Welcome to a new blogger

Greetings and I hope to have stories to tell and talk about......welcome to those who will share with me as well.
My life is in rapid transition on so many fronts that I struggle to know where to start to tell this story and I suspect it will become part of many tales to tell in the next year.
Let's see...does everyone remember the old list they had of things that cause stress and that we should avoid? Been there done ALL of that.....
Move across the country away from family
Move closer to son's family with brand new baby
Be diagnosed with a serious illness
Gave up a long held self employed business
Move from friends of long standing
Worries about money and choices for life
Recurrence of illness and new doctors
Husband starts new job

OK, so what is new, right? Everyone is in that boat at one time or another and I generally pride myself on facing the cycles with some humor but do they have to cycle so much faster than it seemed they did in the past? Or did I just grab on to the suffering when I was younger instead of knowing it would swing back out of the trough of despair into wow, it's great again before wheeeeeee, it heads back down. Is it faster or is it me?

As a Buddhist, I have spent many hours contemplating that very suffering and trying to understand having compassion for oneself. It took years, but comes more easily to have compassion for others. My own weaknesses and failings are harder to embrace.....especially letting go of worrying and fatalism. Contrary to what many people think, Buddhism is not fatalistic. Karma is karma and our wheel is always turning but how we choose to live and behave is not pre-determined and every choice is part of your karma as is every living thing.

So the story begins......