The View From Here – Reflecting

This #10yearchallenge is going around again on Facebook , asking that you share a picture of yourself both recent and from ten years ago.  Have you done it?  Have you played along?

It’s so fun to see the pictures and see how people you know have changed.  It’s even more fun to look at yourself.  And do a little or a lot, of reflecting on how much YOU have changed.

I guess we’ve done it before, because it showed up on my Facebook memories today.  Only, when I played along three years ago, I went beyond ten years, and started digging really deep into old pictures of me.  My oh my, how our pictures can tell a story and bring up all kinds of memories and all kinds of feelings.   Good and bad.

Like this one from high school.  Wearing all black, trying to be cool. 

When my oldest daughter saw the picture  she said “you look like one of those cool 80’s chicks from those movies that carries their binders in one hand and wears funky hats and complains about their mothers forgetting their birthdays”.  I take that as a compliment.

You think back to those teenage days.  When we were just trying to figure out who we wanted to be.

Where we wanted to go.  Life felt safe and secure.

Ipperwash Beach.  1991.  Weeks before my world turned upside down and I lost half my family in a car accident.  Life would forever be turned into two distinct time markers of before and after the accident.  I have stared at this picture too much.

Knowing NOW what would happen in the next two weeks that would change life in such a huge way.

Thirty plus years later and I’m still working through it and trying to remember the girl who sat and laughed on the beach.  Wishing somehow I could help her.  Protect her.  Prepare her.

My first trip to Florida was an adventure I went on with Eve Morgan over 20 years ago.  Yep, we’ve been friends for a very long time.  January 1997.

I learned that Florida in January is not as warm as you think it is.  I packed shorts and t-shirts and had to borrow sweatshirts and sweatpants just to stay warm.  (smile)

We went to Sea World and I got to feed the dolphins.  I look at that picture and  see my youngest daughter in me.  So many similarities.  Odd. 

Gosh.  We were so young.  Before kids.  Before mortgage payments and adult worry.  Before grey hair and wrinkles.  I still had a waistline.  (smile)

It was hard to find a picture from 10 years ago to compare the “then and now”.  I found this one picture.  When I got my first laptop and was playing with the camera with my kids.  There was a lot of heavy stuff going on in my life then that I think I’ll just skip this challenge.  (smile)

Facebook is both a blessing and a curse sometimes.  It has the ability to transport you back in time to old pictures, old posts and old memories and some are better left in the past.  (smile)

I challenge you to do this fun exercise in time travel.  Look back on your life.  On those old pictures and memories.  Look at where you are and what you have gone through and overcome.  The hurts and heartaches.   The trends, and fashion faux pas. (smiles).

All of it adding to your life story and who you are today.

What are you thankful for?  What are you grateful for?  What did you learn from the challenges?  Who is still with you celebrating with you?  Who is missing?

My 50 years have been full of blessings, and heartache.  I appreciate all of it for what it has taught me and how it has shaped me.

I wish some of it never happened, but appreciate the lessons along the way.

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This post was written by Carrie Buchanan