“Just keep going/keep going strong/just keep going/don’t know how long/just keep going/going strong/we don’t know what’s ahead of us just hold on. Just keep going/going strong/just keep going/we don’t know how long/just keep going….”

Sometimes a song comes along and plants itself not just in your ear but in your brain, heart, or spirit. Such is the case right now as I continue to navigate my gut reset protocol and my headaches with the above lines from a new-this-summer song from one of my faves, Rising Appalachia, titled (shockingly) “Keep Going.” Because whatever the case may be, I am still in it, where I have to keep going, and really still don’t know how long I’ll be at it before I really feel like me again.

To recap, I haven’t written in almost a month, in part because we went down in the trenches with sick kids for 10 out of 14 days and also in part because my situation is one that can ebb and flow, shift and shade its status at any given point on any given day. I can start out with a clear head for the day and be doomed by nightfall or I can sometimes manage to keep myself from tipping over the edge of the headache abyss and end up with a quiet night instead; I still just never quite know what the day/evening will bring.

I did learn, however, that the setback I wrote of in my last post is actually quite typical when going through a gut reset. It’s like the bad thing that brought you to this point is trying really hard to make things suck, even in the midst of all your trying, so you give up and let it stay. So kudos to me, I guess, because I have stayed the course and am still here, this many weeks later, still committed to the protocol, the diet, and the plan of slow and steady to get me through this. See why the reminders to keep going, to hold on, no matter how long, have latched onto me? I need them.

Because headaches or not, life continues. I’ve got kids coming and going and doing a million different things each week (OK, not quite, but even signing up each kid for one extra fall sport for five weeks made our calendar darn near combust with practices and pictures and games). New grades also mean new opportunities and with new opportunities come new tasks, like getting the cello home along with the siblings and back packs all amidst the end-of-day chatter, which you know, falls to the mama pack mule more often than not.

The kids have also had their own health waves to ride (including an ear infection for the littlest that we had no idea was there because she just kept popping nightly fevers but never once complained about her ear/head hurting) and their own big feelings about life and the world and school and all the things. I can’t shut that down (even though I do get after them so much more now about noise levels than I ever did prior to six months ago).

Instead I have to find ways to rest when I can, embrace the quiet when it comes, and find the strength to just keep freaking going, hoping that I’m closer than ever before to getting a hold on this, or, even better – to putting it behind me. Because eventually I’d like to have kept myself going so long and so far that this is all a distant, faded memory of perseverance, not my daily reality.