Life of an Anxious Chick

  When people ask, who is/was an influential person in life, I typically respond with my mom.  She will always be one of the strongest women I've ever known.  Sadly I only got 16 years with her as her life was cut way too short.  She was diagnosed with breast cancer during my freshman year of high school and passed away right before my junior year.  But I want my mom's legacy to be more than her illness.  That was just one small part of her life.     She was so many things to so many people.  She was a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend and professionally a cardiac nurse.  I'm sure I got my love for medicine from her.  She was a dedicated, compassionate and brilliant nurse.  She was talking about graduate school before she got sick.  In the last few years of her life, she transferred from patient care to clinical educator.  This meant she taught the new nurses that had just graduated and were starti...

When did the light burn out? When did the sparkle dim? And when did the music stop? It's hard to pinpoint exactly when things go from good to bad in an unhealthy relationship. It's as if at some point it all just gets molded into the bad. Darkness overshadows the light until all you can see anymore is black. You ask yourself, was there ever good? There must have been at some point. But things have been so bad for so long that you just can't remember anymore. All you know is the darkness, the pain and the despair. And perhaps one day, somehow, you're able to find the strength to walk away. Kudos, really. But you quickly discover that darkness just follows you, because that's all you've known for so long.  So that is what you expect. And if by some miracle the light starts to come back in your life you don't embrace it, but instead you question it. You question it's intentions and you certainly can't take it for face value. There must be so...