I’m a HUGE crime junkie, not only of the podcast Crime Junkie but Snapped, Dateline; I mean, if there has been a crime, I have most likely heard about it, watched something about it, and talked about it in detail to anyone that would listen.
The show Snapped has a saying right before they explain what happened where the narrator will pause dramatically and say, “and that is when she snapped.”
As Britt would say on the Crime Junkie Podcast, “FULL BODY CHILLS.”
I love that saying, not because it means that the woman then goes to off someone, but because you know what happens next changed EVERYTHING.
I feel like everyone has a moment in their life where something SNAPS.
That moment in time where everything changes; whether it be an AHA moment, a light bulb goes on, a complete breakdown, or when you just snap, everyone has something that changes their path.
So here is mine, the moment I snapped, the moment that would end up years later being what would change my path…
The night my dad was officially diagnosed, I came home and took a long bath.
The bath is my place. The place where I can let my guard down, take a deep breath, and where I seem to let myself be the most vulnerable version of myself.
I think I googled every version of ALS I could think of in hopes of finding one website, blog, post, article of SOMETHING that would give me hope.
Hope that I would not lose my dad, hope that things would be okay, hope that I was not alone.
I did not want the science, the stats, or the horror behind both of those to continue to prove what was about to become my reality.
I wanted the heart and soul behind ALS, the REAL outlook on the disease, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful of what I was about to experience, who I was about to become.
That did not exist.
When I decided to put my anger aside, turn everything I was feeling into ambition, and start advocating for those with ALS, I knew exactly who I was going to become.
I wanted to be the person I was so desperately trying to find that night in the bath. I was going to be the person who put everything out there: my heart, soul, good, bad, ugly, and beautiful.
So that is how I snapped.
I snapped into a version of myself that was the person I wanted, a person I NEEDED in that moment in 2017 when I found out that the future I envisioned was no longer the future that would become a reality.
I believe that sharing your story will save a life; that life might even be your own.
All of us have been through something. We have all had a version of a moment in time that was good, a bad moment, something that was ugly, and a moment in time so beautiful that the thought alone will bring a smile back to your face.
Moments like those change us, and when we share our story, you never know whose life you might change too.
November is Family Caregiver Month, and every caregiver has had a different experience, a different perspective, a different story.
Throughout the month, you will be hearing from Guest Contributors as they share their Whats, What if, or What They Learned.
We all travel on different roads of life; some are bumpy, some are smooth, some have a lot of stop signs, and others are open roads. All of us, though, will get to our final destination. What matters is not the speed at which we arrive; it is the joy we have in our journey.
Share your story, enjoy your journey, and let’s help each other do both along the way.
If you would like to be a Guest Contributor for Caregiver Corner for November, please
e-mail me at Sabrina@I-Ally.com
