It's been a good couple of weeks of 2016! I always love a new beginning, a fresh new start. And trust me! I am very familiar with starting and starting and starting over with many things in my life (especially when it comes to healthy eating and living the active lifestyle). And that has not been an exception this year already. Lemme tell you.
Hello friends! It's been a good couple of weeks of 2016! I always love a new beginning, a fresh new start. And trust me! I am very familiar with starting and starting and starting over with many things in my life (especially when it comes to healthy eating and living the active lifestyle). And that has not been an exception this year already. Lemme tell you.
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Hello friends! This is me on my 22nd birthday 3 years ago. A while ago. Kind of like my last blog post *clears throat*. Okay, let's not get into guilt tripping, Maria. Let's get back into the topic of this post. So, why did I choose this lost forgotten photo above. Hmm, maybe it's because of the thought of setting New Year's resolutions and the bit of angst that comes with that. Maybe it's because of the upcoming cold that Texas is just now getting. I am just not down with the cold. Today I am writing about something very near and dear to my heart! And that something happens to be the place where I work-- Wonders & Worries! I LOVE IT SO MUCH THAT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START. But let me give it a shot anyhow. I truly believe I am so very blessed to have found myself at this incredible organization. I just felt the urge to write about Wonders & Worries, because it is such a big part of my life and where I want my career to go. My "job" there is more like a calling really. It doesn't even feel right to call it my job. It is my calling. I work as a child life assistant at Wonders & Worries, a non-profit in Austin, Texas that provides professional therapeutic support to help children cope through a parent's illness. Being a child life assistant means that I provide assistance in various ways to the child life staff, who provide therapeutic psycho-social support to the children that come to Wonders & Worries (more on what that means in a little bit). I have been there since June of 2013, and am completely in love with what I do! I always think of my illness story in three parts: the initial diagnosis, my second flare, and my kidney transplant. Today I want to share with you guys about the second flare of my illness. This was a big turning point in my illness, because a lot of intense changed followed. For the last 8 years after my initial diagnosis of ANCA-positive pauci-immune glomerulonephritis, I had lived a semi-normal life. At the beginning it was lots of craziness, of course, the chemo, the renal diet, the back-to-back hospitalizations, and the medicines. However, eventually things settled down. Thinking back now, I remember my biggest worry being graduating from middle school and having my doctors' clearing that I would be able to attend the graduation ceremony. So, it's even funnier now to think that 8 years later at the age of 22 about to graduate from college, I was being faced with the same situation. In case you didn't know. . . and you most likely don't because we have just started this wonderful friendship. ;) I LOVE making videos. Ever since I was a youngin', I would force. . . well, not force. . . let's say kindly direct my cousins and brother to make videos with me. It could be anything from music videos to writing a script and filming my very own telenovela (Spanish soap opera). And I loved it! I loved the thinking process for making a video, I loved the planning, the directing, the acting, the editing piece, the anticipation of waiting on an upload. Well, except when the uploading would get really slow. Theeen, I'd get a little annoyed. But it was only a small nuance for an amazing feeling. Bottom line: I love video making. Hello Friend, I know sometimes life gets hard and it feels like you're stuck going nowhere fast. Trust me. I have been there too. You feel like no matter what you do, you remain in the same spot. Time passes and you remain. . . stuck. And even though you try to ignore it, the feeling sticks. You can't help but feel guilty, because you "should be farther along than this." The feeling becomes even worse, when you come to realize that maybe you not only have remained stuck, but have actually moved backwards. There is a story that we tell teens where I work. It is a closure activity when the teen has reached their last session with their child life specialist. It requires a tree slice round. You know what I'm talking about? The wooden, round plaques that have become oh-so popular in rustic weddings as center pieces. Or just as awesome, engraved plaques. Yes, those! The possibilities are endless with these little slices of wood. And the possibility we use it for. . . is for its story. Have you ever really looked at a tree slice or a stump? There are the rings, of course, which signify how long the tree has lived, but furthermore, within those lines are brown or dark marks. Little marks. And sometimes big marks. Those marks signify when a tree had a really tough year. Maybe a drought Hello, everyone of the internet world! Hola, mi gente! Welcome to my page. I am so happy that you have found me. Thank you so much for visiting my blog site! I almost can't contain my excitement for this new blogging world I am immersing myself in! (In case you couldn't already tell by the plethora of exclamation points I've used thus far). I have been thinking (for what seems like years now), "I should start a blog." Or on particularly hard or amazing days, "I wish I had a blog to pour all of these thoughts and feelings into." If you have ever thought about starting a blog or you have a blog, you might now how hard it was to get yourself to start. You know what I'm talking about, right? Right! But enough waiting is enough waiting and sometimes (most of the time), you have to take action when you are not ready, because there truly will never be |
Hi, I'm Maria!The name's Patino. Maria Patino. I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease at 14 and that forever changed my life for good. Eleven years and a kidney transplant later, I am now trying to lead a vegetarian and cruelty-free lifestyle. Follow me on this fun journey to love, kindness, and happiness. Archives
December 2015
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