She’s out of this world. I’m struggling a little bit today, but it’s better than yesterday. I can talk most of the time without the lump in my throat stopping my voice. I have found that when the pressure in my head gets to be too painful and tight, that I need to stop, remember her, and cry. It releases the pressure.

I had therapy yesterday and my amazing therapist spent the whole time helping me cry, talk, and realize I am not dumb for feeling this way.

I was able to call a few people this morning and talk on the phone and even laugh. There are times I catch myself smiling at a memory, and other times I am sobbing uncontrollably.

I was walking through the house that feels so empty and talking on the phone when I noticed them. A cardinal pair that visits our feeders were out there. But they seemed to be on a mission. I saw them through the kitchen window while making my coffee. Then, as I was gathering my clothes to get dressed, I saw the female at the front window, staring into the house. I had to stop and notice her. I also saw her last night, she was up at the barn in the lilac bush, so close to me that I could reach out and touch her. I do understand that many would say it’s not possible, but there is an old wives’ tale that a cardinal sighting is a visit from someone who has passed. My brain wants to deny that as a reality, but heart whispers “It’s a God thing, he is letting you know she’s okay by allowing her to send you a cardinal.”

I continued with going up to the barn for chores, my heart both heavy and light. Spring is in the air and today I would have had Lainey with me. She loves this kind of weather; the mud is a delight to her and the horse poop is finally thawed enough that she can have a good snack. It’s also a day I will be riding, and she would have been trotting along with me.

My head slowly started to build up pressure, it feels like it will explode. I turned to the sound of Mary’s bus coming in. My eyes traveled to the patio door, which I have been avoiding looking at. You see, Lainey will sit at the back door to ask me to let her out to join me. I just couldn’t look at that door! The bus made me look, and I saw a black and white muzzle. I kept blinking and thinking that my eyes were playing tricks on me. I asked Kristin if she could see it, and she said yes! But look its Bella.

I waited for Mary’s bus to leave and slowly walked to the house, my head pounding with pressure and tears starting to leak out of my eyes. Bella was standing there, her eyes never leaving my face and a gentle look of love in her eyes. I opened the door to let her out, thinking she needed to go potty. She didn’t move past me; she kept her eyes focused on my face in the same manner Lainey always did. I leaned down, and she put her muzzle up to my face, I slowly lowered my head to hers and the tears streamed down my face. I dropped to my knee and hugged her neck, never losing contact with her head. The pressure in my head eased the tears slowed down, Bella shifted, and our contact broke. She kept her eyes on my face as I asked her one again if she needed to go potty. She slowly turned and faced the door and walked back into the house. How did she know I needed a hug?

Riding with Mary was a bit hard, facing the house was harder, but we got though the lesson. Sassy and Nora were rockstars and followed all that Mary and I asked of them. I was able to finish my morning at the barn, but noticed it was icy up at the barn entrance.

I walked down to the house to get the ice melt, and I saw this…. Lainey in the gelding’s pasture, watching me like she always does. Head turned towards me, eyes never leaving my face. She’s In another world, but still in my heart. Thank you, dear Father, for this. For these glimpses and bringing peace to my heart when I need it.

I wouldn’t trade the last 17 years for anything. It has been such an honor to be loved by her, and an honor that God, my animals, and people in my life are all are taking care of my wounded heart and helping me put it back together again. Today I realized that she may not be in this physical world any longer, but she is always going to be a part of who I am and live in my heart forever.

The shells on this beach will be here tomorrow, next week, next month and even years from today. The election won’t change the shells, the sand on the beach, or the waves in the ocean.

It also won’t affect the love I have for my family, my friends or my life. And I hope it doesn’t change your life and your relationships.

Let’s just keep loving those we love, living the life we made for ourselves and remember that God has us, He has the election. He has plans for us and he died for us to live life to the fullest.

I wish we could fast forward to two weeks down the road. Or maybe just fall asleep for awhile so we don’t have to listen and be aware of all that will happen in the next few days.

Since I can’t just fall asleep and hibernate I’m going to try to ignore the news, ignore the mess they make of it, and work hard at it not letting it affect my life.

None of us voted the way we did because we want to do harm, we all voted the way we did because we think it was the best way to vote. Whether you voted for him or her, it mattered that you cared enough about this country to vote.

Let’s smile at a stranger, hug a friend that needs it, don’t post mean things about each other, and remember it’s the people in your life that have your back, not a politician that you will never meet.

