Mommy with Multiple Sclerosis - talking about the Elephant in the room

We took our hope from Cape of Good Hope

MS Risk for the baby? Yes, sure, we thought about this. for a long time, really. We researched in detail and part of my Bachelor's degree in Psychology ( "The relationship between disease perception and life quality with Multiple Sclerosis") was focused on analyzing pregnancy risk.

"Research conclusions were that Multiple Sclerosis is triggered by environmental factors, for people with genetic predisposition. (Jelinek, G., 2010, p. 61). 
Although for people with MS this may seem scary taking into consideration the probability to transmit the disease to descendants, researchers mention that the disease is triggered only when people have high susceptibility and the environmental factors are critical. 
So,  for parents who worry that their descendants will inherit the disease, the potential does exist but in the same time, a healthy life style is reducing significantly the chances that the disease ever appears. The Canadian researcher in MS, George Ebers, estimates that the environmental factors impact can by modified, preventing the disease to be triggered at 80% of the cases
. (Jelinek, G., 2010, p. 63)
(Țurlea Florența, 2018,  "The relationship between disease perception and life quality with Multiple Sclerosis")

-good sign  when quoting from my own work :))

Talking about the disease transmission risk, according to the info presented here, the risk is for 1 of 67 parents to transmit the disease.

We thought about this for a long time, and at the foundation of our decision was that the genetic factors, according to the studies, are not 100% responsible for the disease. My parents didn't have MS, and from the information I have now, no one ever did in my family.
The environment is a huge component and also life quality (a stressful environment is a critical factor not only for Multiple Sclerosis).

For lots of people, this risk is too high and each of us have our reasons. We decided to take this risk, we are fully dedicated to offer the best for our child and to the question "Are you not afraid?", we can answer sincerely YES. We are afraid of course, AND we are choosing not to leave this fear guide our life. We take responsibility for our decision and we know we don't have (at least not yet) reasons to worry.

About stress... (which from my point of view was an important reason of my diagnostic)... I know we will do everything we can to protect our child from any type of sufferance, same as any parent who loves her child would. In the same time, we know we won't be able to be near her every second, or for that matter, in her shoes. And at this point we are hoping that the education we will offer - especially the emotional education - to protect and teach her how to manage the critical moments as best as possible.  

Because in my experience, advises as "Don't worry, it will pass" and "You NEED to be strong" were not very helpful in managing my life with Multiple Sclerosis. More than this, I see around me patients with MS following these advises, denying reality, but sadly, every relapse cracks their "bubble of hope", risking depressions, anxiety etc.
What I believe it's significantly different between someone who accepted their diagnostic and manages it accordingly, and someone who lives to fight with the disease, is the simple fact that for the last ones they need to fight EVERY DAY. One won't ever stop fighting with a chronic disease. And then, what happens with the joy of life? With plans? With all the love one doesn't have energy for, as all is focused in this useless fight with the disease, with life? The disease is now part of us. When we fight it, we fight ourselves.

This doesn't mean to give up hope. Anything that helps us is recommended. It was just my experience that forced me to find alternatives, and things I can hold on to when there's nothing to hold on.

Someone told me that if I wasn't supposed to become pregnant, I wouldn't have. Anyway, not so quickly. And nowadays, when doctors, nurses, medical trained people encourage you, as an MS patient, to have a child, I'm really thinking we can do this.

What's important is that this child will be born out of love, and she will be the most loved child in the whole world! <3

Love,

Florența

Wheelchair-ing in Africa - Day 1

 

Happy to leave, in the airport

We started planning this trip right after our wedding. My life long dream, to visit Africa, was starting taking shape.

We chose month of May, although during this period, in Africa is winter time. Our initial purpose was to see animals in the safari, and May it's a good month for that. Also, we wanted to avoid crowing.

It was perfect!

Winter temperatures during winter in Africa are aprox. 61-68F/ 16-20C max, and 39-45F/ 4-7C min. We usually had around 20C, also because it's May, and just the beginning of winter. The coldest time was in safari. The two games we had were in the evening, right before getting dark, and next morning, at 6.30 AM. Fortunately, they gave us blankets!

