Month of (not so much) Margin

We had declared November the month of margin.  At the end of the summer, I asked Sean to pick a month to take a break from extra events.  We pushed hard over the summer with his d.j. business, projects, and side jobs for both of us.  “We can only run hard for so long and I think we're going to need margin.”  I was speaking at a women’s retreat the first weekend of November and we planned to have a relaxed month immediately following.

One evening at the end of October I was tucking my kids in and could hear my sister-in-law talking on the phone in the kitchen.  “Which hospital?  How soon?  Let me write that down…”  I hurried to the kitchen as she hung up the phone and turned to me.  “It looks like Dad had a stroke.  They are life flighting him to Portland.”

It turned out my father-in-law had bilateral subdural hematoma; a brain bleed.  The doctors made no promises about recovery.  

Miraculously, they were able to do surgery and even more miraculously, he is recovering.  Sean cancelled his last two events in October and spent two weeks in Portland as his dad began recovery and we began asking, “What next?” 

November took a different shape as Sean and his dad sat in a hospital room making hard decisions.  Instead of transitioning back to his huge beautiful home a block from the beach in Long Beach, WA,

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