Life | Getting A Late Start

Hello there!

It seems so weird to be writing this post.

I have not felt inspired to talk about anything lately. I’ve been like this since the end of October. I made myself dive hard into Blogmas in December and I genuinely enjoyed the posts I did for those three weeks, but by Christmas, I knew I needed to take a longer break from blogging. At one point, I was even comfortable with the idea of never blogging again…

Technically I quit on the 23rd of December, so depending on when I’ll actually get this post out, it would be about two months of nothing to do with writing, publishing, and networking. This prospect is a frightening reality I am currently living with because all I know to do is blog. I may not get paid for my posts, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think of it as a job anyways, and I wonder if that’s also part of it; when I am “working” I feel like I have that constant need to do this or that and it has just taken away all of the fun it brought me in the early days.

I created this blog in May 2011, to give me a space to work on my writing style but the reason why I focused my attention on discussing disability topics is because I wanted to show people of various ages that you can have a wonderful life with a severe disability. I have fallen out of that a few times in the last 12 years of blogging, but I always found a way to come back stronger. The last five years, I have enjoyed how far I’ve come as a writer, I was taking chances and it felt amazing to see all of the hard work pay off.

For my birthday last November, I had this strange feeling inside and it felt like I was turning into a better version of myself. It was “strange” because when I began my 20’s, I sought out finding my soulmate, getting married and raising a family by a certain age like most young women do. It wasn’t until I hit 28 that I realized my overall dream of what I wanted to have as a life wasn’t going to come and although the realization hurt like hell at first, I felt like I could breathe better. Honestly, a lot of things changed at that age! I became an aunt for the first time, and I think it was a great wakeup call for me! I love babies and children, but I have never spent the day/night with them before so being around this little human has humbled me to the core.

This would somewhat happen again a year later, as I asked my cousins about how they knew they were attracted to others, and they proceeded to discuss being in relationships, and all throughout that conversation I wanted to throw up but ironically enough that was one visit I did not come home with the stomach flu… I was shocked that I really couldn’t sense myself entering a relationship and being comfortable about it at this point of my life, and I still don’t four months later! I’ve never been the type of person that would get married, I like the way of having a life partner instead.

Even though the new year is already here, we can always enter a new path at any time. It doesn’t always have to start on your birthday or NYE, and you can never make a mistake on your journey either. You can always come back after a setback so please try not to feel bad or foolish because tomorrow is a whole new day to begin anew.

If you have been reading this post all the way though, I appreciate you for your commitment. I would like to know how long you’ve been a part of my blog in the comments. You don’t have to say the exact date, but if you do indeed remember the day, you started visiting Got Meghan’s Blog, please list it down below.

Blogmas: Why I Decided on 8 Days

Hello everyone and welcome back to Blogmas!

I absolutely adore this theme and it’s one I continue to do every year, even if I’m not feeling very festive. I was first introduced to Blogmas back in 2014 when I found the blogging community on Twitter. I still look back on that memory quite a bit and wish we were all doing the fun chats and checking out everybody’s newest posts without any drama going on behind the scenes.

For those of you who do not know what blogmas is, it’s a concept based around Christmas, you create a series of different posts talking about the festive holiday. Some people will do every day leading up until the 25th, or sometimes they will shrink it down and release 8 or 12 days instead. I’ve always done whatever I could get done and it’s been a hit and miss throughout the years, so that was one of the reasons I decided to only publish for eight days for 2021.

Before I go, one thing I try to do is give people, especially new bloggers a collection of previous blogmas posts, I’ve included what I wrote in 2020. So, I really hope you enjoy what I have in store for you in the next couple of weeks on Got Meghan’s Blog!

---

How Do I Read?

This post is all about how I read my books. Last year, I had the chance to work with an awesome company called Tilisma. They create a variety of bookish products. I saw them while watching one of my favorite YouTubers and she showed her viewers these really cool things; it is in the shape of an eye made out of wood with a nice hole carved out in the middle, this is where your thumb (or in my case big toe!) and it is supposed to allow you to hold any type of book and of course make reading easier!

I was given four different products and the nice people of the company, customized every item to my size! The little one is definitely my favorite because it is just perfect for my toes and it has made reading outside or just in the house a whole lot easier for me! Click here if you want to read the whole post on Tilisma. I definitely recommend anyone checking out their stuff on Amazon and/or their Instagram as they share photos of various people using the holders a lot so you could see what you could use for yourself.

