#sisters – Quillan Kelly-Dunn

#Beyourself, #doitanyway, Family disasters, Grief, vulnerability

Iris

June 30, 2026July 16, 2026 quillankellydunn

I had the hip replacement 2/11/26 and everything went fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone over the age of 35 with hip issues. I can walk normal so that is solved.

Now I am left with the aftermath of not being able to wear high heels anymore and building myself back up to where I was physically. I am struggling to accept that my body is not the same and it may never be. My clothes fit different now. All my clothes revolve around heels and wedges! I have to start over from scratch!

I’m going to have to go shopping for clothes eventually. I honestly do not know where to shop at my age.

When you don’t know what to wear, your clothes don’t fit anymore; you end up feeling stuck and you avoid going out. Well at least I do. When you avoid going out, you get in a rut. I would like to get out of this rut and get unstuck. I can’t hide at home forever.

Why would I really want to go out though? There are so many fantastic bingeable-shows on, so many good books to read and so many podcasts to choose from!

It’s all enjoyable… in the moment. However, too much alone time, hometime and screentime, leaves me feeling “blah”. Social skills get rusty. It’s like I lost my spirit. My spirit only comes from having fun & spending time with other human beings, like friends and family.

What work am I avoiding? I have no clue. I’m constantly doing “stuff” aka some type of work: housework, yard work, work at my job, working out, & grocery shopping/cooking. What more could we be doing?

Unfortunately, these are the messages that keep presenting themselves in the back of my mind:

What you resist will persist…

What you hate is what you need…

These statements are getting annoying.

After almost year of these internal questions-I decided to do something about it. I embraced the suck, finally, and answered them.

What do I resist that keeps persisting? No idea.

I keep assigning myself tasks to re-direct my energy. The to-do list is forever long when you own a home.. and you are easily distracted by the stuff you find while organizing.

When I finish a task lately, instead of feeling accomplished, I still feel that empty, clueless feeling. It seems like I am going about my life on autopilot.

Next question: Why do I feel lost?

Because I’m going to be 52 and suddenly I feel like I do not know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know how to dress for my age & I don’t know where to shop for clothes.

I don’t know how to put on make-up for “mature skin”. I see all these relentless ads on instagram telling me what I need, what supplements to buy, and I have even gotten sucked into purchasing items.

Then, of course, they don’t work.

What you hate is what you need….Ok, so…What do I need?

What do I hate?

I couldn’t think of anything. I do stuff I hate all the time: dishes, meal prep, cleaning toilets, laundry, pull weeds.

What do I need? Alcohol, going out with friends, shopping, sugar, a spa day?

Why would anyone want to do something they hate?

I guess you find out what you hate when you figure out what you love.

What do I love to do that I’m not already doing? A road trip with the windows rolled down and the music blasting.

If that’s what I love, then what I hate would be going on a road trip with the windows rolled up and no music?

Yes I would hate that and I absolutely refuse. That’s too long of a commitment to do something I hate. This has to be a shorter time period – like an hour or two max.

I LOVE YOGA.

Then I remembered. I love all yoga… that is, except one… vinyasa.

I despise vinyasa.

I’m not sure why, but I avoid vinyasa class. I DREAD IT. While I am in class, I’m counting down the minutes until we are done.

I suppose I’ll start with this 60-minute agonizing activity I hate.

Vinyasa requires focus & balance. Stillness. My ADHD goes on blast. My mind is making lists during the class and thinking of other things while I’m trapped on that mat…

During Vinyasa, I fumble around and I feel stupid. I feel old. I feel inadequate. I FEEL…. I don’t want to feel.

Brain: “you just need to practice dipshit.”

So this week I did what I hated and completed three vinyasa classes.

After my second class, I was proud of myself. I took a nap after, then I experienced a lost, stuck, empty, clueless feeling.

Yoga poses that include a lot of twists, release cortisol & cause lymphatic drainage. Vinyasa’s emotional release combines fluid, breath-linked yoga movements with somatic techniques to help your body process and let go of stored physical and emotional tension. Because trauma and daily stress are often stored in the body’s fascia, muscles, and nervous system, this practice gently coaxes the body to release pent-up feelings like anxiety or stress.

