December 29--2025 in Review (Part 1)

I let go of old ideas and thoughts of limitation. I release my need to control people, places and things. And in letting go, I am free. --Michael Gott

    2025 has been such a strange, exciting, depressing, tedious, healing, creative and fun year. I have decided to break up my year-in-review posts over three days to give this interesting year its due. Part 1 includes the downers of the year. Part 2 includes the uppers of the year. Part 3 considers the massive amounts of healing that occurred through it all. Here goes, Part 1...

    Holy cow! What a year this has been. The highs were higher and the lows were lower than ever before. Even though the lows were huge, there were more highs than lows. 

    I returned in early April from the “BIG trip of a lifetime” with an incredibly-painful case of sciatica, which ultimately wrecked my left leg, ankle and foot and balance. Golf was completely out of the picture for the year, and returning to pickleball became my recovery goal. I believe I had more doctor visits in 2025 than I had had in total the past ten years. I spent most of the rest of the year in twice-weekly physical therapy to restore my strength and balance. I spent a very painful week alone in April when my husband was helping our son’s family move, and our dog Barney was my lifesaver, snuggling me when I could do nothing but cry due to pain. I became acutely aware of the loneliness caused by extreme pain. I attribute much of my healing to the crying, screaming and cursing I did at Spirit, and the pages and pages of writing (much with my non-dominant hand) to vent my frustrations. Ultimately I was able to recover without surgery. I am thankful for that, but I also know that I will always carry a fear of extreme pain returning.
    The other big bummer of the year (there are good points coming in Part 2!) was the move of my grandsons and their parents from Colorado to Two Rivers, Minnesota. This puts them 800 miles away instead of 600, and for the first time our sons live in different places. It is a much more complicated process to visit Minnesota than it was for Colorado visits. For example, lodging is a considerably bigger challenge. It is also a 2-day trip with extra hotel expense, or a very grueling one-day trip.

    These bummers in my life remind me I don't have control over people, places and things, not over my body or its pace of healing or my family or the weather or much else, really. 

    Stay tuned,

        Leta