It’s all about taking chances with a dream

A little over a week ago, I finished reading a book, given as a gift by Tricia Crisafulli, www.faithhopeandfiction.com., titled ‘Go Back and Be Happy’. It’s a true story told by Margaret McSweeny, about a woman’s, Julie Papievis, recovery from a traumatic brain stem injury, and her short visit in heaven. While there, she saw two of her grandmothers and God instructed her to ‘Go Back and Be Happy’.

I find it fascinating that Tricia chose this book as a gift for me, or as she told me, the book told her where it wanted to go. Tricia had no idea of the head injury I suffered as a child. Actually most people don’t. Its not until recently that I may explain to people my seemingly air headiness, and frequent forgetfulness, beyond what the average person forgets.

Julie’s journey started with an automobile accident, she goes to and returns from heaven, wakes from a coma, and finds she no longer is the person she used to be. She wonders why she was sent back and how could she ever be HAPPY living life in a body that did not work as it use to. Her ‘come back’ is remarkable and I think any one who reads this book, will look at their own life, see where they could work harder and attain their dreams.

My head injury occurred, when a horse threw me, and catapulted me in the air far above its 18-hand stance. Falling back towards the ground, I hit the back of my head at the base where it connects to the spine, on the top of a jumping post. (Yes, I was wearing a helmet.) I seemed ok, until I passed out the following day while jumping a horse again. My mother rushed me to Children’s Hospital in Buffalo NY. They looked into my dilated eyes, then the doctors rushed me in for x-rays, or some sort of imaging. I am not sure what they did I only remember the sound of the buzzing machines around my head.
I had a fractured skull, with a blot clot at the base of my brain and the brain was swelling. They could not believe that I did not have a headache or that I had not passed out earlier than that morning.

Back in the 60’s they knew less about head injuries than today, so their instructions for my parents were to take me home. Don’t give me aspirin or any pain medication, they did not want to chance thinning the blood. Monitor my speech and mobility and do not let me sleep for any longer than 2 hours at a time.
In the first two weeks of my one-year recovery, I had to go back to the hospital every day to be re-x-rayed. They wanted to make sure the clot was not breaking off, going places it shouldn’t and keep the swelling in the brain in check.

The doctors warned my parents about mood and personally changes. But they did not prepare them or me, a once A student, the problems with attention or remembering things I had read or written, I would have. Nor did they prepare us for the hours my mother would spend helping me to write legibly again or remembering what I had read.

I recall one day coming home from school and asking her in tears, “Why was I so smart and now I am so dumb?” She told me never to say or think that again.
For one year after the accident, I could not ride horse, a bike, an elevator, jump rope, or do anything that would ‘shake’ the brain and cause more injury.

My injury was nowhere near as traumatic as Julie’s. But a few years ago, when I started researching a little more about brain injuries, I realized how bad it could have really been and often wonder why was I spared, when others who’ve had less trauma to their heads, ended with more damage to their over all body function or the loss of a life. Conducting recent research, I found my head injury was closer to the brain stem than I ever realized. As Julie wondered and asked god frequently, I too wonder more since reading the book, what went right for me? Was it, and is it all part of Gods plan?

Go Back and Be Happy, made me look closer at my life, and my dreams, and reconfirmed taking chances with our dreams is the one and only way to make them work. What this book did, beyond making me feel normal about my life long struggle with memory malfunction, was reconfirming just how lucky I was, that it could have been much worse and what I’ve always believed, but like so many have a hard time doing, is… it is all about taking chances with our dreams.

How many times in a week or month, do you wake up and think about a dream, but your fear of the unknown sets you back on the same track you follow every day (Security in the known, fear in the unknown). If only there were a crystal ball, you say to your self, so you could see if taking the chance on your dream is what you should do. It’s easier to follow your dream when you have something to fall back on, but what if you don’t have anything, what will happen then?

Taking chances with our dreams is a big thing. Most of us are afraid to do so. We are afraid of ridicule. That we’ll look foolish or that we’ll loose everything. But mostly we are afraid of failure. However if we don’t pursue our dreams haven’t we lost something important already, our hopes. Hope of a new future, a new life, an experience taking us to new heights and following our dreams of we’ve been all that we can be.

Beside our fear of failure, often we hesitate to follow our dreams, because its hard work and does not come with out bumps and bruises. Like a child learning to walk, falling is part of the process. But that’s what we need to do, pursue our dreams like a child. A child does not care if they fall or what others will think, because fear of failure not yet instilled, allows them to get up and try again.

Reading of Julies journey of moving forwarding, falling, and getting back up, taught me, if you think your dream is not working, try a different approach. It’s not necessarily the dream that is wrong, just the approach. Sometimes to get it moving again, a different perspective is needed, whether from someone else or you changing your way of thinking.


There are two recent events where people pushed their fears aside and followed their dreams. They took a chance and their dreams came true.
One is the singing sensation, Susan Boyle. What would have happened if she did not take the chance of looking silly? What if, she had not chanced having her appearance criticized or let the sounds of people laughing at her stop her. What if, she didn’t throw all of those fleshly worries to the winds, she’d still be singing in her home. But she took the chance.

Then there is Mine That Bird, the two-year old Kentucky Derby winner.
What made them think this horse could win? Was it a dream they saw in him every time they watched him run that they packed up their against all odds horse, with no pomp and circumstance, concentrated on their dream and did something that most people would fear to do, put their dreams in the heart of a horse. Like winds that carry a leaf, Mine That Bird, carried their dreams over the finish line. Why because when all odds, 50-1, were against them, they trusted in what they saw instead of looking at the odds and followed their dreams.

