"The Book of Me, Written by You" - What makes you proud?

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations.

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

This is a journey of finding yourself and how your loved ones see you in their eyes. Further, this can be online and carried forward to share, if you wish, to future generations. - See more at: http://joannfitz.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/the-book-of-me-written-by-you-topic-1.html#sthash.2TuO2bVu.dpuf

The prompt for the week is:    

What makes you proud?

The Brief:

• Your achievements
•  Against the odds
•  Challenges 
• Your Family Members
• Spouse 
• Parents 
• Grandparents 
• Grandchildren 
• Children 
• Friends and Colleagues

This prompt makes me sit back and think...what exactly is my emotions to being proud? I think these emotions are mixed because while I've accomplished and fought for things I believed would make my life easier, I've had so many roadblocks in life that its hard to sit back and think about them all. Everyone has roadblocks in life and we all deal with them in different ways. I've probably went through what many in life have done and have just pushed on.


Family

My great grandparents in front of their shop in the 1930's in NJ.

The people in my family are all fighters on some level. You have the ones that want to fight and will actually pick them with you quite loudly. There are others that are the exact opposites where they fight for all their worth, but do it in a quiet and dignified way. Just sitting back and thinking about how each person in our family goes about how they view life and how they combat, or fight, their way through it is different. I do have to say, as fighters, one thing  we do not do lightly is give up. We keep going and keep on giving no matter what. This is one of the traits, I'm proud to say, stem down from my great grandparents - on both sides of my family. Both sides come from Poland, and as anyone who knows Poland's history, knows that no matter who's running the show, Polish people just keep on going and keep on giving. This does make me proud.

My Spouse

I am proud of my spouse because he supports me in almost everything I do and want to do. Its also reflected back by me doing the same back to him. Did you wonder why I put the word almost in? That's because sometimes, like in most relationships, you just need to compromise. I encourage, support and show him love when and wherever I can. True, we don't show a lot of public displays of affection, but the emotion and respect is there.

My Achievements and Challenges Against All Odds

I have to say, I've been fighting since conception. My mother mistook how to use birth control pills in the 1970's, keeping in mind they were a new way of prevention back then, and then she found out she was expecting. Then came my mother breaking her ankle and being put in the hospital and needing help to get around until her ankle fully healed. As my progress in growing was being made, they were reducing the cast my mother's leg was in. The downside to this point was her roommate helped her take up smoking, so by the time she left the hospital she was truly addicted to them, which, in turn, affected me. However, as you can see, I still made it to being born.

One of the braces for people with pigeon toes

However, once I was born, there were problems. I had birth defects which affected my heart (a murmur) and legs (pigeon toed). When I started school, it was found I had a learning disability as well. Each thing as it came along, I fought and dealt with. First the doctors did what they could and tested my heart at different times trying to figure out if it was life threatening, which it isn't, but I still have to be careful. The legs were put into many different shoes and braces until I was at least 4. By then, I hated the things and would hide or "get rid of" them, so I've been told. I still remember when my grandmother Jean was alive, we would go walking around Newburgh and she would always tell me not to be so lazy with my legs and keep them at the right direction. I believe this was one reason why she didn't take me many places with her. I got used to just ignoring the small, but sharp, barbs growing up about my legs as they were as they were and nothing could make them right.

Then came my learning disability when I was in first grade. Not only did I not have many friends because of the custody issues (my time was split between my mother and father), but then I was constantly singled out each year which I had problems and needed to be sorted out and then taken away from most of the other kids and put into a room with about maybe 20 kids. Talk about a real confidence boost in making and keeping friends. However, over the years, I learned on how to make things work for me and deal with this disability. People don't even realize that I have a problem and it isn't until I tell them, and in some cases I don't tell them, they even know. If anything, I fight my way through it and take the more challenging route for me.

What didn't help was throughout my education, I never was encouraged to keep going or celebrated. The times there were ceremonies, either I didn't go, or if I did, it was by myself. To most people in

One of my many achievements

the family it was a normal day even though I was just given a new badge in Girl Scouts, or had a chorus show, or even made Honor Societies in both high school and my trade school. There was only 3 times were it was celebrated - when I graduated from high school, my trade school and I received my Associates in Applied Science degree. However, the high school ceremony was destroyed because it started to pour out and my mother got mad and went back to my car and sat there, wet, while I received my diploma. The trade and Applied Science degrees were attended to, put I always felt like it was a huge inconvenience instead of a big deal - we got dressed up, attended and then back home after. No celebration other than to say "Are we done yet?" or the feeling of those words.

My birthday each year was a bit of the same type of feeling as the graduation celebrations. Because of this, in my teens, I stopped celebrating my birthday and now, I don't celebrate any birthday's or achievements any longer - not the Certificate 4 in Training and Assessment and I don't have any plans on celebrating my Certificate 4 in Web Based Technologies which will be completed in the next 2 1/2 months. I did the work, received the paperwork, hit another birthday on the calendar and let's move on.

How does this relate to being proud?
What does make me proud is how I've handled my life - I can't do much about what life throws at me, I can just deal with what life throws at me, look at it and do something with it. Its happened there's not much you can do. However, I think its a bonus of a day if I can get up, walk up to a mirror and look me straight into the eyes and know that everything that I have done, I could do to my up most ability and do it both mortally and lawfully, then its something I can be proud of.

Some people have asked me in the past, doesn't that make you mad and tick you off? Of course things do, but its happened all you can do is deal with the fallout of what's happened. Will it make me feel better to call people names and sledge their name? Sure it would, but it could also come back and bite me right in the ass and by doing this could actually hurt or take away some of the options I could have had if I hadn't done that. Its thinking of the cause and effect or Newton's law of Action and Reaction in Physics but instead of all the chemistry stuff that goes with that, just think of the concept - something you do will cause something else to happen which might limit your choices. Because of this, I try to look at the brighter side and go the way less harm will happen.

All I can say is I do what I think would make myself proud. In doing that, hopefully, others will see value in what I've done. Further, to do anything in malice will only make things harder in the long run and could result in missed opportunities. In fact, one of the places I teach at recently gave me this certificate, because they said it fits me.


I've put some of my challenges and accomplishments within this post, but feel free to look at my tiny story below, which will show you a bit more. This is also on my About Jo Ann page of our website and will take over 13 minutes, so make sure you have a drink handy.



  Check back for the continuation of "The Book of me, Written by You" series.