Greene Publishing, Inc.

By Kristin Finney
Greene Publishing, Inc.

2011 is now nearly six months underway. This means that by now, more than half of those who made a new year’s resolution have all but forgotten their promises. Those who planned to diet may be back to eating their unhealthy foods. Those who planned to workout more are back to relaxing on the couch; when they could be doing crunches. The list goes on. However, why not begin again; the year is halfway over, so it can be called a mid-year resolution.
This means getting back to where you were mid-January, before life got in the way. Everyone has hectic schedules and busy workdays. The trick to maintaining your resolution is to not allow any excuses. It is far too simple to say, “I can’t today, but I will start back tomorrow. What can it hurt?” The truth is it can hurt a lot more than we believe and the way to avoid that mindset is to not allow it to happen.
Keeping oneself motivated is the most important part of any resolution. Whether you want to lose weight, eat healthier, spend more time with your family or keep a cleaner house, the most important step to accomplishing this is to making it happen the first time. Every time you do it after that will simply be building habit. If we do something enough, eventually it becomes part of our every day life.
Setting up a schedule is another great way to kick off your mid-year resolution. If you are eating healthier, then planning out each meal and doing a calorie count for each meal will help.
There are several websites that allow you to calculate a meals total fat count. If you’re planning to work out more, then set aside time each day to work out. For even better results, set aside two times that could work, that way if you miss one, you have a second option.
To make spending time with your family easier, set aside one night each week to be “family night.” On that night, play board games, card games or charades. It is important to make sure that everyone is entertained, so if you have several children, rotate weeks. One week let one child pick a game the next let another, until everyone has had a turn. Also, make sure that when you eat supper that night, that the entire family joins around the table.
Some other good ideas of resolutions would be to clean your life up. Don’t let simple things throw off your entire day. If something goes wrong, look at the ways that you can make it positive instead of focusing on the negative. Do not let arguments blow up into huge battles, simpley agree to disagree and let it go. Talk about things that bother you instead of holding it inside. This will help you to not get stressed out over small simple things, and in the long run makes you a happier person.
You could also begin a new tradition of sharing household chores. If the mom in the house normally does most of the chores, let the children take over a few nights, as well as dad. By trading off chores it allows mom more free time and no one person is stuck with all of the responsibility. This will take a lot of stress from your home and allow more to get accomplished in less time.
While it is hard to maintain a resolution for the entire year, perhaps breaking it up into six-month increments will help make it easier to accomplish your goals. During the summer there are a lot more free evenings and the days are even longer, which gives you more time to be awake and focused.
Don’t let yourself stray from your final goal, especially for health resolutions. It is never too late to work on making your life healthier.

By Lynette Norris
Greene Publishing, Inc.
“I think it’s very important that any sign of any change in your body be checked out immediately,” said Shannon Curtis.  “I didn’t do that.”
Curtis, who had just had her youngest child and just passed her six-week check-up, dismissed the lump she later found in her breast as a clogged milk duct, or fibrous tissue.  There was a history of cancer in her family, but not in someone as young as Curtis, only 32 at the time.  Her aunt, Martha Scott, is a three-year survivor of breast cancer at age 70, and her grandmother, first diagnosed with lung cancer at age 83, is now battling lymphoma at age 85.  It has spread to other parts of her body including her throat and bronchial tubes.  She is currently undergoing chemo and radiation and has a feeding tube, but she hasn’t given up yet.  She was discharged from the hospital Wednesday to carry on her fight at home, but “it isn’t pretty,” said Curtis.

Shannon Curtis begins another spring day in Madison shortly after dropping her three daughters off at school.

Shannon Curtis was born and raised in Pinetta, and moved to Madison when she married Nathan Curtis.  They have three daughters, Savannah (eight), Sydney (six), and Sadie (two), and have just celebrated 15 years of marriage.  She can’t remember exactly how many years she has been involved with Relay For Life, but she thinks it is probably about seven – first with the team of teachers from Madison County Central School where she taught Kindergarten, and this year, since she is still on sick leave, with the Fellowship Team from Fellowship Baptist Church.
Her husband, Nathan, was working for Homeland Security in San Diego and the baby, Sadie, was just a year old when Curtis went for her routine annual exam with her gynecologist, who asked her if she knew about the lump, and why hadn’t she come in sooner.  After a mammogram and ultrasound, a surgeon removed the lump, which initially was thought benign.  It wasn’t until Curtis and her mother went back to the doctor for a post-op check-up that they learned it was malignant.
“We were just floored,” said Curtis, “that we were talking about cancer.”
She opted for a double mastectomy and began and course of chemotherapy – 16 treatments in all – from June through November of 2010.  And because her cancer was estrogen-induced, a hereditary trait, she elected to undergo a full hysterectomy in December.  “I won’t have this cancer again, because I now have no estrogen in my body,” she said.
As with previous years, with small children, she probably won’t be able to take the entire night for Relay for Life.   She’ll have to leave in the evening and come back in the morning, but she does a lot of the support work.  “I follow directions really well, and I do whatever they tell me to do.”  This year, she has heard that they might have her working on the Luminaria committee, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet.
“God is good,” she said.  “You always hear about how God works in mysterious ways, but it’s true.  My husband was able to get a hardship transfer because of my cancer.”  Nathan Curtis now works out of Tallahassee instead of San Diego, and he is able to be with his family every day instead of having to be away from them for months at a time.
“I love telling the story about how good God has been to us,” Shannon continued.  “And you can’t beat the people of Madison, either.  From day one, friends, family, church members, coworkers…I haven’t gone a day where I needed anything.”
Today at 34, Shannon Curtis is a survivor, with a recent photo of herself with hair again, surrounded by her family, as a reminder of how far she has come.  This year at the Relay For Life, she’ll be out there, where “I’ll just do whatever they tell me they need me to do,” for herself, for her aunt, for her grandmother, for those who have survived, for those who are still struggling, and to honor those who have lost the battle.  There is always hope, because, as she herself will tell you, “God is good.”