Month: November 2025

Thank God

Yes, indeed. Thank God. As we approach another Thanksgiving, it seems a good time for me to count my blessings. It has been a challenging year (I seem to be saying that every year now!) but to be honest, I would not have changed a thing. In the rear-view mirror, I can clearly see that the incidents that drove me to the brink of despair during the past year have sparked great growth and contentment. This year, I feel like I’ve graduated from “managing” to “thriving.” I don’t think I could have done that without the cuts and bruises of 2025.

As I review my own growth over the past few years, I feel like I’ve travelled through several phases. I guess I started out in a phase of barely holding on to my sanity and sense of self. Over time, I learned coping strategies and made friends with my neurosis. At some point, I stepped onto the battlefield to try to rescue the Terri who was wounded and crying out for help. After that, a new season of barely holding myself together and learning coping mechanisms ensued. My brain probably has the whole cycle on a loop stuck on “repeat.” My very own unhinged playlist.

This year, though, it feels a little different. I think, if I do end up back on the battlefield, it will be to support the Terri who is still standing- and fighting the good fight. It won’t be to save her from destruction. I am in much more peaceful skin than I have ever been. There is a kind of happiness and trust in myself that are new to me. In the past, when I had a glimpse of those blessed qualities, I skittered away because trusting them meant the fear of losing them. This year, I have been starting to lean into them- somehow finding faith that, if I lose them, I can find them again.

None of this is to say that I expect to live in my current euphoric bubble for the rest of my life. I do not fool myself. I understand that it is highly likely I will experience wobbles and freak-outs over challenges in the future. I am sure there will be days in the future when I will read this paean to mental health and bemoan my own delusion. It is not delusion, however. It is true now. And it will be again.

There are many factors that have gone into this wobbly, wandering, wonderful journey. My experience with my life coach, Todd Payne, is probably chief among them. I have also allowed myself to accept and rely on support from the people in my life who love me and value my love in return. My pastor and his family have comforted, challenged, and loved me when I wasn’t able to do any of that for myself. Max, as always, has been the most consistent, stalwart of loves. I have seen both of us grow individually and together toward a deeper love this past year. I know I am loved in a way I never used to be able to understand or accept.

There have also been the hard parts- times when people have been vicious and destructive, times when I have tried desperately (and failed just as desperately) to do everything people wanted me to do, times when the ugliness that I invited into my heart threatened to overcome my very personhood like a parasite destroys the host. I hated every last minute spent in those episodes. However, I look back at them with gratitude today. Would I want to relive them? Of course not. But now, I know I could. Do they still hurt when I think about them? You bet! But now, something better has grown in the heart space they destroyed.

I am thankful that I am loved in different ways by different people. I am thankful that I can experience love- from God, from others, and… sometimes, even from myself. I am thankful I can give myself a little more credit for emotional resilience and courage. I am thankful for the experiences I have had- both joyful and painful- that have grown these qualities in me.

Mostly, I Thank God for the year of blessings He has scattered in my life. I could say that sometimes He disguises them as disasters. The truth is, though, He does not disguise blessings as disasters. He uncovers blessings in the disasters.

I hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving. God, please grant everyone who reads this blog post a year of abundant blessings. Also, dear Lord, if it doesn’t mess up some huge divine plan of Yours, please grant that those blessings will be undisguised! AMEN!

Have a thankful day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Am I Too Old For Birthdays?

I recently turned sixty-six years old. You may recall that, to celebrate my benchmark birthday last year, I visited a wonderful place called Beautiful Creatures (Follow The Bouncing Birthday – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement ) This year, I expected a little less fanfare. Still, I was excited. It was a beautiful time doing things I enjoy with people I love. So much warmth and love surrounded me from all over the world.

I have always loved my birthday. This perspective mystifies most of my contemporaries. They cannot understand why I would look forward to celebrating another year of aging. After all, I bemoan my wrinkles, gray hair, creaky joints, and a myriad of realities of my decrepitude. My take on birthdays is different. I never thought of a birthday as a celebration of the number of years I had attained. I thought of birthdays as a celebration of me. After all, when we celebrate the birthday of some famous person in history, how old that person was or would be today does not enter into the equation at all. We commemorate that person’s character, achievements, impact, and other attributes that make that person worth remembering. I like to think that is what everybody’s birthday celebration should be- even mine.

I do not often allow myself to come to the front of the priority queue. I do not often celebrate the qualities that make me uniquely myself. I am genuinely stumped when I try to understand why anyone would love me or think I am anything special. I have no default to such things. In fact, allowing myself to be the top priority, recognizing what makes me special, and celebrating my worth requires all my mental and emotional MacGyver skills to workaround the default- that I am nothing special or worth celebrating and am only acceptable if I put everyone else’s priorities before my own.

A birthday for me is a time to give myself permission to be first in line. It is a time to be selfish for twenty-four hours. It is a time that I can acknowledge what is beautiful about myself, without feeling like I’m being conceited or delusional. It is a time to be happy that I was born- that I am blessed with a beautiful life, and I help create beautiful lives for others.

This philosophy has brought me through many happy birthdays. Even in the worst of times, my birthday has been a little respite of joy. This year, I realized the satisfaction I get from my birthday is about even more than the permission to appreciate myself and put myself first.

I am a very attachment-oriented person. Connection is my life’s blood. I wither without giving and receiving love. Attachment is all important to me, but I constantly fear that I will not have it or will lose it. As a result, I find myself trying to figure out how to merit connection. I feel like I must understand what it will take to earn attachment- what do I have to say, what do I have to do, how little trouble must I be?

Most people would say that grace is often the true basis for connection. I believe that- for everyone else but me. You shouldn’t have to earn love. It is a mystical symbiosis of souls- supported and sustained by shared experience and mutual vulnerability. Somehow, though, I have made myself ineligible for that grace. I believe I must earn attachment, and I can’t figure out what my currency is. I don’t see what it is about me that merits the connection, so I too easily wither.

On my birthday, I allow myself to accept attachment on grace alone. I can accept love and be secure in attachment simply because I am me. I’ll never be too old to celebrate that.

Have a graceful day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