Dancing with ALS and Life

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com AI ART,  “Still Becoming” “Sometimes the most beautiful parts of us are born from places that once felt broken. Let your light shine through.” August 2026

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com AI ART, “Community United” 🇺🇸Happy Memorial Day!🇺🇸 Honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice.   “Even when the body grows still, the spirit continues to speak—through love, through care, through awareness, and through action.” 5/26

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com AI ART, “The Iron Horse “ One of the most famous lines from Lou Gehrig comes from his farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939: “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” He delivered it after being diagnosed with ALS, speaking with gratitude rather than bitterness despite the career-ending illness.  5/26

AI ART, “Caregivers = Heros” There are quiet heroes among us—people whose strength doesn’t always make headlines, but whose impact is deeply felt every single day. Today, this is a heartfelt shout-out to the caregivers who stand beside individuals living with ALS. Caregiving in the world of ALS is unlike anything most people will ever experience. It’s not just helping with daily routines, it’s stepping into a role that requires patience, adaptability, resilience, and an extraordinary depth of love. As ALS gradually changes the physical abilities of a person, caregivers become steady anchors in an ever-shifting reality. You are the ones who make sure electronic devices are set up so we can stay in touch with the world or learn new ways to communicate when words become difficult. You are the hands that help when muscles can no longer cooperate. You are the calm presence in moments of frustration, fear, and exhaustion. And you do all of this while carrying your own emotions, often quietly...

         dancingwithalandlife.blogspot.com AI ART, “Golden Flow Of Neurons Surrounded By Emotions”  “ True emotional healing doesn't happen without feeling. The only way out is through.”                           ~ Jessica Moore

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com AI ART,   Watercolor “Spring basket of joy” “The  first blooms of spring always makes my heart sing.” ~S.Brown

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com AI ART, “Rays Of Hope” There are diagnoses that change a life, and then there are diagnoses that redraw the entire map. ALS is one of the latter. It arrives quietly, perhaps as a slight weakness in an arm, muscle twitches or a trip while walking that feels a little out of place, and then steadily, relentlessly, begins to take more. Muscles weaken and independence shifts. The future, once bright with many dreams waiting to bloom, can suddenly feel dark with dreams withering and fading away. And yet, even here in the midst of the new roadmap hope finds a way to exist branching off in many different directions. Hope doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. Sometimes, hope is quiet. It lives in small victories: a good day of energy, ability to safely transfer from my wheelchair to the bathroom, a shared laugh that feels like a return to normalcy. It shows up in the determination to adapt, to keep participating in life even as the road is constantly ch...

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry show life a thousand reasons to laugh and smile!

  “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com Living with a terminal illness sometimes feels like a wild roller coaster ride. I’m at the bottom of the track and slowly up I go. Click, click, click, I make it to the top of the hill. Then, in an instant, I plummet at high speeds into the valley below. I start going up another small hill and back down again and then up ahead, I can’t see.  All of a sudden, I'm whipped around a sharp turn. This journey has so many facets, and it changes from moment to moment.  Initially, the diagnosis comes and whiplash hits. I'm trying to process things in a state of unbelief. I begin to mourn some of the losses, maybe check out for a little and then I have a choice to make: will I turn left or right or keep going straight? Depending on the choice I make, the result is the difference between feeling a sense of hope, purpose or maybe despair.  Some people‘s journeys are very short at this stage of the ride and others may be more of a lengthy one.  ...

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com “ Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”  ~Arthur Ashe 2/26

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com Time travel can be a way to connect and build relationships with people. In this blog, I will be talking about what my transportation experiences have looked like with ALS and my disabilities. However, before we do, let’s take a trip down memory lane. I remember the first time I got into a car with my drivers permit.  As a joke, my father put on a motorcycle helmet, looked at me and said, “I am now prepared to teach you how to drive!”  I laughed so hard, I almost peed my pants!  Looking back, he probably was pretty smart and realistic. My first car was a manual stick shift.  If you have ever driven stick shift, you know there is a learning curve to having smooth transitions between the gas, clutch and gears. After several months  of practicing my Mario Andretti skills, I officially passed my drivers test in 1988 at the age of 16.  I couldn't wait to get behind the wheel of the car and experience the feeling of independence...

 Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.   ~ Mother Theresa & Follow the LAW  (Love Always Wins) ~ Stacy & Christian   2/26  

dancingwithalsandlife.blogspot.com Experiencing slow but continual motor function loss of my arms, hands and now in my legs, sucks!. Prior to living with ALS, I was very active with a busy life consisting of my career and family. For self care, I enjoyed hobbies to help me decompress from the world.  In 2021, my busyness came to a screeching halt going from 100 miles an hour to nothing and gave me unbearable whiplash. I just felt so lost when everything was being stripped away from me, especially all my hobbies that required using my hands such as gardening, baking, crafts, crocheting, and reading. Focusing on the losses just threw me into a tailspin of deep depression and self isolation. I would spend countless hours scrolling through webpages on 101 hobbies to try, hoping and praying for hook, line and sinker that would fit my new normal. I even googled activities/hobbies for disabled individuals. Funny thing is, the website said disabled individuals should try gardening, puzzles...

  “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, but felt by the heart” ~ Helen Keller

  As a teenager, I loved growing up in the 80’s.  It was an era when everyone seemed to have fun.  No one was uptight about things such as being politically correct about everything you said or did. It was a time when you could have a Halloween party and not call it a fall fest or celebrate Christmas instead of calling it a holiday celebration. I especially loved all of the 80’s music from Prince, Joan Jett, The Go Go’s, Pat Benatar, Bruce Springsteen, The Cars, and Madonna. Mostly, I was obsessed with the launch of MTV and when they actually played music videos not reality TV shows. I remember I couldn’t wait to get home from school to check out the next new music video.  On the weekends, I’d stay up past midnight watching all those videos. I loved my walkman and purchasing music cassette tapes, then a cd player, using the money I earned from my waitress job. The 80’s were also known for blockbuster VHS/CDs and movies like Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, St. Elmo’s...