Thanks, Universe

So this last week, I am not particularly proud of my performance. The best way to describe my state of being this week was "desperately tired." I was completely exhausted and couldn't seem to snap out of it. Also, my group this week was a little lower energy than the groups I'd had for the past couple of weeks. The past two weeks, I'd worked with ladies with Cerebral Palsy who, while they had more personal care needs, were genuinely happy people who were appreciative of their time here and excited to be at camp. I have come to find that folks with Cerebral Palsy are just genuinely happy people. They are nice and happy and excited and all of those things that make camp wonderful.  I am not sure if this positive outlook is associated with their particular disability. Perhaps, I just got lucky with the wonderful ladies that came into my life the past few weeks. Either way, it was pretty fantastic. This week, I had what I'd consider a relatively "easy" group, but things that shouldn't have annoyed me did. One woman asked the same handful of questions over and over and another loved to give hugs. What's so bad about hugs you ask? Well, these hugs hurt. She would basically tackle you to tell you she loved you. She also liked to touch everything that you were also touching including the spoon holding the cereal enroute from your bowl to your mouth. She also liked to elbow you in the rib cage just to say "hi." The bruises are still healing... It was one of those weeks where I kept thinking, "Tomorrow is a new day. I will wake up tomorrow and do better." And every day, I didn't. And I hated it. I feel like I wasn't my best self for the ladies in my group which is unfortunate because they each had this unique fantasticness about them. And some of them had things that were significantly less fantastic that bothered me more than they should have, but I suppose we all have those things.

Friday morning, as I was counting the hours until the start of a new week when I could officially start off on a new foot, something pretty great happened. A camper in one of the other groups who I had chatted with a few times gave me a hug. She held me so tight, crying that she didn't want to go home. The tears started coming and then I also started to cry. At first, I tried to pull away, but she didn't let go. So then I just embraced it and her. So there we sat, hugging, both crying, both not wanting to leave. Sometimes the universe gives you what you need when you need it and not a moment sooner. On Friday, the universe gave me an amazing hug from an amazing camper, reminding me that this job doesn't have an eight week cut off like it did last year in AmeriCorps and that I need to continue to be my best self for my week 12 campers as I was for my week 1 campers. Thanks, universe.