•Hip Openers (e.g., Pigeon Pose, Lizard Pose): The hips are heavily associated with holding onto stress and unprocessed emotions.

•Heart Openers (e.g., Camel, Sphinx, Supported Fish): These poses stretch the chest and shoulders, countering the physical posture of anxiety and helping to release feelings of vulnerability.

•Forward Folds & Twists: These encourage internal focus, grounding, and gentle compression of the abdomen (where anxiety is often physically felt)

I didn’t want to feel like this so I started online shopping. I surrendered & bought some clothes, I ordered a bunch of different options and sizes from Amazon. Ok doing what I hate got me to take action on a problem I’ve been avoiding. That must be IT!

I tried on the clothes and felt comfortable. I went out with friends and went out to dinner three times in one weekend. I’m back!

Unfortunately, the feeling still lingered. It seemed deeper than fashion in my 50’s, supplements or mature make- up. I went out and spent time with people l love. It must be something my soul needs. But what is IT???

I went to vinyasa again on a Saturday. I was thinking about the social outing I had to attend in the afternoon. While I was laying on my mat after all the dreadful hip openers and twists, IT appeared.

Thoughts: I don’t want to talk to anyone, I don’t feel like getting ready, I don’t feel like staying home but I don’t want to go out either. What is wrong with me?

An acoustic song in a women’s voice started playing. It was a slower cover of a song I heard a million times, but the lyrics meant nothing to me or went right over my head.

Today I HEARD the song differently …

🎵🎶🎼 “And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to Heaven that I’ll ever be
And I don’t wanna go home right now“

“And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
And sooner or later, it’s over
I just don’t wanna miss you tonight.“🎼🎵🎶

Thoughts continued: I don’t want go anywhere

Song: 🎶And I don’t want the world to see me.” 🎵

Thoughts: No one would get what I’m feeling.

Song: 🎼 “Cause I don’t think that they’d understand.”

Thoughts: what’s wrong with me?

Song: 🎼When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am…

Then IT arrived…. what I have been avoiding feeling: I don’t know what to do with my life without my mom. …

Who am I without her? What is my purpose without her?

It’s not that I forgot she died. I’ve been just going through the motions of life, day by day. I’ve been in shock I guess. She passed away during my hip surgery recovery and things became blurred. Too much life to process at once.

It was three months without her on Monday 6/29/2026.

While my brain was occupied with this song & revelation… tears were rolling down my face. I didn’t even realize I was crying, as if I was two separate entities.

🎶🎵🎼And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies

When everything feels like the movies
Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive

The floodgates from my soul opened…the detached, autopilot me connected to the lost, empty, grieving me…the ugly sobs began. Two people from yoga gave me a hug. I needed that.

My whole adult life was spent worrying about my mom, helping my mom, caring for her, spending time with her, experiencing joy & life with her, fighting with her, sharing her grandkids wth her, laughing with her & making her care about herself… now at the three month mark… I don’t know what to do with the next half of my life. Who am I without being her daughter?

So what this hidden feeling is, IT, is grief.

Therefore, I just have to sit with this. Go through all the firsts. First Mother’s Day, first birthday, first holidays without her. Feeling IT is the only way through.

We all have to go through this phase…I mean no one here is getting out alive. We know this, yet when people leave this world, we are still shocked.

Apparently, this is why we must do what we hate, in order to get to what we need. The more we resist, the more it will persist. Maybe I’m supposed to stay home for awhile and feel it. Maybe I should stop trying to be who I was before because that woman no longer exists.

IT is not how I expected IT to present itself. Grief isn’t just about losing the person you loved, it’s about losing who YOU were before you lost that person. Losing that version of YOU before the loss.

The “magic I’ve been looking for” is my mom. The work that I’ve been avoiding is stillness & emotional work. I don’t want to meditate. Vinyasa and mindful walking outside alone is a form of active meditation.

The world looks and feels different now without my mom. I miss the world where she is still in it. I miss the me with her. I miss my mom and my siblings together. This is this is why I’ve been feeling so lost.

My foundation has shifted. This whole process has been surreal. In public I feel so strange & out of place. I have to stop resisting it.

