Dear Readers,

I would like to  share something that has happened with me, it is an amazing thing, a wholly unexpected thing, a wished for thing to be sure, but yet a surprise!

With the reading about childhood abandonment and childhood abuse has come a, I don’t know how to put it…

The burden of pain that I have carried in my heart since I was surely a little child, that burden of pain had decreased. I feel lighter, more at ease, less afraid, stronger and more able to handle life. The pain inside has lessened so much so that even when I come to Buffalo, the bottom doesn’t fall out because I feel so bad about not living near my son and in my old home. I still do miss Buffalo and it will always be my home, I do miss my son very much, but the sadness is not the heartbreaking, soul annihilating, lost in the darkness sadness. This sadness I can stand. I am sure it is normal for people to miss their old homes and neighborhoods and obviously it is normal for mothers to miss their sons. But it was not “normal” for me to descend into heart shattering darkness whenever I came here and then again when I got home again, or for any number of reasons.

But the burden of pain I have carried since I was a little mite has lessened and this “Buffalo sadness” or any other sadness doesn’t wipe me out anymore. I feel stronger and more able to handle this and to handle life.

Now that the climate inside me is getting sunnier, I can look to what is happening in the outside world and think seriously about what I want to do with my life. All the energy that was going in to pulling myself out of the abyss of heartache and sadness may now be spent on external things, such as PhD’s or Real Estate licenses.

Ironically at this time of emotional strengthening, I have found out that, as I always suspected, I do indeed have a hole in my heart hahaha. No seriously, I do, it is a hole in the wall of my atria. It’s called a Patent Foramen Ovale. Everyone has it as a fetus, but it closes for most people at birth. For up to 25% of people, it doesn’t close, I am one of the 25%. Mine is a small hole, blood going mostly from right to left, better than going left to right, as this direction leads to strokes. Speaking of strokes, my MRI that I had done due to the concussion last December showed I’d had a tiny stroke in the right hemisphere of my brain, in an area called the nucleus accumbens. Most certainly as a result of a tiny clot going through the hole in my heart and being carried to the brain.

So a little hole in my heart, a tiny stroke, and strength. That’s what I’m made of. It’s scary, but when I get frightened, I tell myself I’ve had this hole all my life, and yes I did have a stroke as a result of the hole in my heart, but it was a tiny one, so much so that I never knew I had it and there were no effects of it whatsoever.

There is a surgery that can be done, a catheter is inserted in your leg vein, taken all the way up into your heart and a membrane is put on the hole in the atrial septum that closes the hole. I may get that done or I may stay with my 1/2 a baby aspirin a day therapy, which acts as an anticoagulant, prohibiting the formation of clots. So hopefully no more strokes, as well, not too many black and blue marks.

So there it it. Strength in the emotional arena, what can only be described as weakness in the physical arena. But lots of strength and a little bit of weakness. I’ll take them both.

With love and hugs,

Samina.