Day 5 - Emotional
According to http://www.definitionofwellness.com/, "The emotional dimension of wellness emphasizes an awareness and acceptance of one's feelings. Emotional wellness includes the degree to which one feels positive and enthusiastic about oneself and life. It includes the capacity to manage one's feelings and related behaviors including the realistic assessment of one's limitations, development of autonomy, and ability to cope effectively with stress. The emotionally well person maintains satisfying relationships with others."
"Life gives us brief moments with another...but sometimes in those brief moment we get memories that last a life time...” - Author Unknown
I think that most people are born with some things they are drawn to and interested in and some things they are naturally talented at doing. The real key lies in finding a way to marry the two. As for me, I am drawn to trying to find a way to treasure the "here and now" for as long as I can. I am interested in documenting my adventures as I stumble through life in words and pictures. Luckily for me, I think I have some talent at writing about (well at least for a mathematician) and photographing life as it happens. The marriage of those two things for me is in scrapbooking.
I jumped on the scrapbooking bandwagon about 12 years ago (yikes) as did many others. I'm sure for many, they see it as a fad that is a whirlwind of pretty paper, silly stickers and a chance to get together with the girls. Don't get me wrong. I too enjoy all of those things, but for me, it's something more. I get to capture an instant in life that is all too fleetingly fast and revel in it at my leisure.
So, once a month my mom and I try to get together to "do our books." She brings all of her pretty papers, boxes of photos and usually a snack. We spread out in my family room, which easily accommodates 2 6-foot tables (we each get one). We grab a dvd or two and spend the entire weekend (usually from Friday evening around 6 PM to Sunday morning sometime) creating not only scrapbooks of our lives, but just as importantly, new memories of the time we spent together that we'll remember well into the future.
Tonight as I pulled out all of my paper and photos, stickers and work-in-progress albums, I took a few minutes to peruse a few completed albums. (Why is it that I don't do that more often?) I smiled as I remembered the excitement I felt at winning a whole load of motorcycle gear, marveled at exactly how tiny Phoebe (my 13 year-old cat) was when I brought her home (1 pound!), mourned when I turned to the photo taken just a little over a decade ago of my mom's extended family and realized that most of the people in the picture are no longer with us.
These scrapbooks that I make are my legacy. I don't leave them to my husband or children (I don't have either). Instead, I leave them to my future self. When I depart this lovely world for my heavenly home, no one else may care that my loves, losses and life were captured between those covers, but if I do it right, when I am 80, I will get to pick those books up, flip through the many pages and laugh and cry, just as I did tonight, at all of the life that I lived.
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