Father’s Day + Turning The Corner

Happy Sunday friends!

FATHER’S DAY

I want to start this post by wishing my dad a very happy Father’s Day! He has truly been a rock for our family this last year with the exacerbation of my mom’s lung disease and through her transplant journey at Duke. I admire many, many things about my dad but the way that he has led our family in such a steady and level-headed way through so much stress and so many unknowns has been inspirational to me.

Throughout my life, my dad has been adept at equipping me with skills and knowledge that I need, and then gently but firmly encouraging me to use them. A small example of this is when I would travel home from any visit to see my parents with two loaves of my dad’s freshly baked sourdough until one day I traveled home with starter instead after receiving hands-on lessons on making the bread myself. He went on to answer countless questions and offer bread-baking troubleshooting so that I could become confident about the process myself. We still talk about sourdough baking all the time and it’s become a fun hobby for us to share.

Most recently, my dad empowered me around being an active part of navigating my mother’s idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and advocating for her care. Late last summer, he asked me to take my mom to her first appointment at Duke. I flew down to Florida to bring her back to North Carolina. At the time she was on around-the-clock supplemental oxygen, had lost 30 pounds in three months and was very weak. I managed her care at my house for almost two weeks and got her up to Duke for the appointment that would ultimately change the trajectory of our lives and give us all the gift of more time together.

Over the last year I have had full access to my mom’s online chart. I learned so much about her disease and the lung transplant process. I spent weeks with her in the hospital after her transplant. I have taken on the responsibility of accompanying her to clinic visits at Duke post-transplant.

While all of this has stretched me to my edges and almost cracked my heart wide open at times, it’s been an incredible lesson in teamwork, selflessness, humility and speaking up when needed. I am so grateful to my dad for involving me so closely and so proud of our family for the way we joined together to get through a very difficult and unprecedented time.

On this Father’s Day, I am wishing my dad an abundance of ease and happy times in the year to come! <3

Here’s a post I wrote about how great my dad is earlier this year on his birthday when my mom was in the hospital and here’s another post with 10 things I’ve learned from my dad about food and cooking.

TURNING THE CORNER

After 10 solid days of dealing with symptoms related to the upper respiratory infection that I had, I finally turned the corner on Saturday. It is so wonderful to be feeling more like myself although it will take a while to be back to 100%. I tried to introduce some jogging intervals into my walk this morning and it was pretty rough.

I celebrated my birthday last Thursday and while it was a bummer to feel pretty crummy, Finn brought a lot of sunshine into my day. We had a birthday cupcake breakfast!

And my grandmother sent me these beautiful flowers. She knows purple is my favorite color! 🙂

I gave myself the gift of a fresh manicure and pedicure and it was so nice to get a little pampering after feeling bad for so long. I went with this OPI color, Got Myself Into A Jam-Balaya, and it’s such a fun summer color! Highly recommend if you’re looking for something more pink-orange-peachy.

And that’s about all that I have for you. I have a recent eats post planned for next week along with a download on all the books that I’ve been reading and enjoying lately. I am looking forward to getting back into the gym so I’ll try to get a workout up too!

Enjoy what’s left of your weekend and have a wonderful week ahead!

xo,
Jen