I for one am grateful that I’m not an oblivious shell on the beach, even if it means I have to get through another election.

I walk into Nick and Kate’s house and look up the stairs. Right there in front of me is my granddaughter, Collins.

She’s 10 months old now and she brings so much joy into our lives, with just a smile and a hug.

The other day I was babysitting for the kids and decided to take her outside to explore the backyard. Watching her touch the trees with a gentle hand, staring up at the leaves with a look of wonder, seeing her lean into the gentle breeze and turn her face towards it, makes me do the same thing. She can take an ordinary sight and turn it into something I’m “seeing” for the first time.

The bark of the tree has so many dimensions, some of it is rougher and appears peaked like a mountain range, while there are other sections filled with holes and small branches with tiny leaves making their appearance.

I set Collins down on the basketball court and she is fascinated by the black ants scurrying about their business. She tries to touch them, but they’re too fast and her frustration makes me laugh out loud. It startles her, my laughter in the quiet, but then she looks up, her eyes meet mine and they start to twinkle and I see Nick in that moment and she laughs with me.

We move over to the grass and she sees the dandelions. Oh she loves the dandelions, she picks one and I do as well. I touch her cheek with it and she laughs a little because it tickles. I touch her nose with it and I remember being little and playing with dandelions myself. Do you remember them? What they felt like, tasted like, and the yellow that came off of them onto our faces?

Having Collins in my life has been such a great adventure. She is showing me how beautiful the world really is. The miracles of spring, the new life out there, the beauty of the dandelions and the sensation of the warm breeze and sun on my face.

I thank God that He gives us a second chance at living through a child again in our “later” years.

Being a Grandma is such a blessing and I am so grateful at this stage in my life I get to slow down and soak it all in without the worry of a schedule. Collins and I just get to live in the moment as we explore this wonderful world together and it is good, very very good.

There she is, she’s standing there looking at me, her body swaying with tremors, her eyes a bit dull with age, and her hearing, well, it’s almost nonexistent. She’s my dog, she’s my friend, and sometimes she is my baby. She has been by my side for 16 years; she has helped me train unruly horses. She has ridden in the saddle with me, she’s been riding shotgun in the truck since she was just a pup and has even traveled on a plane under the seat in front of me.

She is little but mighty, her heart is the biggest heart I’ve known, her stamina has always matched and surpassed mine, until recently. She stands there swaying, she loses her balance at times, and refuses to eat. I see her and my heart squeezes with pain. I want to grab the days and slow them down, but the harder I try to hold them the faster they seem to slip through my fingers. I know it’s getting closer to the time she will leave. I know that’s why she’s pulling away, she’s helping me say goodbye, to get used to not seeing her trotting next to me as I do chores and looking up at me to see what we’re going to do next. She is starting to prepare to move on, and this time we won’t be together. I don’t know when it will be…. today? tomorrow? a year from now? or could I really possibly get a couple years? I don’t know, but one thing I can tell you is that I would do it all over again. Having her in my life is worth the pain of losing her.

I sometimes wonder if God gave her to me just to show me what unconditional love looks like. We humans are flawed in our ability to love, we add strings, we ask for performance, but she never has, she just loves me for who I am each and every day. I can lay around the house, or clean, or do chores, or even just spend the entire day knitting, she doesn’t care, and doesn’t judge. Her relationship with me reminds me of God. Because like God, she loved me first, for who I am, 100 percent.

She is love, companionship, and security and I am blessed by her.

Well, here it goes. It’s been hard to be positive lately. I don’t know if you all ever struggle with sadness, or hopelessness, or that if you would disappear, no one will even notice, but I sure do. I don’t think I have a hard life; I don’t mean that at all, but there are times when it seems like I’m walking through mud, each footstep is hard, and there is a little voice in my head (sometimes it’s a very big voice) that says, “Why? Why do you do it every single day? Is it really worth it? The same thing, day in and day out….” I hate that voice, it’s the voice that tries to tell me that life here on earth has no point, I mean really, do I even make a difference? I feed horses every day, I clean up after them, I do a little bit of training, and a smattering of lessons here and there. The winter is coming, I hate the winter, the dark and dreary days, the cold that hurts in such a way there is no escape. If I have to take off a glove, my fingers curl into a ball and it’s painful to find the screw I just dropped but need to finish fixing something or another. Winter in Minnesota can be brutal for those of us that work outside.

