Youtube daily which Feb 23 2017

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[Woman] - I felt totally lost.

I felt totally depleted.

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When I lived in Ontario,

and I lived in a house, looking after my husband

and trying to deal with things.

And I was trying to deal with mental illnesses there.

And I wasn't aware of them, and I was

dealing with a lot of looking after a lot of things,

looking after the house and trying to keep things going.

And I felt that I had lost myself.

I felt totally depleted.

I didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I thought, I'm gonna get old

and this is going to be the end of my life.

And, I thought, I have to escape.

My husband had just died,

so my life had taken a total turn.

At that time, soon after, I came

and visited my daughter here in Vancouver.

And I fell in love with Vancouver,

and I really wanted to be close

to this particular daughter, to Alicia.

When I came here at first, I was very excited.

And then,

I became really shocked

because I didn't know anything.

I didn't know where things were,

where places were, and I had

very little support system here.

I was used to having very close friends

around me all the time.

And all of a sudden I was without friends.

I had a daughter,

but I didn't have friends of my own age.

And that was a real loss for me.

I was living in an apartment building where I rented,

and you don't know your neighbors.

They're not really there for you.

You know, you walk past them, they walk past you,

and you can say hello, but you're living with people

that you have no connection with.

And so, I went on a search to try and find

networks where I could find people

that I could relate to and people that I could talk to.

And people that I could become friends with,

not just acquaintances.

I tried a meet up group, I tried a couple of meet up groups.

One was a little too young for me.

That didn't work for me at that time.

Then another one was really good

and there were people that I could relate to

at my age group.

I started to look for places where I could connect.

I went and took a course at SFU.

And I kept looking for places

that I would feel comfortable with,

and that I could make those kinds of relationships

that would sustain me.

One of the things that worked really well for me

was a UBC one, and it was

the University of Victoria Centre on Aging,

the self management of chronic disease,

and I have a chronic disease, which is diabetes.

And I loved the material in that course.

And it changed the way I dealt with my health issues.

But it also opened up a whole new world.

I became a facilitator for those kinds of courses.

I took a training course,

and that gave me meaning

and it really helped me to connect,

and it was something that I'm really grateful for.

I guess my journey is one that I'm really grateful

for so much that has happened in my life.

Having a success in one field has helped me

find another field to be successful in,

it's helped me, opened up other areas that I can look into.

It's helped me gain better health,

and I'm,

also tried to find a way to let go of things

that could be potentially draining for me again.

For issues that might make me depressed,

or might make me lose all these wonderful

feelings that I have now.

The fact that I know I have activities

that I can do on a daily basis, I mean,

how rich can your life be?

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- It's really important that you keep your mind open.

Try something little,

and see if it will help you find more.

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