Evening safari

Luckily for us, few days rained and was cloudy, and only short showers during the day. Lucky for us but not so good for them, as they are currently confronting with a water crisis. The water consumption is being rationalized everywhere, from domestic use to restaurants and public institutions.
 

We were both freezing on the morning safari

So our adventure started on April 30th, in the airplane. I had chosen two seats on a row of 3, the one in the middle and next to the window. I usually prefer to get the seat next to the corridor, to have space to stretch my legs, but Ionuț loves to look on the window during the flight, so I told myself that probably we won't be back soon to Capetown and it would be nice to see it from above. 

Missed the fact that we will be traveling during the  night. And because my legs started twitching (MS related spasms) we switched places, to make sure I won't hit the guy standing next to me.

Anyway, there was nothing to see for Ionuț on the window. Night. And a lot of ocean. 

The person who sat next to me, on the seat next to the corridor, seemed to me a 40 year old man... not quite sociable. He came, he sat. No "Hi!", no eye contact, nothing.

Later, I got up and made few steps and met him on that part of the plane where there is more space. He was speaking English. I assumed that he was from London, where we had a layoff, so I imagined he just got in the plane. 

But no. We started talking and found out that he flew from San Francisco, with a layoff in London, going to Capetown! No wonder he didn't feel like eye-contact after so many hours of flying!

Later, him and Ionuț were aleady exchanging contacts, he was showing us pictures with his wife and two (gorgeous) kids, we were talking about parenting , psychology and traveling.

I was also wrong about his age. Especially Ionuț, who thought he was about 35. He was actually 51! When we asked him how come he looks much younger, he explained that he always did sports. More than this, his wife finished two Iron Man competitions (sport contest that consists in swimming, running and cycling for long distances). 

We said goodbye with a promise to visit him and his wife in San Francisco.

 

Table Mountain view

After eleven long and uncomfortable hours of flying, we landed. It was morning. Finally, we could enjoy the long-expected landscape: Capetown, seen from above, is spectacular! Table Mountain image, seen from the plane, almost made the eleven hours on the British Airways uncomfortable chairs worthwhile. Almost.

Later on, we got here

Although I had only slept the entire flight one hour, from 8 to 9 AM, when we landed I got so energetic! So I befriended fast with Bernice, a South African woman from the airport disability service, who accompanied us to the rental car company. She said she will look for us on May 15th, when we had our return flight, to tell her how was our vacation. Unfortunately, we never did see her again, seems it was not her shift. But our stay in South Africa confirmed what Bernice transmitted: Africa people are fantastic! 

In this first day, nothing special happened... we were so tired after the flight. We only went to eat in the evening in a near by restaurant, where we befriended Jadene, Cerilia and Philippe, one of the waitresses and the two managers of Roco Mamas (the one in Buitenkant street, where we stayed in Capetown). As they were just next to our accommodation, we visited them in other occasions also.
It's a wings-ribs and burgers restaurant, with very good food and a lovely young team. The fact that they were our first contact with South Africa, young people always smiling, dancing in the restaurant and asking us every two minutes if we are ok, gave us confidence on our South-African experience to come. More than this, because we were a bit insecure when we got back to our accommodation after dark, Philippe, one of the managers (measuring 2 meters I think ha!), accompanied us to our building.
Later, we were more relaxed, especially after we found out that the area is quite secure, with the Police Department near by.

My first conclusion at the beginning of our trip: maybe I am not so unsociable as I thought!
But more important, what I can say now, after two weeks in South Africa, is the fact that my life would definitely be easier in a wheelchair if I moved to Cape Town!

In the following blog posts, more about this and our south african experiences!

Love,

Florența

I love you

I wrote a great deal about my mother. After her death, this was my way of somehow, keeping the relation with her. A dialogue. With her, with me.

I wrote about things I would have like telling her, and I never got to, or maybe things I've said but perhaps I would have preferred to say in another way. I wrote to organise my thoughts, or to simply feel I "download" everything on a piece of paper, who doesn't judge me, and could never made me feel embarrassed to cry.

I considered it a therapeutic process. We all need to grieve after loosing someone so important, we need to express our feelings, and perhaps the worse thing we can do is to "get over it", without feeling the sadness, the loss, and to give our soul and body the chance to recover naturally. The truth is some voids can never be filled...

