Embracing Life

Our lives are like a roller coaster constantly moving-constantly changing.

A blog by Linda Knebel Pruden, author of From Fear to Peace: Growing Spiritually as a Dementia Caregiver

This is my first entry into my new blog: Embracing Life.

Our lives are like a roller coaster constantly moving-constantly changing. Sometimes the ride stops for a while, and we experience life like a peaceful lake. But the flow of the life is always moving-always changing-propelling us along-to grow-to enjoy the beauty of all life’s

experiences. Each twist and turn has a beauty all its own challenging us to let go and trust the journey. Begging us to observe-to grow-to remember who we are and what we are here to do.

It has been two years since my husband passed and a few months since I published From Fear to Peace: Growing Spiritually as a Dementia Caregiver, a spiritual memoir, love story, and caregiver’s guide. The process of learning how to live on my own and to appreciate the beauty of my new life continues, changing each day as I do things that feed my soul. One would think that the feeding of my soul should be enough to move forward in all aspects of my life. But it has not been. An unknown irritant latched onto my spirit-stalling me in promoting my book like I want to do.

I knew if things were to change, I would need to discover the irritant that was keeping me stuck. To gain insight, I reread my book-twice! Each time, I realized habits I had fallen back into that needed to be addressed. Was that it? Was my falling back into habits I had tried to erase the irritant that kept me stuck?

Last week I got a message to visit a store devoted to spiritual growth. Honoring that message started the spiral of events that led me to unveil the real issue that gnawed at my peaceful heart. FEAR. Fear of the ‘who does she think she is’ judgment. I feared readers would discover that I was a phony who did not live up to the words I had written. Somedays I didn’t handle life well. How could I promote my book of peace if I hadn’t mastered the self-love I stressed in my book? I sat in that fear of judgment until a voice inside my head yelled, “You are not a phony. Your book is not a phony. Get over yourself. You are human. You were meant to experience what you experienced and to write From Fear to Peace! Now stop the fear and move forward. Setbacks are part of the process.”

 I never proclaimed that I was perfect or that I had all the answers. I had been vulnerable in sharing my insecurities in my book in hopes that others would learn from the mistakes I made-the mistakes that lead me to new patterns, new understandings. I had been open to being a human experiencing all of life. I reminded myself that it was okay that I continued to make mistakes. I did not need to be perfect to be perfect. Seeing the beauty in life’s imperfections was a gift that I shared and the greatest message of my book. It was time to unstick the fear that had latched onto me keeping me from being all that I could be. I re-dedicated myself to continuing to embrace my humanness-to remove the judgments that continued to keep me bound. I started this blog to do just that.

I invite you to hop on the roller coaster of life with me as together we celebrate and learn from our experiences. Honoring the gifts that come through challenges. Learning to appreciate those smalls steps of growth we make. Welcoming love, peace, and joy into our lives as we let go of judgments of ourselves and of others even, and especially when, we enter those trying times that force us to hold on to the handlebars of life with our eyes closed. Join me in using our voices to propel each other to become better versions of ourselves and to accept our imperfections and our setbacks as part of the process of being human.

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