But…… the sun does come out, it’s stunning on the snow, the glitter takes my breath away and it never seems to feel dark even on the darkest night there is a glimmer of light in the snow and the sunsets are absolutely amazing.

The smell of coffee, the warmth of hot chocolate, or a shot of bourbon can make the cold fall away. The bathtub is filled with hot water, and I can soak my coldness away while sipping a glass of wine and reading a good book.

My friends call, we start knitting together, my body slows down, I take naps when I can and the winter starts to become my friend, it’s a time of slowing down, no pressure for lessons, for training, or anything other than caring for the horses. They let me into their herd, they let me feel their warmth. Their heartbeats settle my panicking heart, their slow breathing makes me take a deep breath. I feel God in that moment, I look up into the cloudless night sky and the stars twinkle down at me and I wonder if the stars that looked over Jesus are looking over me. I feel Jesus in my herd, his leadership and that way he will leave the 99 to come looking for the lost one. I am that lost one. I need Him to hold me in the dark days of winter, and he does. Sometimes it feels hard to find Him, and the challenge for me is to keep it up until I do, because when I do finally find Him, I realize He was the on looking for me.

I check my phone and see I missed a call from my daughter, Danielle. My heart sinks a bit since I know she had a doctor appointment this morning and I have felt for a few weeks now that she’s not doing so well. She’s been tired and I’ve noticed she’s lost weight and sounds congested. The doctors had already started her on an iv antibiotic treatment and took sputum samples to culture. We’ve been waiting 2 weeks to see what organisms she’s growing. So far the tests have been negative, and to a normal person that would be good news. But to a patient with a lung disease such as Cystic Fibrosis it can indicate an insidious, slow growing bacteria such as Cepacia or Mycobacterium Abscessus, also known as MAC.

Today she went to the doctor to see if there is any improvement in her lung function and to decide what to do. You see, she has grown both Cepacia and MAC but if they aren’t causing issues, we don’t treat since the side effects are harmful and the more we treat, the more resistant the organisms get and eventually there won’t be any drugs left to beat down the infections. I’m so afraid that today, the news won’t be good.

I look at my phone as a text comes through from Danielle before I can call her. “I’m now at work but we are starting treatment in a week once results are back. It’ll be two iv antibiotics three times a day and two orals for about 4-6 months. Today I will be sad but I have you all in my corner fighting with me and God! I just want to feel better and beat this thing for good and we will!!!!!!!!!!! Call when you can.”

My stomach clenches, my breath catches in my chest, and my heart races. I call her and she answers. Her attitude is good but tears spring to my eyes. My brain flashes memories of the last time we treated this. The nausea, the weight loss, the severe diarrhea, the exhaustion and her having to hook herself up to med balls every 6 and 8 hours respectively to drip the antibiotics into her veins, and those are just the initial side effects, as she continues she has ringing in her ears, her kidneys and liver start to be affected and then they have to stop her IV treatment and continue with oral drugs that usually are less effective.

I know she hears the tears in my voice and I try to stop them. I smile through the tears but I can’t stop my shaking and the pictures in my mind of what the treatment will do to her, but the alternative is worse, much worse…..

I reassure her that we will help her fight. She has an amazing support system in our family and friends. We will start the prayer chain. She tells me Nick, her brother, talked her off the cliff when I didn’t answer. I’m so grateful they have such a great relationship. Even though he’s married with a newborn baby girl, he answers his sisters phone call and they support each other and are as close as a brother and sister can be.

It makes me think about our family and what a disease like CF can do. It hurts us all, leaves us breathless with worry and pain for Danielle and frankly, for each other. But…. It has brought us closer. We know how to fight for Danielle’s life, we know how to sink to our knees in prayer and how to find joy in the midst of despair. We’ve been told we’re too lenient with our kids, but I disagree. We know the fear we could lose them, it never goes away. So we love them and we love them unconditionally, without holding back because we know how fragile our lives really are. We know how quickly a few words uttered by a doctor can change the way we look at life.

I remember the day they told me Danielle had CF. She was in the hospital because she was considered failure to thrive. She never got above her birthweight and she was 3 months old. The nurses took her from me and brought me into a conference room, sat me down at a table and uttered 10 words that changed our lives forever

“Our worst worst fears are founded, your daughter has Cystic Fibrosis.”

