Thrive As You

Tonight my facebook status went something like this --  And here is said blog post.  I'm not quite ready to write about or recap my year, but what I do want to write about is accepting what comes our way. More importantly letting go of the life we thought we wanted.  I've talked about this before.  Several times in fact. In the world of autism you must mourn the child you thought you were going to have and accept  and embrace  the one you do have.  Know what sucks? Death. Ugh. You have to accept  that your mom is no longer with you at Christmas and find a way to embrace  the memories you DO have, and cherish them.  It's all about recognizing the new chapters in your life and diving into those chapters face first and examining what those chapters will do to change the entire story of your life.  Everything -- every loss, every gain, every person who enters and every person who leaves is a chapter in the story of our lives.  We m...

Oh my dear friends, it has been exactly 30 days since my last post!  Eeeeeek! Let me tell you why. I fell off the bandwagon.  Not just the "writing" bandwagon.  The "me" bandwagon. Sunday in church we were discussing testimonies and sharing our stories.  I do a pretty good job of sharing my story with anyone who wants to land on this website.  The interesting part of the sermon was that Pastor Mark was talking about sharing our story (in turn, sharing God's glory) before we are even actually healed. I'm even BETTER at that. So I stood up and said that, yanno, like to everyone in the congregation.  Don't worry, I wasn't the only one. I'm not healed.  I may never be "healed."  What does that even mean, exactly?  It's kind of like in the autism community when we talk about "normal."  Is there such a thing? To say that I am "healed" is to suggest that I have nothing going on in my life that causes me ...

In the new age of social media we share a lot, quite often, too much about ourselves. Writing a blog you tend to share more of yourself with, you know, anyone in the entire universe who can access the internet.  Sometimes it can be a very scary feeling. I made the decision quite sometime ago, when I first started blogging, to share my story.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  I had this feeling that if I was able to share my struggles, it might just help someone, even ONE person get through theirs. When I started my blog it was originally called " April walks with autism ," and the sole focus of my words was to help other mama/daddy warriors on their journey through autism.  But as I started writing, and as more people began to read, I realized that what I had to say, was actually having an effect on a few people out there, and maybe I should open up and begin to talk about some of the other things I was going through, too.   It was around this tim...

It's that time of year again, I can feel it brewing. That time when people see the month of November right around the corner and are preparing their facebook pages for an onslaught of gratitude.  For the entire month of November, the time of year that graciously hosts the holiday of thanks, we see lists and "challenges" and daily reminders.  Every social media outlet will be barraged with thanks.  Instagram will do their photo challenge, facebook will be loaded with "Day 7 of things I'm grateful for...." ad nauseum.   Our feeds will be full of thanks. And that makes me so happy. Kind of. This has been a rough year for me,  a rough 3 years in fact.  And what I've learned, what I KNOW is that the only way I have survived it, and in fact THRIVED it, is through the practice of gratitude.  Now hold up.   Before we start talking about "gratitude practice" I want to talk about that phrase.  It's kind of "hip" right ...

For many years, people have told me I should write a book.  In fact, I have told me that I should write a book.  It's less of an "idea" and more of a "calling."  I just know it's inside of me and it needs to come out.  I'm not sure if anyone will actually read it, and that's ok.  The book is inside of me, and I need to write it, to express it. For a long time, I hesitated to to sit down because I thought "I'll never write like Elizabeth Gilbert ."  Well Duh.  There's only one Elizabeth Gilbert just as there is only one April Schmidt.  But the real problem wasn't really that I wanted to write like Liz, but I wanted to write a story similar to hers.  You know, minus the amazing travel.   The story of how I too, found myself crying on a bathroom floor for weeks and months on end...... took a journey (mostly internal), found and endured the David years, and then........ perhaps ended with a love story like hers and Felipe's....

The thing about being married is that you forget how fun breakups are.  Kind of like a long married couple can forget how much fun dating can be.  But there's a crushing flip side to the "fun."  A few months removed from a devastating breakup and a thousand conversations and therapy sessions later, I'm starting to realize what is truly eating me about all of this. The broken promise. It's not just David that has done this to me.  No, I have a friend who refers to "the list of men" in my life, and while there haven't been many, they all have a common theme. The broken promise. Yes David made the big promises  to me.  "I will always love you."  "I will always be here for you."  "I will marry you and be your partner until the end of my days."  "You have changed my life and ruined me for good.  I will never be the same." "I don't want to spend another day of my life without you."  "You h...

For the last several months, I have been working on "the big purge."  I have been cleaning out  closets and drawers and scary spaces beneath beds and throwing out... the crap .  No matter how many times I go through this process, I still need  to go through this process.  Life seems to be a constant game of how to get more .   So this morning I was cleaning out my closet, which, I have been trying to empty an item or two out per week, so I thought I was ahead of the game, right?  Then I looked at my bra collection.  Yes, I said bra and yes I said collection.  There's really no other way to refer to it.  I didn't count them.  Let's just say I think I could have gone 2 months and never worn the same bra twice.  Now, if you're a woman reading this, you can likely relate to what I'm about to say.   I wear the same 3 bras in rotation.  So WHY oh WHY do I have ..........a collection of bras? This bra business got me th...

There are a few of you who already know my "big announcement" but for those of you who don't, read on. This weekend, I'm going to training to be certified to become a yoga instructor for kids. Now, there's a lot of questions that go along with this statement.  The first of which is usually... "Wait, kids do yoga?" Do kids MOVE?  Like... at all?  OK, then they are doing yoga.  Yoga is the foundation for ALL movement.  Yes really. I see a whole lot of yoga going on in this picture.   Look at this kid stretching for soccer or basketball or whatever "manly" sport he's prepping for.  Yup, that's yoga. Wait, a PLANK is yoga?  Oh yes. I googled some gymnastics photos.     That's called "Natarajasana" or "Dancers Pose" Yoga, Yoga, Yoga. Looks like Yoga to me! This is just bad a$$ and makes me smile. Have you ever seen a child bend over and touch their toes?  That's ...