32 | November/December 2022 | BAEC Bulletin BAEC President Jill K. Bond Thanksgiving Message
November is the month we are reminded to give thanks. As we approach Thanksgiving, I have been spending a lot of time contemplating the blessings in my life. That’s easy. I just became a grandmother to Bennett Bond, who is bright eyed and healthy and perfect in every way. My kids and their significant others are all healthy, employed in jobs they love and “off the payroll, “ so to speak. Keith, my best friend and husband is still beside me on this amazing journey we have been on for the last 36 years. We have both had great careers and look forward to our retirement in the coming years. I have had the opportunity to serve this organization as its President for the past 5 months and it has been so fulfilling. I am happy. I am content and I am grateful. It wasn’t always this way. Seven years ago, I had much of what I have today, but somehow I felt unworthy of any of it. I found myself depressed and filled with anxiety. Why? Who can say for sure, but it seemed like the stars were aligning against me. My three children, one by one, had left our nest, leaving me grieving the end to a life I loved, centered around the three of them. I had turned 50 and that threw me into a funk. I was dealing with terrible insomnia. Work was stressful, my boss of nearly 30 years was retiring and I had to start over and prove myself with someone new. I was sure this would be the time when I would be discovered to be the imposter, I always felt I was in my role, A relative whom I loved dearly, even idolized, was dying. I had so much to be grateful for, but I felt unworthy of it all. I didn’t recognize that what I was experiencing was anxiety and depression. I just knew that I didn’t want to feel what I was feeling. I found an escape. It came in a bottle, or rather, so many of them that I was self- conscious about my recycling bin at the curb on garbage day. I would show up at work every day, but I always had that anxious feeling. I would get that heart pounding feeling you get when you are speeding on the highway and pass a police car. I couldn’t wait to get to the end of the day so I could have a glass of wine and stop that felling and relax to the point of eventually being able to fall asleep. As things progressed, sometimes I didn’t wait, I just moved the end of the day up a bit. This was easy, I could always find someone to join me. I had a lot of wonderful friends many of whom were women facing similar issues and any one of us could call a meeting of the “5:01 Club” where we would unwind over a bottle or two of wine. We would hold up those magazine surveys and laugh, “according to this, I’m an alcoholic.” Well, if the survey fits…. There was always someone in the group who I thought had a bigger problem than I did. I was okay. I was just going through a rough patch. The process of my nightly unwinding took increasingly more time and more wine. Often, I would finish a bottle by myself before I could fall asleep. When I would wake up a few hours later at 2 or 3 a.m., I would have another glass of wine or maybe a shot to help me get back to sleep so I could get another hour or two. I never felt rested. The lack of sleep and the wine exacerbated the anxiety
JILL K. BOND President Bar Association of Erie County
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