“Signs of a Life” – Part I
Much like many people, I’m sure I’m not alone when I say I’ve lived a stressful life. We all face stress. Stress comes to all of us in many ways and we all deal with stress and react to stress differently. For me, I thought I handled it really well. I was strong during the moment when I needed to be for me and my family, though when I was alone I would break down for moment of release. I would recover and do it all over again time after time. I thought I could handle anything.
As a young teen, I watched my mother suffer five years of her life through a nervous breakdown and never knew if my mom would survive that ordeal. Thank God, she did as God had a plan for her. He miraculously healed her when the doctors gave up on her. You can read about her miraculous healing in our first book, “Signs from God” that we published in 2014 and made available on Amazon. My mother has an amazing story, and while her story will always be a part of mine, my story has allowed us to expand our purpose even further. As you can imagine, watching your mother suffer something so traumatic as this, it makes you grow up fast and you have to learn how to handle that stress. This is where it all started for me at a young age.
At the age of 53, my stress level hit its peak and I broke! On April 27, 2016, I went to work like any other day, but this day I was managing a difficult project. In fact, one of the biggest projects my team had worked before. We were getting oversight from our upper management team and leadership and we were taking the brunt of the project’s failure due to issues outside of our control. I knew my team and I were doing everything we possibly could, but we were already set up to fail when this project was incorrectly solutioned. This particular day, I was in a meeting with someone that intimidated me so bad and I was so frustrated because he was not listening to me. When I am made to feel like my opinion doesn’t matter, I clam up. I think that is probably a normal response, and many people do the same thing. Some people might just brush that off and forget about it, but I let it fester, and over the course of several hours it built up so much that I found myself heading to the hospital to be checked out that evening!
The results were positive and they admitted me. I was there for ten long nights with lots more stress and anxiety to follow. Along with cardiac arrest, tests, and even a pump inserted up to my heart to relieve it from having to do all the work. This experience changed my life in so many ways. Some of which I will share with you in this series of blogs!
How do you handle your stress? Do you internalize it or do you release it? I’ve learned it’s important to understand your triggers. So give that some thought as we move through this series together!