Show up as I am, no matter how broken. No one has expectations of me, I’m putting them on myself.

Here the song version where I lost my shit which is what I needed.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2yFw6Ca2l7MOdbdXUFYrd5?si=unNAiLuaQHGbh1LBJ_IciQ

https://youtu.be/rtwrl_7YbfE?is=JrPXffiS9ouFLI4N

Grief insights:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da0qfiAxlWQ/?igsh=cWdkajVwa3I0d2Q2

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZeCoWtq-i9/?igsh=MWd2MzF6eGpyMDZ5Zg==

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXMolqeDeWO/?igsh=Mnk0aWExYjg5ZWhj

https://www.instagram.com/p/Daikv7kjX0-/?img_index=1&igsh=MWFqZGtidTNrMGVvNg==

Sisters clips/Comic Relief:

https://youtu.be/pR1PIuVgiDg?si=EAk7e8F-q4U5mGnp

2025 year from hell, Aging parents, Anxiety, Family disasters, Mental Health

Babysitting Blues

February 6, 2026April 12, 2026 quillankellydunn

This was us…. my siblings and I at the beginning of 2025…

Fresh start, new year! We were discussing renting a house together during the summer. Things were looking good!

My adult kids are always out or doing their own thing in their room. Around March, I was starting to feel stir-crazy and erroneously said out loud that “I’m kind of bored”. Ideas of going back to school or looking for a new job crossed my mind. I decided that I need a new challenge…..

For the love of God, do not say that you are bored out loud (do not even think it!) Also, do not mention you need a challenge. The Universe is always listening….

Soon after having that thought, my daughter’s senior year stuff exploded. We were spending money like crazy. Five days before graduation, my son informs me he needs help being moved out of his dorm that weekend.

Then, I injured myself and couldn’t walk.

My sister found out she needs a hip replacement.

In June, my baby sister had a different type of medical scare…

Meanwhile, our brother has a perpetual flow of weekly disasters that we assist in solving.

In July, my mom went from working full time and taking the train daily downtown …to a forced retirement at age 71. Her retirement was due to some medical issues and vision impairment from macular degeneration and glaucoma.

Somehow we got through the medical issues. We revamped her diet, got her on a meal, hydration & medication schedule etc. Unfortunately, we were very clueless on how to handle the sudden vision loss. This was a HUGE adjustment for her and for us.

She lost her independence overnight. All of her favorite things involve seeing.

We felt terrible for mom, but also frustrated because both eye conditions are exacerbated by untreated hypertension and diabetes. Mom took her medication on her terms, not the doctors. She watched her sugar intake but not carbohydrates. She put her job first. She couldn’t remember the last time she had an eye exam. Then states “it was before Covid.”

Therefore, both conditions were not managed. She developed something called metabolic encephalopathy. It caused her to talk incessantly, even in the bathroom alone. There was no filter.

My mom knows her way around her apartment well and claimed she could see certain things. It appeared to us that she could, but then she would do strange things; like pick up a diaper off the ground and ask “is this a hat?”

Some days she would get ready herself and look adorable, other days she would sleep all day and looked homeless when we arrived. Sometimes she would decide to go shopping alone without telling anyone. During one of her solo shopping excursions at CVS, she purchased a foundation that was 17 shades darker than her skin tone because it was on sale.

Mom decided to try this new foundation out at her great-granddaughters christening. She got a ride there from her grandson. When she walked into church, my sisters and I nearly knocked people over trying to get to her because we thought she fell and bruised her face…ummm no, it was just an excessive amount of burnt orange foundation.

Thankfully, people with babies have baby wipes so we scrubbed mom’s face, hands and neck clean in the tiny, church bathroom.

Crisis averted.

A few weeks later, Mom accompanied the grandkids to the pumpkin patch. Things were going along smoothly until my mom witnessed an dark-skinned toddler on a leash and innocently states “I didn’t know you could bring dogs here?”

The parent of the child on a leash overheard and went ballistic on my mom and then my baby sister. Thankfully, mom cannot hear so well either so she didn’t know what was going on.

At this point, we worked really hard at finding a caregiver during the day for my mom.