My mom never used to cry. I can isolate few events when I saw her crying. The most painful one - and the last time, when she wasn't conscious anymore, on the hospital bed, a day before she died. 

I visited her twice that day at the hospital. She wasn't conscious nor in the morning, nor the afternoon. She was asleep. But she had tears under her eyes, which I haven't noticed initially. When I saw them, I started crying. I left her in the morning hoping I will find her awake when I will return in the afternoon. But when I did, she was also asleep.

The next day, I was at the office when I receive the call.

When I was diagnosed, she was looking at me frightened, as if she was waiting any minute for me to react somehow...to start crying. For her, this was the worse thing possible. She would always say "Don't cry!". When I was sad, she would have done anything to make me smile again. I integrated, of course, this behavior, for many years. After a lot of individual psychotherapy work, I understood that it's ok to feel. It's ok to allow yourself to feel whatever you feel, and by denying whichever feeling one will only remove it from awareness. It will kick back in with the first trigger that will remind of the painful situation - The Repression.

Regarding my disease, we never talked too much about it. That involved emotional moments, and we wouldn't allow ourselves crying in the presence of another. Especially when my symptoms worsened. 

At the psychology training course I am attending once a month, there was a specific moment which scattered me. One of my colleagues in the training group, herself a mother,  was passing trough a similar situation: her daughter had gotten sick and apparently, the cause was unknown. Her distress, so real, her pain as a mother, reminded me of my mom's unexpressed pain. The pain which appeared in some key moments, surprising me as it was always unexpected. As it was one day at the hospital in neurology section, when as I was facing new, strange symptoms, she practically begged the Doctor, with tears in her eyes, to tell her where she could go, where she could take me, abroad maybe, anywhere to heal my disease (the Doctor's answer was a typical Roumanian Doctor, which I don't even want to mention, but funny I remember after...twelve years?).

Her unvoiced pain, which almost all the time hidden in the unconscious, was manifesting unexpectedly.

However, noticing the pain, a mother's panic in our training group, I got to be aware of my mother's pain, which she would have felt when I was diagnosed with MS. A pain who reappeared more vividly with every new symptom. A pain who was ignored too many times. By me, by her. As she wanted to protect me from every suffering. In my turn, I was hiding as best as I could any new symptom.

She will be remembered by all of us as the happiest, the most joyful and optimistic person! She is for sure the strongest woman, the strongest person I have ever met and

I am because of her.

All I have  now is to write about this, about her, about her pain, but also about the love we felt for each other. And the many things left unsaid.

Love,

Florența

About Christmas, TA and Dad

I remember my first Transactional Analysis worksop, TA 101. During an exercise, we had to imagine our mother, and then our father entering the classroom. And what would they say about what we are doing in the workshop and about us being there.

Trough this exercise, as I previously learned, the therapist can understand what were the parents' messages the client received, and more important, how the client made sense out of these.
Connecting what is happening in the client's  life currently, the psychotherapist can understand these injunctions and get an image of the client's life script.

I felt confused when I had to talk about my father. At the moment of this workshop, both my parents had died, and my mother pretty recently. So anyway, I tried not to talk about her too much, because I knew that I would start crying and how I got to be aware later, in my family crying was forbidden. Me, as a good, adapted child, I would always suppress any feeling that would take me in that embarrassing, awkward situation - crying in public.
 
I got stuck though, when I realised I had no idea what would my father say about me attending a psychology workshop. I finally imagined that he would have said: "Good for you, darling, but I don't know much about these things. I'm just an engineer."
Than I thought that even if I lived with my father for sixteen years, until my parents split up, and after that I would meet him anyway at least once a week, I didn't know my father. I panicked, got scared, I accepted this.
And now, three years after that workshop, after personal therapy and three years in TA training, I realise there are actually so many things in me, in my behavior from my dad.

I was saying that in my family crying was forbidden (on a psychological level, as my mom would do anything not to see me cry). My mom would never cry. I only saw her tears three times in my life. Most painful was the last time I visited her in the hospital, before she died. She wasn't even conscious than, but she had tears under her closed eyes.

