I'll brother up and say that the process is, short of terminal illness, on of the most soul-eating things that you may endure, in our peacetimes. You have to do the right thing, by those to whom you have obligations: 'whether or not' -- 'or whomever or not."

Now, I face a different version of this, and know that by the time I am done with a 'perfect storm' of health and aging and growing inability to perform the requirements of my trade -- that there a big changes we are facing. Over the nights of this weekend I was physically laid out with sleeplessness, pain, and nightmarish worry. By three-four AM this day, I was pretty much convinced that the stresses and injuries were going to sink my frail barque.

Somehow, dawn came, and coffee and some breakfast -- and I was still here. Now I have to disassemble years of lumber, tools, workbenches, specialized and hard to find items, and to cope with a reality that found me....Fate has two-edged sense of humour, BUT -- our Faith and God's hand to our endurance -- may take us beyond the these days, and into a new and lighter phase of 'owning' and 'family'. I once took years, to finally put a away a long-ago torch-fire of 'a passion forever." It wasn't. And it turned out that I had another life, and a good one, at that.

The opportunity to simplify complex and insoluble problems, is not easy or welcome. But with faith and a 'know it will get better' with time, there will come a day of owning yourself and life, again. I will say flat-out that I did not have that faith, when it started, back then. Now, my present situation is not perfect, but I know that the threads may be picked up and re-woven in a different pattern. There is a Caretaker, and the rougher it gets, the more you may find solace and the will to go on. As well, with that belief, there is no rule against a doctor prescribing palliative chemistry. It can lift a great deal of the stress, and enable you to better deal with the problems with which you are dealing.

I wish you the resource to continue, and that you add a some earthly chemistry to the present requirements. I write all this to you, having had bone aches, sleepless and relentless thinking, and a false certainty that this was 'it'. It isn't -- a change in life is not the end of life -- let those go who must. You can come thru it, and have a happier life, in the end by scaling our hopes and dreams and relationships to what the reality requires. Today I am blessed with a renewal of hope, that our present trial will produce a better and simpler life. May God go with you, and bring the light of the new future, to you.

Otony

Don, you've been around this board as long as I can remember. I always look back at the old days when we had a chatroom and remember our conversations with good memories.

May God watch over you and things get better.

Murphy

We are going thru some critical life changes here at home... family breaking apart... hearts broken..

have cried all I can and laid my heart in God's hands... could use a bit of brotherly love...

will probably be selling everything I can to cover bills...

I'm too old... don't know if my heart can take any more of this stuff in my life... maybe it's getting close to "go home"...

love all you guys... we may not have seen eye to eye on a lot of subjects but ya'll are sill my brothers...