Hello!
I don't come here very often anymore. It's not that I don't miss you all!
Life goes on - and life ends. Many of you know that I lost my Mother to COPD on July 4, 2016. I lost my Aunt to lung cancer April 19, 2017. I've had severe issues with my son since 2009(kicked out of school, mental health care needs not being met, Social services involvement, inadequate residential mental health care, ran away from group home, kicked out of Job Corps), and he turned 18 this year and moved out for good...which is good and bad.
I've had two major car accidents in the last two years, totaled both cars and left me with chronic back pain and Post Concussive Syndrome.
This year I lost my Dad. April 27, 2018. Totally unexpected, and the kids and I were the ones to find him passed away on the floor of his bedroom. I talked to my Dad every day. He was the only person I could just dump on and have no judgement or repercussions. And he's gone.
It's been TOUGH.
My oldest brother and I took care of the estate and got the house we grew up in, the house our parents had for almost 50 years, sold in less that 2 months after Dad passed. My cousins also had to sell the house their parents lived in for almost 50 years - and which two of them had moved back into after Uncle Bob died in 2009.This year, for the first time in our lives, we have no family home to go to for the Holidays.
T.O.U.G.H.
And through it all - I still haven't quit my quit.
I can tell you that if you asked me 5 years ago if I would still be quit today, I probably would have said no. And yet, here I am.
You can do it too. Yes - YOU. The one reading this thinking, "This is hard. I'm not sure." I had many quits and relapses over probably a decade or more before I really stopped smoking forever. This place is a great resource and can be a lifesaver when you are triggered.
As someone way wiser than me here said - you have to want to quit more than you want to smoke. And then remember that smoking never did, and never will, make anything better.
Hang in there!
~Elims Lisa 9/14/13