My dad though, seemed much more endearing. Every time he would see me, there were tears in his eyes, while smiling as he was happy to see me. And now this is the only explanation I can find for my behavior, when I start crying for no reason, sometimes when people around me are not even impressed :)) (for example yesterday I cried my heart out watching a documentary on Steven Spielberg's movies!).

The fact that my father thought he was just an engineer. or this is how I translated his general attitude, was transmitted to me in my own way of looking at myself, in the way I discounted any success or even myself: "I graduated from University" - "So what, anyway I need to finish my Masters degree now" (which I did, and happiness didn't last as I found a new reason to "work for". Anyway, at a psychological level, I was telling myself it's really not a big deal what I did, I wasn't enjoying my success, and that anybody can do it!). When thinking that it's pretty cool I have a healthy lifestyle, that I go to the gym and don't get lazy, I would immediately block any consideration towards myself - "So what? I have MS anyway, look at me, I walk so badly anyway!". 

In therapy, I got to be aware that I was discounting myself on such a level, that I used to be dismissive with anyone who would say something nice about me: "You look so pretty in this dress!" -"Yeah right, I'm as pretty as the Russian language can be haha".

In the last workshop I attended, the final one for the third year of TA, we had an exercise in small groups of threes or fours, and in the end we would each give and get feedback from our colleagues about our evolution in the group etc. A colleague really got me thinking, when she said "Florenta doesn't need feedback, anyway!". ??!!. I was so shocked I couldn't even reply to this, I just laughed, but back home I thought about this.  Because the way people are reacting to us is the way we are inviting them to do it. In the past, I know I was reluctant to any kind of feedback, positive or negative. Although now, on the contrary, I want feedback and every time I get it I feel privileged, maybe I don't know how to show this, or how to ask for them. Finally, I just get frustrated I don't get them, which will reinforce my life script, that I'm invisible.

The presence or the absence of the parents, the way they are transmitting the messages to their children (most of the time, out of awareness) are the key elements the child will take in - in his life script and in the decisions he will take as an adult.

For me it's actually a relief to be aware of all the things I got from my dad. When I thought I didn't have anything left from him...all these things were in my out of awareness. Perhaps suppressed, not yet accepted. And when I don't accept parts of myself, I can't manage them. Bringing them "to light" may be painful, but I always prefer to go trough a limited tougher period, than to carry the burden all my life, even pass it on to children.

My personal conclusion, which brings me joy every time I discover things about myself, is that after three years of TA training, I am still learning a lot about myself and the world.

And when my clients feel this during our psychotherapy, I feel so privileged!

Wishing you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,
Florenta

Just normal

My best friend from childhood is a ballerina at Birmingham Hippodrome.

                          Daria

This weekend was planned to go and visit Daria in Birmingham, to see her perform in The Nutcracker.

Unfortunately, few days earlier, Daria got injured and was not able to perform on Saturday evening, but I'm happy we had is snowing , what is that? - Confetti. - And don't you slip? -Yes...but usually after that scene we mostly run around, and after that, the curtin falls and they sweep").
more time to spend together :X. And because she sat next to me during the show, I had the chance to ask her all the curiosities I had regarding this show, and also the "backstage info" .And gossip :)) (things like "in the set when
Of course people around us were starting shsh-ing us, and every time I had the impulse to say "It's fine, she is a ballerina here!" :))). She was trying to tell me that this doesn't mean she owns the theater. But it was funny anyway!

Birmingham Hippodrome , interior

The first thing I noticed after the show ended, was HOW MANY PEOPLE WITH DISABILITY ATTENDED THE SHOW!! I knew that outside Romania this is completely different, but I couldn't help my pleasant surprise that they actually go out and enjoy themselves! And not just to the nearest shop to buy bread! They actually have a happy, fulfilled life, they travel, go see ballet shows, attend concerts.
We had to wait quite a while to be able to get into the elevator: people in wheelchairs, canes and smiles on their faces, were using the elevator. Stylish ladies, in shiny black dresses and elegant hats, gentlemen with canes and ties, even loud youngsters with wheel chairs, accompanied by friends.

It felt so good just being there.