Julie, tied in bed, wearing a diaper, not able to walk or talk, dreamt of running again. Though the odds were against her, that she’d never be normal, she allowed her dreams to lead the way.
So what does my accident have to do with following your dreams you might ask. My answer is, everything happens for a reason. It made me work for what I wanted. My first dreams, after the accident was to, at least, remember that I enjoyed a book I read. I wanted to be able to follow my dreams, and to do, and be anything that—I—chose.

Like most every one, I am afraid of the unknown or the uncertainty of where dreams will lead, but my accident made me less fear full of the fall. Because though it slowed me, it did not stop me. I had fallen, got back up and tried again.

With out taking the chance, our dreams are only what we dream of, instead of dreams that have come true and so what if the dream does not materialize, there are more where they came from. They are inside of you. Stop, listen and know—It Is— all about taking chances with a Dream.

Done with the Poem A Day challenge

Did I keep up?
Mostly. I missed two.
Prompt #28 Write a Sestina &
Prompt #29 Never (Blank) Fill in the blank
Although I can no longer post them on the poetry site
I will still do them and post them here on my blog later.
But here are the rest


Prompt #22 was to write about Work

Work
Is a necessity
we love to hate,
hate to love
and cannot live with out

Work
When not over done
keeps us healthy
the mind agile,
the body willing.

Work
Makes our troubles less
keeps us young at heart
and satisfied with who we are

Work
Gives us money to spend
Something to barter with
Or at least a since of accomplishment

Work
is what you make it.
it can be a chore,
or fact of life well done.


Prompt #23 Regret;

Regret

I have none

Yes, but what about the time you cried?
I’ve no regrets for those tears, they helped me grow.

But what about the time you lost your first love
I’ve no regrets, for that loss taught what it is
I do not want.

What about when someone said unkind and untrue things about you?
No regrets, it showed me who my friends are.

What about the time, you thought God had forsaken you.
No regrets, it was then,
I learned he was teaching me to fly.



Prompt #24 Write about travel
This is a poem I wrote a while back and revised

Open Butterfly Wings

One day a butterfly flitting on the breeze
Came upon and settled on the breast of me.
Words of wisdom it did carry on wings of softened beauty,
Mother Nature at her best.

It’s lexis of wisdom nearly lost on the breeze of Mother Nature’s breath.
Quietly, unwearied the butterfly in its beauty stayed upon my breast,
Waiting for the words of wisdom, it did carry to rest upon…
MY… life’s breathing breath.
Thus, when I did inhale the breath of life I need,
The words of wisdom it did carry
Became a part of me.

It told me of the beauty my life alone could have,
I must set aside my reservations…
Waltz the rhythmic amplification inside of me,
Dance…
Dance… with the earth as god intended it to be



Prompt #25 Write about an event and make that the title

It’s raining

Dark and gray
It’s raining
Drizzle—drizzle all of the day
It’s raining
The grass does grow
It’s raining
The birds still sing.

It’s raining
until days ends
It’s raining
A rainbow appears
It’s raining
the crops are not seared

It’s raining
Step in a puddle and smile
It’s raining
Tomorrow the sun will shine.


Prompt #26 write about Miscommunication

Miscommunications

Mary’s fed up with Bob’s performance
because he’s doing it again,
or more to the factual point…not doing it.
Repeatedly she urges him with her long legs,
yet, he is stone cold still, no action, no movement, no wanting.

She ponders tapping her fingers on her moist lips,
how to get him to fulfill her dreams.
He’ll like and enjoy it once he takes the first step, but
warming him up to the idea, will be a trick.

Whispering in his ear in her softest voice
“You’d think you’d want to do this for me.
I fix your meals, bath you, and massage your aching back
Still this one little thing you refuse to do.”

Bob would not
or could not
respond to Mary’s gentle touch and coaxing.
She speculates what to
do to get him over his shyness.
An idea she does contrive.

Bob watches motionless as she walks away
and disappears behind the sliding doors.
He ogles her with a new respect
eyes wide with skeptical anticipation
when she appears carrying a piece
of leather he’s never seen before.

“There that should do the trick”
Mary pats his long neck.
“You silly horse,
maybe soon
we'll be able to do a
flawless dressage pattern
without harness blinders.”


Prompt #27 write about Longing
another older poem pulled and revised

The Three Impish Thieves
By
Kellie M Shanley


I yearn for the days of yore,
when the three of us would seek and explore.
To laugh and giggle such follies we’d play, with
devilment, generating sparks in our eyes,
not a word thus spoken, we could surmise.
What one didn’t think of the other one would.
Only the three of us,
we shouldn’t,
we would.

The follies passed on memories for us to seek and explore,
memories of the three of us in retrospect no more.
The three impish thieves, not stealing a thing,
but a moment in time,
a laugh from the heart,
a giggle within.

The three playful thieves
Mother, sister and me
Two generations
of time too brief.

Prompt # 30 write about a farewell

Shall I ever walk this way again

I think not.
I marvel looking back… walking toward the future,
hesitant, with a vague desire to return.

Decisively
I focus ahead, though
daunting at times
to see beyond the bends and curves.
I slow a step
fear, I feel with its oppressive weight.

I cannot see in front of me
Go slow—don’t wait.
With each step forward, I gaze over my shoulder
I feel the weight.
Run— I cannot,
the purpose not visualized.
Merciless push and pull, so tedious to stay
Look back—look forward.

Shall I ever walk this way again

I think not
Ahead, doubtful curves, attainment of new sights
bends and curves retrospectively
behind the wake of me.
With no choice
I’m obligated to look ahead.

Shall I ever walk this way again

Kellie Shanley 2009