Hi everybody,

It's been a long time since I've posted. I've thought about it a hundred times.

One day I came here to read and everyone sounded so upbeat and optimistic and successful - I couldn't take it.

I want to be one of the success stories here, I want to be a winner, I want to be one of the people who has been able to change her life because of this program. And I haven't felt like that in a long time. I knew my program was falling apart when I realized I was eating fritos for breakfast.

It's impossible to talk about myself without including my mother. She'll be 95 next month and I am her primary caretaker. At one point I noticed that in my journal all I ever wrote was "exhausted and overwhelmed". So I stopped writing.

I've lost track of how many of my doctors appointments I've cancelled in the last six months. That scares me a lot.

The reason I'm here today is because we have a home health aid starting to come here two afternoons a week and I'm feeling a little optimistic.

In my life, if there is a problem or some kind of uphill climb, I work hard on it and usually see
progress or improvement. Taking care of my mother is the opposite, she gets weaker and more dependent every day. There's more to do, more paper work, more doctors, more meds, a stay in the hospital now and then, more bowling pins to keep in the air at one time.

I'm hoping that I can stay engaged with everyone here but I honestly don't know.

Thanks for listening.

Gigi