I though about things which are different in Romania vs other European countries. I realised (as I have initially intuited), that the big difference is mostly in the inner way we look at things:

•  I will naturally start by analyzing infrastructure. At the Birmingham Hippodrome where we've been, there were ramps everywhere, elevators, adapted toilets. Anyone would give priority to a person who uses a wheel chair, cane, pre-walker. The designed parking places for disability persons are never occupied by other cars and most important, no one would stare at a young person with a cane. Everything is...just normal. In comparison, at the University in Bucharest where I now study Psychology, University Titu Maiorescu, there just isn't an elevator. For classes and exams I've always climbed the stairs. The parking places for disability (five of them I think), are always empty. And not because people really respect people with disability, but because nobody has the key from the chains that surrounds those parking places. Usually, there is no doorman there anyway, but when I sometimes find anyone there, tells me " Sorry, miss, I don't have the key, but here...park here" (somewhere else, so not just near the entrance). I am planning to make a complaint at the university, as this is my last year, so at least something would get changed, hopefully...

Our infrastructure issue is really annoying  most of the times. As I'm struggling to walk anyway, I always need to plan my route and the best option to take so that I avoid stairs, where to park, whom I can meet to help me if I need to climb stairs etc. Although luckily I still can climb stairs, it does make me anxious.

Despite all these, let's see what WE could do:

• At least from what I noticed - but my English boss, who lives in London, also confirmed, nobody who has a disability doesn't feel ashamed for being sick, doesn't feel that the people around need to do something special for her, doesn't accuse herself for leaving the house and other people see her. Again, everything is just normal, things are happening as they need to happen.

I feel that everything I do, I hit the mentality of so many previous generations in Romania. I also felt the embarrassment for being sick, during long years preferring to keep the diagnostic and symptoms to myself. I felt so ashamed when noticing that my symptoms are worsening and I start limping with my left leg. Even more drama when work colleagues, neighbors, even people passing by were asking me what's wrong, why am I walking like that. Although my answers were always evasive, polite and with a smile on my face "I'm gonna be fine, it will pass!", those people almost instantly were becoming my enemies, people who, in my fantasy, were laughing behind my back.

Once I started personal psychotherapy, started reality checking process and realised that usually people have their own dramas and even if they get surprised for a moment, five minutes later they will forget about me. Even though in Romania people tend to stare... :)). Ideally, nobody will be bothered at all that I use a cane. If they do, it's their choice, their problem, and I'm just not responsible for that.

• When in need, people ask for help. Once again, there is nothing shameful to need some help to climb a stair. When thinking about it, most people that have a disability in Romania (the ones I talked to), know that. More than that, we are the firsts to offer our help to anybody, even to people that have no physical problem (Ionut -my husband, always argues with me when I hold the elevator door in our building for other people, as the ex-communist buildings don't have automatic doors!). I guess it's our nature, and maybe even a statement that says "Look! I can do it by myself, I'm really not disabled!" -though I obviously walk with a cane :)). At least part of the Roumanian people has the obsession not to disturb other people, as we imagine they will be bothered for doing something for us

Since I started studying Trasactional Analysis , whenever in doubt in a situation, I use Berne 's principle , OK-OK. Long story short, this principle states that each of us is ok, or is able to be. If sometimes we encounter issues, we have the inner ability to solve the problem, we can reason and make decisions (there are exceptions of course, as people with different psychic disorders, but even they can lead a fulfilled life).
In my example with the stair, I consider it is OK for me to ask for help when I need to climb a stair, that doesn't make me less independent or less valuable. Then, in that moment, I needed help.
In the same time, the person I've asked for help is OK. She has the ability to reason, to make a decision if to help me or not, depending on her mood, feelings etc. There is no need for me to feel awkward asking for help, to think my request will bother, as long that person acknowledges her feelings and can reason. As an adult, she can say NO, and that is fine.

Every time I cross the borders from Romania, I notice how things should be here. And if, at a national level, the benefit system for disabled people is far from perfect, so it is our own internal system, as disabled people, meaning the way with deal with everyday challenges. The difference is that we are able to improve our perspectives starting TODAY, not having to wait for things we can't control, to change. We can change our own mentality, the way we think and do things.
We can choose to be happy, us with ourselves, the way we are.

