This.

I am going to assume that every one of us can relate to this.

Can't we?

How many times have we laid our heads some place, i.e. the bathroom floor, the steering wheel of a car, the kitchen counter, our pillow, and cried tears of agonizing proportions?

Knowing, just KNOWING that tomorrow couldn't possibly come because our personal world had ended.

How many times have we not wanted the world to go on tomorrow because we could not imagine living with such pain another day?

But it did.

It did come.

And, we did go forward.

This has been a strange year, but even stranger is that it hasn't seemed that strange to my children and I.

It's like just another year of trials, you know?

Is that a good thing?

Perhaps.

Because has much as people who I shouldn't trust because I don't even know them are saying that our world is crumbling and we are all going down some tunnel of disaster...

We've seen all of that before in our personal lives.

And each and every time, we chose to get up again the next morning.

Almost three years ago was the stroke.

I remember the second night in the ICU finally sort of understanding what was happening and crying all.night.long.

Sobbing.

Just wanting someone to pull the dang plug.

There was just no possible way I could go on like this.

What a burden I was!

A very smart nurse said to me, "Get it all out. Feel it all right now because tomorrow, you're going to wake up and start working to get better."

She continued: "Your job is to FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT."

She always said those words in threes.

As I was rolled out of the ICU to be transported to a different hospital, she stood in the hallway with tears running down her face repeating those three words.

And fight fight fight is what we do, isn't it?

We let ourselves feel all the things.

We validate those feelings.

We appreciate those feelings.

Then, we get up the next morning and fight fight fight.