Wow. Yes. Oh my, and patience can be the most difficult to attain at times too.  I lost it completely the other night, yelled at my husband, the dog, the world in general. It was all triggered by something so minor and the explosion was so out of character that I was still apologizing the next morning. I try so hard to remain calm and find healthy ways to vent stress in my life, but it doesn’t always work.  Usually when I am feeling overwhelmed, I can walk away. This time I didn’t realize it in time and really wish I had.

I know that when I have an outburst it usually comes not from a place of feeling overworked or even overwhelmed, but more from a place of feeling out of control. This latest event comes as I am trying to help my husband transition to his new reality post-DBS, as we are both attempting to navigate a post-pandemic world and then our aging dog is showing some signs of incontinence. These are all things that I don’t understand nor do I have any control over them. I have enough uncertainty in my life and certainly didn’t need one thing more, so I blew.

So, yes, as a CarePartner I need patience more than anything. I need patience with my partner and I need patience with the world around me. Most importantly, I need patience with myself. I need to really accept that things are going to happen that are out of my control.  Then, when they do happen, I need to step back and take a breath, find my patience, and move forward into whatever the universe has in mind. It’s going to happen anyway, I might as well own it.