Even if we only were in Birmingham one day, arriving on Saturday morning until Sunday evening, we all felt it was such an intense weekend!
After the ballet show, we went for dinner in a very nice restaurant in Birmingham.

copyright www.sabaisabai.com

Only me, Daria and Katie (my boss from London, who has met Daria at my wedding, back in July) attended the Nutcracker show. For dinner we met our partners (as guys usually reject the idea to go see a classical ballet :) ), Katie's lovely daughter and her boyfriend.

After dinner, we had the famous English tea at Katie's parents house, a couple retired for a while now, and we fell in love with them immediately. In their eighties, they attend all the  Birmingham ballet shows (they had seen all of Daria's shows, even though they didn't know each other). This, when they are not traveling (everywhere in the world!). I was so impressed by their spirit, and their genuine curiosity regarding Romania, the education system, politics, what we do and how we are able to learn so many languages (Anyway, Daria speaks 7 foreign languages, which is a lot even for us!).

Katie's parents showed us, again, once over sixty years old, life doesn't have to mean only cooking or going out for bread, as we tend to see in Romania.

We got back to Bucharest after a weekend in Birmingham as from a vacation that taught us so much! I feel grateful for this opportunity to see once again, that life doesn't need to be taken so seriously!

Love,

Florența

Judging or not-judging...

For me MS made fundamental changes. I started caring more for myself, doing things proactively when I have a problem , instead of pitying myself, playing the victim ( as I I used to – I do accept it to myself now).

Now, MS puts me in all kinds of situations. As I overran the stage in which I was struggling to accept the fact that I have MS, I started living with MS. As fully as I am able to. Doing all the things I can, and choosing not to be frustrated about the ones I can’t do because simply  I’m not able to do.

As going to the gym. Exercising with weights, building up my muscles, which helps me on so many levels. Most of all, because I struggle to walk. Sometimes, I’m not sure that I would be able to walk at all if I wouldn’t keep on exercising. I feel good about it. And when it seems I’m putting so much effort into it, I comfort myself with the thought that everybody at the gym puts effort into it also. Starting with people that , maybe only a month before, were just couch & TV fans, to ladies that just go at the gym during the summer, in order to look good in their bathing suits. And that is fine! It is a step forward, even if done only for the summer. 

So yesterday, it stroke me. I was at the end of my routine, after 60 minutes of what I call “hard-work”, catching up my breath on the bench where I finished the arms workout. Something, probably, insignificant happened, but that for me woke up so many feelings and thoughts. A guy from the gym, that I didn’t know, threw me a phrase, that initially angered me, then made me sad, then made me smile.

 I’ll explain.

While I was ravished, after finishing the last series of the day, the guy (whom I didn’t know him, never saw him before at the gym), while passing my way, told me to 

speed up, that this is not a Monday morning anyway 

(it was Wednesday, so he was right…), on a tone that implied I’m one of the lazy ones. Of course, this might have been my own interpretation for the moment, in fact I’m sure it had nothing to do with him and what he said, but mostly to what I think (about myself, about my condition etc).

I didn’t say anything, just smiled, but I was feeling the anger getting to me. Ok, my cane was on the floor, so he wouldn’t have seen it. And all kinds of thoughts started wandering through my mind (“who does he thinks he is? I don’t remember hiring him as a private trainer!!”, “Do you go around judging people you don’t know as a day-job, checking their involvement at the gym?” and so many others, finishing with “I’m not sure you would even be here, in my condition!”). 

Then the anger transformed in sadness, thinking about how I could have done more, if I was healthy and MS-free.

But I shaken off all these thoughts, remembering that I already burned these stages, and that I came to accept Multiple Sclerosis in my life, even when people/ the world would challenge me. In the end, he had no way to know I have such a disease!

And this is the point! We can’t possibly know what is going on in people’s lives, in their minds and there souls. If we knew, maybe many behaviors would make sense to us. Even for him! Maybe he was bullied during high-school, so he grew up working out at the gym, to prove to the world nobody can ever bully him again. 