Things That Make Me Feel Christmas-y!

In this one, I basically talk about the things that make me feel very festive, and I share quite a bit of photos of putting up our family Christmas tree and baking and decorating the sugar cookies. 2020 was the year we could finally do things with Nolan. My mom and I decorated cookies the year before but we all agreed that Nolan was just a little too young to be around that many cookies and frosting–this was a very good call considering how many he did eat last year! I think it was three and a half cookies and I don’t remember how many times he licked icing off his fingers…

The 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

Here’s the thing, I had a sticky note with array of blogmas topics saved on my laptop, and when I was getting ready to figure out my schedule for this year, I guess I forgot to strike both “Things That Make Me Feel Christmas-y” and this tag. I’m not going to lie; I am pretty proud of myself for looking back just in case or else I would repeat these posts again and I would be really upset with myself.

This post is a survey discussing two loves of mine: books and Christmas. I always enjoy doing these types of posts at the start of blogmas because it is easy, fun and I’m not stressing myself out too much to make it look so perfect. However, now I’m wondering what I will be doing for Friday…

DIY: Christmas Tree Projects

For the longest time, my nana and I would do a bunch of seasonal crafts and despite the fact we loved our pumpkin related projects, the largest job were Christmas things. The final project we did was making everyone their own goody bag full of cookies, lotions, socks, and chocolate bark. And yes, I did a post about it and you can click here to check it out now.

A lot has happened since then, and she lives up north and I am up to no good coming up with ideas to continue the tradition a little, although I wouldn’t say this one wasn’t for family, this was my personal job to see if I could bring back that spark again. I was fairly proud of myself on the work I did on these but now there is only one still on the back wall of the hallway, there is another hanging up in the playroom and Nolan took home the final canvas!

I am doing something similar to what nana and I did with those brown bags, but that’s all I can say about it at the moment. You might see some things on my Facebook and Instagram pages here and there. Once I finish everything, I will have a post up before the 25th.

2020 Christmas Tree

This post is exactly what the title says, it is all about my black Christmas tree for 2020. I’m not entirely sure if I will discuss what I do with my tree this year, but we’ll just have to see what happens later on in the month!

Ultimate Christmas Playlist

As for the final post of the day, you get to know about my favorite Christmas songs. There are a lot of beloved jazz artists like Frank Sinatra, Stan Kenton, Ray Charles, and Michael Bublé, but there is a bunch of different people and songs that inspire that feeling of the holidays as well like, Home Alone soundtrack, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Frozen soundtracks, Lindsey Stirling, and even Celtic Woman.

---

Well, that’s it for this post. These are all of the topics I talked about one year ago to hopefully spark the joy of the beautiful season. As I’ve mentioned above, I’ve done this for a pretty long time, so I have a huge selection of Christmas-y posts you can search in the box on the top right corner of the home page.

What is your favorite thing about Christmas?

A-Z Disability Challenge | N : What I Want To Bring To Nolan’s Life

Before my nephew came along, I was very specific on how I wanted to be represented towards a young child. I had some help creating these thoughts after my neighbor’s three year old daughter started to act like she needed to help me out, although everybody (including myself) thought it was a sweet gesture, it really became clear that this little person looked at me and she shoul help in anyway she coul, even if that meant by holding my cup close enough to face to take a drink.

I understand that she was only doing it to be nice, but she really was doing it for two reasons. One, she getting praise for doing something so benignant and the second is she saw everyone else around her help me out from time to time. I always felt like asking for help was a weakness, so to see this sweet little girl automatically do this, really messed with me for a long time. Although I think it is important for young children to understand all of the disabilities in the world, I also believe there is a way we can teach them about respecting the boundary.

Nolan isn’t at that age where he was can physically lift and carry my drink around to allow me a sip now and again, but he does understand that Aunt Meghan is very different from everybody else.

He loves cars and trucks like every boy does, and whenever he comes over it is one of our favorite things to play with because it is just small enough to put in between his hands and my toes and I can pass it back to him if he wanted to use it. All I have to do is ask for it back and he will either give it to me or exchange another toy for it instead. He’s a stinker like that! He is getting familiar with putting things in my toes rather than my hands; he actually never puts anything in that area which has really surprised me but he was a quick learner as a baby that he understood fast I had certain things “wrong” with me.

