I got some news the other day that came like a gut punch. The longer I thought about it, the more worried I became. To the point that I found myself hard pressed to hold back tears several times a day. I even said to my hubby, I’m not sure if it’s fear or I’m just having a great big pity party. Both of those emotions are pretty rare for me at this point in my life.

Something happened during the night that flipped a switch in my emotions. I have a prescription for a drug that helps me sleep. I rarely take it and if I do, I take a half dose. The reason being that the full dose gives me nightmares and the added bonus of sleep paralysis, which is a scary thing to have happen. You wake up and your mind is conscious but your body is not under your control yet. It only lasts a few seconds but you’d be surprised at how freaking long those panicky seconds seem while you seemingly cannot open your eyes or move a muscle. When this happens, I usually make a point of trying to make noise, attempting to yell but those paralyzed vocal cords can’t do much more than utter a gutteral moan. I do this until I have control of my body again. Even though I took a half dose, the sleep paralysis happened anyway, so I fought to make those vocal cords work and try to scream. The sleep paralysis then broke, at which point I hopped out of bed, and I was mad. I hate when this happens! But I had done what I could to fight against the sleep paralysis until it no longer had a hold on me. It then occurred to me that I could choose to fight against the things that were currently upsetting me. I can choose to pity myself or I can choose to be proactive and fight to remedy what’s wrong. Way to channel your anger, Dawn! *pats self on back*

This morning, I woke up in a better mood than I’ve been in since the bad news and I’m determined to choose positivity and to do the things I can to mitigate the trouble.

A preacher once said that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.

Your power is in how you choose to respond. So I choose to meet this challenge head on, kicking a$$ and taking names. Beats a pity party anyday! 😉