It’s amazing how quickly your life changes with a diagnosis. Things you thought would be horrendous become your new normal. You learn new words, new treatments, how the body systems work, how to hold your child down while they do painful procedures. You learn to fear words such as blown veins, exacerbations, bronchial drainage, sputum, sensitivity reports, resistant strains, picc lines, pulmonary function, liver enzymes, ports, bio hazards, bio security. You become a walking encyclopedia on CF. You absorb everything you can and spit out statements like, “every 20,000 live births result in a CF baby, leading genetic killer of Caucasian children of European descent, 30,000 patients in the US, life expectancy of 18, then life expectancy of 30, then 40 now with Tricafta a full lifespan if there is no damage.”

Tricafta, the miracle drug. It is a game changer. It changes her DNA. Two tiny little pills allows for the chloride channel to work which causes her body to function more normally. We were ecstatic, but our normalcy ended abruptly. She has damaged lungs. She’s still susceptible to dangerous organisms, and now one has her lungs on fire.

“It’s good she was diagnosed young”, they said, “she won’t know any better.” My heart screamed at that statement. I wanted to hit someone,something, or at the very least scream and never stop! It’s not fair. I want her to know how to live! I wish she knew what is was like to not do 2-3 bronchial drainage treatments a day, I would love for her to eat without taking digestive enzymes, to not see a doctor every three months, to not have to haul bags of meds and machines that clear the mucus from her lungs on every single trip she takes. I would love for her to just live!

They say when CF is in your family you go through the stages of grief over and over again. I have those stages memorized. I’m in the anger stage again. I’m angry. I’m very angry. You see Danielle is so happy. she moved away from home. She has a great job she loves and she’s a very hard worker. She often goes in on her day off, even while fighting this disease. She is one they can count on and often shows up when she’s struggling to breathe. She’s tired and that scares me which in turn makes me angry. My anger will dissipate and I don’t find I want to bargain anymore, that stage of grief never made sense to me, but the depression sometimes sneaks in next and usually I will enter the acceptance stage pretty quickly. I’m just a bit uneasy about her treating this bacteria without me. How is she going to do this? How will she hook up to her IV’s around the clock without my help? Who will cook for her when she’s just too tired? Who will search for food she can eat while so nauseous? How will she continue to work?

Danielle and I talked the other day. She’s ready to tell the world about what it’s like to be her. We’ve both have showed mostly the positive side of handling this disease, but she wants people to know both sides. I told her I would help her by writing about her journey in my blog as well. It’s time we bring awareness to this disease. We still have to fight, we need to let you all know what it’s like and to join us in the fight. Pray with us for healing. Pay attention when CF is in the news, and if you’re so inclined, you can donate to the CF foundation to help find a cure. We’re close, and the babies that are born today may never have to fight like Danielle. So far she has beaten down the disease but over the years we have seen so many kids and young adults lose their fight. It’s a long fight, and painful fight and it would be amazing to know that the kids today won’t have to fight so hard just to keep breathing.

Today I really missed him, I could feel his energy around me, hear his nicker on the wind. Sometimes missing him comes over me and I find myself feeling him walking behind me and asking me what we’re doing today. A horse like JJ leaves his mark forever in your heart. He was my buddy my counselor, my teacher and my friend. When I slipped onto his saddle back then, I was home.

I haven’t written about JJ because the words just wouldn’t come. I mean, how do you talk about a horse that walked you through so many changes? How do you talk about a horse that you thought you saved, but really saved you instead?

I got the phone call on a cold December day from my friend Tom. He asked me if I wanted a project horse, a skinny arab gelding that looked pretty bad. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he would make the trailer ride over. When he got here with JJ, I saw a skinny bay horse that every rib could be counted. I bet you could have given a horse anatomy lesson and use him as an example of a horse’s skeleton. But it was his eyes that got me, they were quiet and internal until he looked at me. His head turned, his ear pricked up at me and he leaned closer. At that moment I was hooked and knew he would stay with me as long as it took for him to heal.

We put two blankets on him, started him on Senior feed and let him eat his way back. I rarely took off his blanket that first winter. I didn’t like seeing what he looked like underneath. His eyes had become lively, he had a proud headset, and a beautiful long mane. It was easy to believe he was fat and sassy until you took that blanket off, then you saw the ribs, the patchy coat and the ravages of starvation.