Since he was about 10 months old I think, he started to become obsessed with shoes. At first, it was purely just my sister’s flip flops and sandals that he would attempt to put on, but recently he has tried to stick his feet into her sneakers. There is nothing more cuter when a small child tries to put his foot inside the opposite shoe! I mean, this kid’s a genius, he knows how to grab his foot and move it inside of the shoe without really wearing them a whole lot in his short life. I mean, the first time he ever wore shoes out in public I think was on Easter!

The most recent thing to happen was the day when I decided to put on one of Blondie’s shoes, to see what he would think to see me in them. As soon as I got it on and showed off my incredible feat, he outdid me. He grabbed the other one and put it on his hand! This made me realize on how much he pays attention, but the fact that he sees my feet as my hands! I did not expect that reaction but I was very humbled by it at the same time.

I think about the future a lot, and what’ll mean for him if, God forbid, something was to happen to my sister and she wasn’t able to take care of me anymore, the responsibility would turn to him. There is one thing that I will never allow to happen.and this is it, I will firmly stand my ground and tell him that it is more important for him to focus on himself. If I can get this through his mommy’s head I would, but she is far too headstrong for this conversation apparently. Again, I understand the reason behind this but she has been a protector and a great person to take care of me in my time of need but between the two of them, I don’t want them to think they need to continue on that road, you know? There are great places and nurses that can fulfill that promise just as much as they can. I never want to become a burden to anyone, let alone my sister, brother-in-law or Nolan.

What do you think about this? Am I being too harsh about this future situation or is it something you can secretly agree on?

A-Z Disability Challenge | L : Life Lately

Hello!

It has been a while since my last post. Thankfully we are at the letter “L” on my A-Z Disability Challenge because instead of doing what I had planned I am going to change it to a Life Lately post. I hope you are all good right now so let’s get into this!

---

As you may know back in June, I talked about the fact that both July and August were fast approaching and I had begin to worry about how I would respond to them since I went through a huge depression spell last year and was basically miserable. I felt like I really needed to keep myself busy with blogging, in hopes that my brain wouldn’t be reminded of that time. I had lots of cool topics I was talking about on here and then one day I just got really bored and decided that I didn’t want to write anything. I just wanted to enjoy myself for a few days–which slowly turned into weeks–and I think I realized how happy I have become lately!

Since we’ve moved into this house I have been getting out of my room a LOT compared to the other house. It was a pretty small home with tiny hallways and caved-in floors. When I officially moved in at the beginning of January, I just thought I would continue my routine of staying in my room majority of the time, but my mom had other plans. She was given this nice kitchen table and wanted all of us to use it, but I thought we would only use it for holidays, so the fact we actually sit together and enjoy our meals as one, is pretty surreal!

One of the things that I have really enjoyed is when my mom is home from work. She’ll put me in my wheelchair and let me have breakfast or lunch at the table. If she has to cook or has something else going on while I’m in there with her, I’m usually looking out the back patio doors and counting our cats. I’ve figured out that both Tavis and Felix are the ones who are out there the most in the mornings. However, if nobody is there I try to find ChiChi on the couch. She likes to cover herself with many blankets and try to get some extra Zzz’s but sometimes when I see her peeking through the blankets, I can’t help myself I like to boop her on the nose and if she gets out of her little cave, I crunch down to attempt to get a kiss, trying not to hurt myself in the process, but even if that happens I will still do it because I like getting kisses from the animals.

I like to stay in my chair for as long as possible and even keep my mom company if dad is still in bed. We have some great chats and there are times where she’ll put me to work, and I’ll mop the floors or break up boxes to put them in the trash. I can be very handy at times, just let me pour pasta inside a bowl, apparently I have lost my touch.

She likes to read Closer Weekly magazines, and honestly I enjoy some of their articles too, but in the back of it they have an entertainment inspired Word Search you can complete, and I absolutely love working on these puzzles! My papaw loved Crosswords but I always found them to be a little difficult – to be perfectly honest he also had issues as well especially if they were about a lot of the recent pop culture stuff. It was interesting because there were times where he would ask my mom or us kids if we knew what the answer was; unfortunately there was hardly ever one I knew on the spot! So, that’s why Word Searches are my thing, but they weren’t always though, I have had trouble finding the ones going vertical or backwards in the past, but I have gotten better at them now!

I have found out that I am at the perfect height to reach my foam box while I’m sitting in my push chair. At the beginning of the summer, I went back to coloring again. Before my nana moved away she gave me these crayons that you can twist to keep them sharp, everytime I use one I immediately think “where were these things when I was in school?!” They’re very handy! After two days, I grew out of that because I tend to grip them too hard, I was literally causing my toes pain as I continued so that sucked!

