change

I realize that ending with the therapist I have seen for two and a half years brings me indirectly into facing that my mother won't change, won't meet my needs. I have acted on that basis for years, but this experience takes it to a deeper level.

rituals

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and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5.5)

new life

This is one of my photographs from the photography retreat at the convent last weekend. My daughter had a wonderful time and I got into it too.

the wall inside me turned into a horse and I rode off

This is an old picture that feels like an important symbol right now. I only just realized that I did it almost exactly two years ago.

I wrote a post yesterday that Blogger seems to have lost. I'm just terribly busy with work and having been away two weekends in a row. My last appointment with my old therapist is Thursday.

boarding schools

Christ School does a good job of the elite boarding school look. It was a strange experience for me, as I went to boarding school in 10th grade and for the first two months of 11th grade and it wasn't a success for me. But my son has much better skills at being a part of a group than I did, and he isn't afraid of being a beginner. His teacher, who just moved to Montessori from teaching in the public schools, agrees that public school wouldn't work for him. And we have so few choices around here.

moving forward

Things went well with the new therapist today. I am amazed by how I have learned to have the confidence to say: "this is what works for me." That grew out of my experience of being diagnosed with diabetes and taking the approach "my body, my science experiment."

This afternoon I take my son to visit Christ School.

dependent

Someone I know said it helps her when she gets stressed to remember that she is dependent on God every minute of every day. I'm trying to feel out how to feel reassured by that.

tired

Hosting a speaker yesterday took a lot of energy, though I enjoyed her very much. I did get home a few minutes after six and take a bike ride right away. I have changed, that I made that a higher priority than eating supper. It gets dark just before 7:30 now, but I won't have that option for long. It is going to be an interesting month, dealing with change in my support system when I am so busy.

change

I am going to be changing therapists (though it really hasn't sunk in yet). It is for me an experience of saying "I deserve to have my needs met," which feels like an amazing and radical thing to do. The person with whom I have been working deserves a lot of credit for my being able to get to that point.

hills

I was pleased to see someone who did the 100 mile ride in under 5 hours write about the killer hill:

I feel sorry for anybody doing that ride who didn't know about Maw Bridge in advance. It's pretty shocking to see that wall appear in front of you. Even some of the guys in the front racer pack gasped at the sight of it.

I went back Sunday and rode it again because I had a new heart rate monitor and wanted to see how high my heart rate would go on a really serious hill. I hit 195, stayed above 190 for at least a minute. I guess I get to be a member of the Hummingbird Heart Club (by the simplest method my predicted maximum heart rate would be 171).

met my goal

It wasn't long after I got back to bike riding in June that I set as a goal riding 100 km in an organized ride called Ride for the Raptors. Training for a particular goal is actually something I had never done before, but I took it fairly seriously because I didn't really know how my body would react. Two weeks ago I rode 7 hours testing my blood sugar every half hour, and found I didn't have problems with going too low or too high.

Today was the big day. I was a bit disorganized--had to drive 10 minutes home again because I got there and realized I had forgotten my water bottle. I started the route a few minutes after the mass start. In the first 5 miles I passed several people, which was encouraging. It was a little misty and while riding through some open farmland I couldn't figure out what I was seeing way ahead of me on the road. It looked like two people dancing. It turned out to be two roller-bladers, who were doing the 25 mile route. I had trouble settling down at first--it was a distraction to be in the new situation of an organized ride. There were about 250 riders, it wasn't a huge ride, and after a while I saw very few people.

After the first rest stop at 14 miles I settled down and started feeling tempted to do the 100 miles instead of 61. I decided I had better not since I hadn't gotten an early start and my husband would worry about me if I got home so much later than I had said I would.

I knew the biggest hill was at about 30 miles. I had made it up twice before, but after 10 miles of riding, not after 30 miles. Actually, if anything it was a little easier this time, or seemed that way because I almost caught up with a young man on a mountain bike. After the hill the route went through the town of Six Mile and I stopped and bought a hamburger. It had taken me just under 3 hours to do 35 miles, which was a little better than I expected. I wasn't at all pushing myself to go fast.

At 40 miles the 100 mile route rejoined the 61 mile route, and a couple of groups riding in formation passed me. I didn't see the person from various newsgroups who I said I would look for. There is a pretty good series of hills around 50 miles and I did them quite comfortably. It was getting hot (the high today was 85) and so sometimes I was grateful for the wind but there was one section of slogging into a headwind. I filled up my water bottle at the rest stop at 40 miles but it was empy by the time I got to the rest stop at 53.5 miles. I wasn't dragging when I got to the last 10 miles, I actually rode faster the last mile or two because I saw if I pushed a little I could complete the 61.3 mile route in 5 1/2 hours.

I'm pleased with that--if I take out the 15 minutes for the lunch stop I averaged 11.7 miles an hour. Still pretty slow, but I had had been a little discouraged when I first started riding further that I didn't seem to be averaging much faster than 10 miles an hour.

My husband and kids set out to ride the 25 mile route, knowing they weren't going to make it all the way. They made it about 8 miles, which is as far as we had gotten when practicing, and they said they would have gone a little further if the person who was driving the sag wagon hadn't wanted to finish up. They had a good time and want to get ready to go further in the next local organized ride in the spring.