bathroom than I was spending out of it. The cramping pain was debilitating and I knew what it was. I had tested positively on blood tests for Celiac Sprue years earlier, but at that time, my endoscopy showed no signs of damage to my villi. I was told that stress could bring out the Celiac and I was pretty sure that the stress of my Mom dying had done just that. My Mom died exactly a week after my brother had found her down on her floor from a severe stroke. She was only seventy four years old and I was not yet even forty. Losing her when my kids were still so young made me mad. Her poor health was her fault because she smoked like a chimney and drank way too much alcohol, so I blamed her and had to figure out how to move past that anger. Life with Teale had been extremely challenging in those days, her explosive behavior was constant and we had not gotten the medications correct yet. It would be years before we would finally put Teale on the antipsychotic that would help stabilize her moods better. So at that time, when my Mom died, I felt like I had lost one of the few people who got my pain, who understood how sad and how worn both Mark and I were. Losing her hurt for all the obvious reasons that losing a Mom hurts, but for me, it was different, because in some ways Mark and I just felt so very alone in our life with Teale and my Mom often expressed to us how proud she was of our efforts to help Teale be the best she could be. Within weeks, I was diagnosed Celiac and the one person I wanted to call and complain to, was gone. I remember those early days of my Mom being gone and my diagnoses. I would wake up and for a split second I would be peaceful but than I'd think about what was new in my life. It would hit me like a black cloud on a sunny day, "My Mom is dead and I'm Celiac." That was 2006 and this is 2014, over those many years I have struggled with my Mom's death and my diagnosis. I have fought with doctors that they are wrong about me and I have been retested several times. Every time still comes back possative. I think my doubt is because Celiac is a genetic disease and so far no one else in my family has ever been diagnosed except me. Mark remembers how sick I was and laughs at me for my doubt. Over the years I have forgotten, much like a woman forgets how intense childbirth is. I had not really learned to live Celiac in a healthy way. I eat gluten free, but as I said before, I over indulge in gluten free treats. This vacation from school for Teale has been filled with stress as all vacations are. She misses her routine and the socialization that school supplies her. The difference for me is that I am trying to stay very conscious of how the stress effects my eating. Believe me, I have not been great at this, I have over indulged in some treats, but I think the difference is that I am so much more aware of what and why I am doing it. This morning when I stepped on the scale, I was the same, not more, not less, and this week I am going to celebrate that.