After Nolan had his birthday party in June, he was given a lot of new toys, and there were so much that we were given a chunk of them to keep in his room. He has a new love of Hot Wheels now so I am even more happy that I purchased that city rug for him, because he can really put it to good use with these little cars! What is funny though is that Brandon and I, we were perfectly fine without it. They move better on the wood floors and since there is so much space in the living room, they can go pretty far; Nolan gets a big kick of it. Every time I ask for a car, he’ll give me one and put it in between my toes so he loves it whenever I play with them too!

One day I got the idea about playing with these little cars in his room. At least, that was my original plan, but I ended up changing my mind when I figured I could play basketball instead. They also left this large bag of these brightly colored plastic balls, and since he has like two baskets I thought this would be kind of cool, and I was right! I love being active and the fact that I am using both of my legs to do this makes me happy and I enjoy having fun with playing again, it has become a blessing in disguise. I wasn’t doing too good at throwing them in the basket at first, but I am slowly getting better at it as time goes on! Practice makes perfect.

I am still trying to get Nolan into basketball. So, I am plainly trying to get better at my shots so that maybe it’ll inspire him to play along with me! He does know how to dunk because he has a basket at his house that he pushes a basketball, soccer, and whatever stuffed animal is nearby into it. At least he gets the idea so that’s a plus! Maybe when he comes over on Christmas, he can watch an NBA game with me? It’ll only happen if I can get him to crawl (or walk as he is trying to do it!) into my room without anybody knowing he’s gone. I doubt that’ll happen as Blondie and papaw freaks out about everything he does!

• 

• 

• 

What helps you relax or get you out of a funk? Have you learned anything new about yourself or a hobby this summer?

A-Z Disability Challenge | K : Why Kids Should Be Educated About The Various Types Of Disabilities

When I was busy coming up with the letters and their themes, I was a little worried whether it would be a good idea to basically talk about children and how they view people with disabilities twice. After discussing it with my mom, she pretty much convinced me that it would be interesting to speak up on different ages, because as I’ve found out over the years, children under the ages of 5 are curious of their surroundings but they want to learn about everything! Kids in that are higher in age and in school may hang out with friends that can influence them to bully other kids. So, this is what we will be talking about on today’s post!

I remember when I was in grade school, we were all in separate classes for all of our subjects. The only time you basically got to see the other students was at lunch and recess. I knew at the time that there was one other kid with a disability, we never saw each other but only on the occasional field trips and grandparent’s programs. That was it! So, I was hardly ever around somebody that was remotely like me, until I had my surgeries in 2002.

The reason why I bring this up is because throughout my entire time in elementary school, I was basically taught to be like everyone else. I never really experienced any bullying although there was one girl who didn’t like me, but we were at least civil with each other. Anyways, I grew up actually hating to be around other kids with disabilities, because they acted differently than me and my friends–now of course, I feel horrible thinking that way but that was my mindset back then; I wasn’t like them but yet I was!

You can never really tell what a kid thinks about things unless they tell you, but when they don’t ask you questions, they will almost go through life not knowing the real answers. They will begin to seek them through their friends, and you hope that everything those kids have been taught are saying good things but unfortunately not all children are being told that having a disability of any kind can be a beautiful thing. Instead they are fearful by what they don’t understand and relying on that information to others.

I always wished that there were more motivational speakers that came to schools with a variety of disabilities. Unfortunately, I also worry if this were to happen, if they would appericate it because I know everytime we had people come in and talk with us, it would literally go in one ear and out in the other. However, there is that small chance that a few kids that enjoy learning about everything, so it could be a positive experience as well!

I think it would be useful for these youngsters to see a plethora of differences in their bodies, we are not going to look like athletes or supermodels, and it’s important to remember that at any age!

I had a thought the other night about this subject. For some reason, all of the speakers that came to talk to us were all adults. What if kids saw teenagers or someone in their early 20’s? If I saw more women and talking about her disability, I wonder if that would have made a difference because I didn’t learn how to love myself until two years after I graduated from high school altogether. It really sucks to know that not only .did I have to be away from my classmates and watch X-Men: First Class to feel like I can love being the way that I am!

When you were in school, how did you view the speakers that came to talk about the aftermath of drunk-driving or their disabilities? Do you think there should be more people talking about other topics that could be helpful to children as they continue to get older?