A great friend fo mine Sharon Mashburn penned this article for the Post Traumatic Stress and TBI group on facebook. Brilliant work, it exemplifies the #dealwithit out look on life. Feel free to join the group, its one of the better online communities for PTSD &TBI on facebook.

Here is the URL https://www.facebook.com/groups/PTSD.TBI


When you are young, you are naive. You think you have all the answers because you see everything everyone is doing and you obviously have a better idea of how to fix the issues. The problem is, is you cannot fix the problems of others by looking in through the window at someone else’s life. Until you have experienced the life, experienced the sadness that is incorporated into it, been a party to the long nights of worry and empty hope you cannot have the answers they need.

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There is a certain level of patience and acceptance that comes with age. The young want to jump in gun-ho, and then they drown, and their firing pins are now all wet. Once upon a time, I would show my hand, I would never bluff nor wait, I would run in guns drawn, fire blazing and most of the time I came up short and wanting. Now I know to wait, sit and let the answers come to me. I don’t need to expose my wild cards and show my hand early. I can sit and wait for the other person to fold under pressure just for them to find out I only had a pair of 4’s and they could have won that hand.

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None of us are getting out of this life alive, and we aren’t taking anything tangible with us in death. So, in reality, is buying that ugly statue, not buying the book you wanted to read, waiting for tomorrow to tell the person you love worth it? Tomorrow is not promised, you can’t take the statue with you after death, but the knowledge from the book, will it retain after death?

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The blessed man is the man who has many he can call upon in his time of need. When you are gone, what will they say of you? “She was bright. She had a lot of stuff that she can’t take with her. She enriched other people’s lives daily by giving away art, giving away poetry, giving away pieces of her soul.” Truth is, none of us are getting out alive and we can’t take anything with us that we can touch, so what are we doing collecting things that we can’t have after death? The only things you own are your memories and thoughts, and for some, that is even a stretch. I understand wanting to forget things that upset you, but when the good goes away with the bad, suddenly you are left wanting it all back, good and bad. Without the bad, the good isn’t as good as it could be. If you don’t have the sad and bad to compare the good too, you may never really know how blessed you are.

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Smile a lot. Laugh constantly. Say thank you, and you’re welcome regularly. Let the bad, just roll away, don’t let it rent space in your head. Tomorrow is not promised. Live in your moment, live in your right now. Be happy. Fight the battles when they are at your feet, but when they are not, smile, engage, and be merry. Welcome to being happier. I like it here. They know me here. 🙂 I don’t have to fake it. 🙂


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