Just Breathe

Today's Prompt: Aspiration. “If I could do anything as a Health Activist...” Think big today! Money/ time/ physical limitations are no longer an issue. What is your biggest goal that is now possible? What’s your one, three, or five year plan for your Health Activism?

Aspiration.

It means "to breathe in."

As a singer and a voice instructor, I love breathing words. Inspiration (to breathe in), Expiration (to breathe out), Respiration (the cycle of breathing).

There's also Inhalation, Exhalation, Ventilation...but these are different. I like the words about spirit. From the Latin spiritus for breath. Spirit (n.) the vital principle or living force within human beings.

We all have a sense of our own spirit. Something inside us that keeps us breathing - in, out, tens of thousands of times each day.

the embodiment of Spirit in my life

I don't know where I'll be in five years. My children will both be elementary-aged. I may or may not have chosen to go back to full-time voice teaching on a high school campus somewhere. Maybe I'll work full time in the diabetes sector. It's not necessarily what I aspire to do at this point. That's too far out.

Most days, I just aspire to keep breathing. Breathe as my 1 year old frustrates me with his fussiness. Breathe as my daughter jumps off a play structure at the park. Breathe as the number pops up on the glucose meter and it's not a number I hoped to see.

I have aspirations about being a part of movements within the diabetes online community that seek to educate and inspire. I want the media to get facts correct, I want the TSA to treat us like human beings, I want to let young women know how to have a healthy pregnancy with diabetes.

On an individual level, I know I have inspired people with my story. I have inspired my students with my unconditional love and belief in them. I hope to inspire my children with my strength and my adoration. I'd like to keep doing that.

I'd like to keep breathing words out onto the pages of the internet and hoping they catch somewhere. Fogging the screen of your laptop. Cooling the perspiration on your weary brow.

Inspiring you to keep going, too. To keep breathing.