In the spring he had gained enough weight that I felt I could try to ride him. I took him to the round pen to evaluate him so eventually I could use him in the lesson program or sell him. Thats what I did back then, lessons were my priority after a horse I took in was on their way back to health or selling them to a new home that I thought would be a better fit for who they were. The buying, rehabbing, retraining and using them for lesson was easy for me, the selling, not so much. I wasn’t very good at the selling part…… unless one of my boarders bought them. Many of my boarders own the horses we took in back then.

As I slid on his back, my friend, Kim, came out and asked me what I thought. I told her that he needed some work. I rode him around the round pen, he neck reined nice and picked up the walk, trot, and canter easily, and had a decent stop. I thought he might make a nice lesson horse, but little did I know that I was evaluating my heart horse, my best friend, my mentor, my teacher, MY Horse. I can’t believe in that moment I didn’t know who he really was, how blind I was to who he was. If I could have had a soul partner in a horse, it was him.

I started riding him as my demo horse, the horse I taught from and who showed my students what to do. We started trail riding together. I didn’t really have a personal horse back then. I just rode whoever needed it, but I found myself choosing him, being uncomfortable with my students riding him and unsettled if anyone ever said anything negative about him while taking lessons. Special note here: students get frustrated when they’re learning and often speak negatively about the horse they are riding. As instructors we try to take that in stride, but it can be really hard, especially, if the horse is mine and I know it’s operator error, and how the horse is really taking care of the student and trying to help me teach. I would often get pretty angry if anyone would complain about JJ, so I pulled him from the lesson program, and he became my personal horse in everything I did.

JJ and I loved trail riding together, in fact he loved it so much he would argue a bit with me when it was time to go back to the trailer. He was a leader, he always wanted to be in front, and there were times we disagreed about it, and I tried to change that in him and make him ride in the back, but he made it so uncomfortable for me that I finally gave in and accepted that was who he was. He loved the freedom of the front, the ability to see, to take off in an instant, to protect the others, and spin like a top if a deer crossed our path. My JJ, he could spin on a dime! He was fun, he helped me rescue other riders when they came off their horses, we carried a few people back to camp together. He loved camping, I loved camping with him. He never ever let me down out there.

We also gamed together. We chose Omoksee as our preferred gaming club. He loved chasing down the other horses in the races, I loved riding him. When he would see a pole, a barrel, a jump, in our lane as we approached, he would slightly slow his stride as if to ask me what action to take. I could just see the pattern in my head, and he would do it, we rarely if ever knocked, he always was with me, he knew my thoughts, and my plans to the point I had no conscious thought, just the feel of the pattern, my horse and our oneness. Gaming will never be the same for me again. I’ve tried, it’s different now, Sassy doesn’t like it and Buzz doesn’t have that absolute and total trust and connection with me that JJ had. Maybe I don’t do the pattern work enough with them, maybe the desire is gone, or maybe it’s because no horse can be JJ?

We tried jumping for a hot minute. Yes, I often chuckle when I imagine JJ’s thoughts as I brought out my little jumping saddle. I can hear him saying, now what? A new Saddle? OK, we can give it a try. And try he did! We even attended an eventing clinic when he was 25 and I had a torn ACL. I’m sure we were a sight to behold, me with my brace and him with his sway back. We did have fun that day, and then I hung up that saddle and never used it again with him. It was fun to try, but gaming and trail riding was our thing, and we went back to that.

I took him to his last horse show when he was 27 and he took high point that day in our class. I remember people asking me about him, and being impressed, until I took his saddle off, then they would do a double take and ask me how old he was. I guess everyone but the two of us were concerned about his back being swayed. He never, ever let that bother him, and frankly it never bothered me either.

My last trail ride with him was up at Crow Hassen, when he was 32. We had a beautiful fall ride with several of our dearest friends and he left his body less than a year later on August 16, 2015. My friends that were with us on our last trail ride are still here, but some of our horses are gone. I miss them, we miss them, and today I was finally able to write a little about my JJ.

Today I rode Buzz and used JJ’s saddle, his bridle, and his halter. It’s the first time I’ve sat in his saddle since he left. As I settled down onto Buzz’s back, it almost felt like home, but not quite, it was more like being next door. I don’t think I can do it again, ride in that saddle. Buzz is not JJ, and I shouldn’t expect him to be. But today it was nice to almost be home again.

**The 1st, 3rd, and 7th pictures above were taken by Shelley Paulson. She and JJ were friends and I want to make sure she gets credit for the amazing photos (memories) she gave me.