We tend to judge so easily, without knowing the facts. Multiple Sclerosis taught me not to judge, as I analyzed myself going through so many episodes, so many stages, that got me behaving perhaps very differently than normal . That,  in the end, made me who I am now.

Love, 

Florența

How I was a "Zen bride" :)

Saturday morning, July 22nd. We forced ourselves not to be nervous. Ionut ( my husband -now) is tossing and turning in bed, because he promissed himself he will be so relaxed, that he would wake up at 11AM. So he is trying to sleep more.

I wake up very early in the morning anyway, although I don't feel nervous... or emotional. Today I slept until 9AM. 

We realize that this seems to be one of the lazy weekends, when we have nothing to do... we drink our coffee for one hour... I do my yoga practice... until 11AM when I have an appointment to the hairdresser. When I get back, "the authority" (Ionut) agrees with the final result in my hair, so there's peace in the house :D. Only my wedding God Mother is getting her make up done (in Romania, when we get married, we choose a couple that will be our God Parent after the wedding. Once you get married, your God Parent become your spiritual parents, for the couple). 

I'm next for make up.

Later on, we are leaving to the church. In the meantime, the house got a bit more crowded, our friends came, both God Parents (it was pretty difficult for me to understand that we need to leave the house to church with so many people around us - I really had in mind that it will be just the two of us, but ok... apparently this is how it's done here :)) ). Anyway, it was strange that our friends came anyway at 2PM, dressed and all ready to go, when usually, 2PM is their wake up hour on Saturdays :))

photo credit Marian Nadu

The truth is that, once I did it once, it gets easier. Let me explain myself. At the civil ceremony, when I legally got married, I was expecting to be overwhelmed by my emotions, so then, I would walk more difficult, because this is what usually happens since my MS symptoms got worse. With that in mind, I've tried something: " What if... I would just enjoy, without feeling that my head will explode of enthusiasm?":)) So I saw that IT IS POSSIBLE. And that I felt ok for the rest of the day, even in the following  days, when I cool down. Because even if usually, I experienced relapse with MS after a stressful period, I noticed that it happened also too much ecstasy. Not as bad, however it happened. My conclusion was that I go to relapse whenever I live very strong emotions, positive or negative.

During my wedding day, I knew I will experience a heavy emotional charge. Just thinking of all the people I would see again, after a long time, that would come especially for us. Many traveling from foreign  countries, even from other continents! Per se, this feeling was overwhelming.

So I realized that I learned to enjoy things in a balanced manner :). To stay present, and keep my head in its place. Of course, I don't mean not to feel emotions. I laughted, I cried, and I stayed present.

photo credit: Marian Nadu

In the past years, I saw how organizing a wedding meant constant stress for one year before the party. I did my best so that it wouldn't be my case. I couldn't afford a prolonged stress. I wanted to be "functional" for the wedding, but also after that.

I think very important it was that Ionut was on the same page. For both of us, the purpose was no stress, and more than that, we really had fun in planning the wedding!

Even when it came to the bride's dance, although I do admit we had some struggles here! Good that everything stayed in between the walls of our living room, where we also made up! :D

                    rehearsal June 22nd in our living-room

Critical: planning and deadlines. Since we started planning the wedding I created an Excel file (long-live Excel!) with all our expenses, estimated and real, distributed by month. In the end we had a huge file, but we were in peace we wouldn't miss a thing.

 

More than this, we really acted as a team. Me - with "project management", deadlines etc (have not worked in a multinational company for so many years for nothing!) , him - going to places, talking to people, negotiating with the restaurant (it is his field, and this is what he loves doing)

In the end, we felt great planning the wedding, and also enjoyed the party. In Romania, we have something called "ciorba de potroace" - means kind of a party that takes place the following day, where the guests wake up from the hungover , and this is where the groom and the bride actually have fun (it is considered that the wedding party is more for the guests, not the groom and bride). I never attended to what they call "ciorba de potroace", not sure they do it nowadays, and I don't agree to this statement, that the part is not for groom/bride. We really had such a good time! Everything came out perfectly, just as we wanted to, and we are even happier that we did everything from scratch, not needing help from relatives etc.

And yes, it was the best wedding I've ever attended :D

Love,

Florenta