How I'm not crazy, and why I love friends

I have received the nicest messages from people about my post yesterday...and first I should say, THANK YOU! for caring and saying such nice things. Next, I should say that I'm really not diving off the deep end!

I love my mom, but I am very at peace with her spot in the universe and have been for so many years now. In fact, I often feel more protected than I could have been if she was alive. I've had several very visceral moments when strange and miraculous things have happened to me, and at each of those moments I really felt my mom. So I am happy, and not grieving for her.

I DO think, though, that sometimes anxiety can be a habit. Yesterday when I wrote I was trying to get to the bottom of WHY I might be feeling anxious...and I think it is partially a holiday habit which I now must break. Maybe there is something about this time of year that subconsciously puts me on edge. I think it is something like how I used to attribute fall in Beverly Hills to being miserable, because during my first year here, I was feeling sick, pregnant, and depressed in the first trimester with Katie (I was off depression meds during that first trimester...don't think I didn't want Katie very, very much!). I love Beverly Hills/this area but for a few years after that I got a whiff of that yuckiness during the fall. Perhaps my holiday anxiety was also a habit which needed to be broken, again!

On a last little side note - we did turn our hard day around, with the help of great friends (like Patty, who commented!). Maybe in 2003, we had a caroling party on my mom's day, and then again in 2005. So now on that day I can remember the fun we had during those parties! I may just have to pull out another one of those again next year (it might not fit with my theme of relaxing through the holidays this year!). Oh, and I have to get a piano, and commission Rob to come again and play for us...and maybe someone who can lead the songs, since singing is not my forte (though I love to do it).