One evening in late October, my sister arrived at my mom’s and mom answered the door without a top on & wearing two different slippers. This is abnormal behavior for mom so she took her to the hospital.

Mom was sleeping but her enzyme levels were going up, indicating she was having a heart attack. They also discovered from her MRI that she had a stroke, called an embolic shower.

This caused a hilarious case of hospital delirium. She did not believe she was in the hospital. She would become furious when hospital staff reminded her she was.

Mom would state, “I swear, if one more person tells me I’m in the hospital, I’m gonna knock them out. I’ll kill em!” 🤣 (she’s a 110lb tiny lady)

The places she believed she was in varied, like a funeral home, her boyfriend’s basement that was decorated scary for Halloween, and camping.

We felt guilty for laughing, but what else can you do at this point? Cry and feel hopeless!?

So we decided to have fun with these hallucinations and roll with it. My brother asked her who she was going camping with?

Mom replied, “Oh ya know, the usual crew.”

Mom states: “I have never gone camping so I should go but I don’t want to. Russell is going.”

(Who is Russell?)

Mom then thought there was a little girl in her room dressed up in a Doritos costume and offered her some juice.

While she believed she was at the funeral home, she called me at 5am stating “I am really underdressed for this wake, can you pick me up. I am in New Lenox.”

Instead of reorienting her, I replied “so who died mom?”

Mom replies: “I don’t know, but I am trying to figure it out, I’m watching the slideshow now.”

She had to have a EEG and MRI. Whatever meds they gave mom, I want some. 🤣 She thought she was at a destination wedding in Maui and was telling us how beautiful it was.

Mom gradually shifted from the delirium to mania. This was exacerbated by caffeinated coffee. She would talk non-stop, so it would take her two hours to finish a meal.

Her 80 year-old boyfriend came to visit her and he was met with mood fluctuations of euphoria and anger. She began yelling at him for watching the Jayne Mansfield documentary without her. She then threw her blanket over her head and hid under there for a hour.

Her boyfriend knows better to keep his mouth shut when she’s angry.

After ten days, she was discharged to a rehab center.

I arrived the first morning to bring her clothes and my mom was whispering “this place is horrible and my roommate is a man! He’s huge with this deep voice. He would not shut up last night.”

Then I meet her roommate who is of course, a female, dressed in many layers because she goes out to smoke frequently. She informs us that mom is her 27th roommate and she’s seen it all.

I don’t know lady, you haven’t met my mom yet. She is little but she is fierce. Especially if you turn the light on while she’s sleeping.

She was fairly cooperative at the rehab center except mom states “the staff think I’m a troublemaker.” She debated about exercising and she was enraged when they interrupted her while watching The Drew Barrymore show.

She asked us and the staff everyday when she can go home.

She was discharged home after two weeks. The regression of your parents and the role reversal that is experienced is not something you can ever be prepared for until you go through it yourself.

Becoming her caregiver did feel like babysitting at times for us. We would end the evening family group text with “moms all tucked in wearing her pull-up, Jammie’s and slippers.”

Mom became more herself at home, except now she wanted to go back to her old habits. Not eating often enough, then eating too much, wanting to hydrate with coffee and Diet Coke. The debating and arguing began, about her wanting cereal, pasta and beef.

She still would sneak off on her own to Calabria Imports, even though one sister meal-prepped weekly food. We only found out because she left the receipt on the table. When confronted, mom states “Oh here comes the detective, investigating what I’m doing!”

This is where we went bezerk on mom.

Mom would reply:

My sisters and I on the phone:

We found two caregivers, one from the state and one we pay out-of-pocket. She was rude to them too, but they weren’t her daughters so they didn’t take it personally and just laughed at her. After meeting with the kidney doctor, the fear of going to dialysis or losing a limb got mom to surrender.

Our youngest sister reminded us that Mom is doing her best and it’s pretty cool she still wants to live alone with caregivers. She’s a courageous lady. Mom is grateful now for her caregivers and her family who is helping her. I think now, she has accepted her normal age limitations and changes. Mom finally believes she is loved.

P.S. Always put your health first! Taking care of yourself and going to annual appointments are mandatory. Exercise so you can function later in life! A Job is not an excuse to neglect yourself!

Unrelated honorable mentions: