Week Long Institute....where do I go from here?

I spent a week @ Teachers College Coaching Institute & now my brain has so many wonderful, stimulating ideas running through it I just don't know where to begin first. The week was jam packed with commuting to a far away school in Brooklyn that very much resembled the school I coach at. I was so excited to be doing this each day. I was so fortunate to meet wonderful woman from around the world who were just as excited as I was to be learning. Since this is my third coaching institute, I was honestly hoping for "some" new ideas, truthfully, I thought, it will be very much like last year, coach a little, lecture etc. I was so pleasantly surprised by how much it did not resemble my experience from last year. I was able to stretch myself as a coach, try many new things in coaching that I had not had the opportunity to try before. NOW, this is the hard part, what do I pick to implement with my teachers, where do I begin to sort through all the "wonderful" that this week was? I wonder if it will take me at least a week to decompress all the info! I do however, look forward to trying new things & propelling our work forward!
Hugs,

Where do we go from here?

I have not written/blogged in a couple of weeks. Life has just gotten the best of me. It just seems that we are in this strong-hold of horrible situations. Three weeks ago, my 35 year old brother-in law calls that a colonsycopy revealed two tumors, not polyps & they were going to be biopsied. My heart hurt for him, for I know what he was going through. I was there almost 3 years ago, that news just leaves you speechless & breathless. My biopsies revealed tons of pre-cancerous tumors. I was lucky, they went in & removed mine through a controversial surgery that took forever to be approved, but now looking at what my brother-in-law is facing, phew, that ordeal was NOTHING!!! His news just went from bad to worse, to down-right horrible. The tumors were indeed cancerous, horrible in and of itself, however, they found more tumors when more tests were done. These were not in the colon but on the liver & the lungs. The news there was grave. He was stage 4, the cancer was not only in his liver but in his blood as well. With each phone call, I felt more helpless. I did what you should not do in these situations, I cried my eyes out. No, not when I spoke to him or his partner or my other brother-in-law, I saved my hysterics for home, riding in the car & unfortunately, once while speaking with my poor husband! Our family is still recovering from my son's tragic accident, I'm not sure all of us have much fight or strength in us, yet, we found it, we pulled it together & have sprung into action. While we know his cancer is terminal, he has decided he will fight. He used this example, "If my nephew can fight to stay alive like he did, if he can be a miracle, so can I"! Oh boy, as I wrote everyday while my son was in a coma, while he spent 4 weeks in ICU, while he spent months in rehab, "Expect a miracle, get a miracle!" I will believe with him, I will fight with him, b/c after all, believing gives you strength to get through the really hard days. We are armed & ready to do this, to believe, to fight with him! Expect a miracle, get a miracle!
Love,

Progress...Slow...but it is progress!

On Saturday we hit 8 months, 8 months since the accident. I made it through the day without crying all day. It has been such a long, up-hill recovery for my boy! He has made remarkable progess. Recently though he hit a stand-still or even should I say, a road block & I really began to worry. He began to worry as well. This became a vicious cycle for him & I. He worried he would not make anymore progess & that life would be a constant struggle for him, that words would never come for him, that he would never be the same boy he was before the accident. I did not know how to tell him, that he would never be the same boy he was before. I didn't think that this was all bad, it just was the facts. He was different! Not a bad different, just different, he was more cautious, more reserved, more mature. I think it just happens after a life altering, tragic experience such as this. He is a miracle. He is our towns miracle, his friends miracle, his schools mircacle, my miracle. This changes you & how you look at things! He continues to make progress, but it is not as fast as the first 8 months, so it is frustrating to him. I feel so bad for him. But, I believe in him, I know he can do it! afterall, he came this far, he got through the hardest parts, he can get through these parts! Slow & steady wins the race! Keep taking those steps my boy!
Hugs,

Snow, sleet, ice, oh my!

Snow, sleet & ice was the order for today. It made for a really scary commute home from work. They closed most of the roads that led out of my school. Before I even left school, our principal asked that all of us who lived far away from the school leave now because they were closing roads, major roads, highways that would take us home. He was worried we might not get out if we did not leave now. Oh boy, that would be me. I quickly shut off the computer, grabbed what I needed for home & got out of there. I got outside needed to scrape off my car. There was about an inch of ice on my car. I quickly scrapped & got in the car. I immediately saw as soon as I left the school parking lot the lights, flares & emergency vehicles at the entrance to the highway I take home. It quickly dawned on me that I would not be able to take my usual route home. I decided to stay straight, go through town & see if I could take the next highway that would get me home. I kept driving with the death grip on the wheel. I was driving like a snail. Every few seconds another emergency vehicle went rushing past me! What in the world was going on??? I was really beginning to get nervous. I just kept inching my way slowly to the next highway entrance to only find out that it too was closed! Oh my good-ness. I then decided that I would have to go through all the towns to make my way home. It would be much longer, but perhaps safer. It turned out to not be any safer, would most likely be just as long as going on the highway because the roads were so bad. It took a little over an hour and a half to get home. When I got home I turned on the news only to find out that 4 major road ways were closed by my school due to a 10 car pile up, an over turned bus, severe ice & unsafe road conditions, & last, the road up about 5 miles from my school where our intermediate school is was closed because the crossing guard slipped in the middle of the road broke his leg. I feel so bad for him as well as all the others that were hurt trying to make it home today. I'm grateful for my principal who let me go early. He is so caring! Snow, sleet, ice, oh my, what a commute home. I really can't imagine what tomorrow will bring because the storm is still yet to come? Oh boy!
Hugs,