“It has been good for me to relearn my shortcomings and learn to let things go. It’s been good for my family to learn the world (or Mom) doesn’t revolve around them all the time. Reaching for my dreams has sparked a fire in me that makes me happy. “
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“My anxiety keeps trying to push through the boundaries of medication and deep breathing.
Sometimes it succeeds.”
“As parents of special needs children, we are preached a religion of self-care. We are told repeatedly we have to make time to take care of ourselves or we won’t be able to take care of anyone else. That’s all well and good, but when I was in the thick of the worst of special needs parenting having no idea what I was doing or how to make it through?
I wanted to punch every person who said that to me.”
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Tonight when the demons in my head want to take over, I’m reminding myself that I am amazing and I have accomplished things that I dreamt about for years.
I graduated college. I have a BA in psychology. Other people had that. Not me. But now I do.
I’m getting my Master’s degree in Social Work.
I am a published writer.
Yes, my brain and other people are tearing me down and screaming at me that I can’t do anything right.
But the evidence?
The evidence is that I have survived 16 years of special needs parenting. And that is an accomplishment.
I survived 19 years of being a military spouse. Not everyone does that.
I crawled my way though years of severe back pain and 2 surgeries. And I came out the other side.
Anxiety, depression, people who don’t like me and think I’m worthless?
You won’t win.
I will get back up.
I will NOT give up.
I might have to stop and regroup. Give myself breathing room and take my meds.
That doesn’t mean I’m weak or incapable.
It means I am smart enough to recognize when I need help. I’m strong enough to get back up. My brain and the naysayers don’t get to win.
Because I am enough!
A universal need.
That’s what my social work classes call it. The human need to be heard, seen, and known. It was a central feature of my first grad school class. It’s something that has been in my thoughts a lot over the past 7 weeks. I’ve talked about it with my Mom, my friends, and taught a lesson about it at church.
And here is what I’ve found.
It’s true.
We need to know that someone, somewhere knows the real us. That we are seen for who we are. That our wants, needs, and desires are heard by someone.
One of the hardest parts of living through the pandemic has been a disconnect from the ways we usually get those needs met. Friends and family have had to social distance. Events and celebrations were canceled. I met with the sisters in my church and we discovered that all of us had been feeling very alone. We felt like no one understood us. Many had felt that maybe church wasn’t the place for them anymore, they were isolated and felt like they didn’t belong.
I watched as everyone drew a huge sigh of relief to discover that they weren’t alone. They hadn’t been the only one person thinking these crazy thoughts. They weren’t the only one struggling to find a way to meet these needs. Our hearts ached as we listened to our sisters tell their stories that we didn’t know were hiding beneath their pasted on smiles.
So we made a plan.
It’s just in its beginning stages. But we realized that somehow, some way, it was vital that each of us felt heard, seen, and known. We made plans and commitments, both individually and as a group, to do even just one percent better at reaching out to each other and checking in. Because if we all did one percent better, that one percent multiplies like compound interest.
It is a couple weeks later and I have reached out to a few women who were on my mind. Nothing earth shattering has happened, but they now know that someone, somewhere was thinking about them, and if that helps them feel even a little less alone, I have succeeded.
“Right now I am in a class for Psychological Pharmacology and I have never worked harder on any class in my life. I am not doing well. It’s my last semester so I can’t drop the class if I want to graduate. Last week I spent 6-8 hours a day studying and going to class just for this class. It’s affecting my work for my other classes.
And it’s affecting me.”
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“. . .what I had essentially done was to write my own IEP for school. These were all things I was working on that will help me succeed.”
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“Mom’s out there of young children- The job you are doing is hard. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t know what they are talking about. Take care of you. It’s okay to take a nap, a shower, a meal, or to get out of the house without your baby. Our parents survived it, and so did you. So don’t listen to the people who say that you can’t. You can. And your baby will be as perfect as ever.”
If your spouse is in the military, law enforcement, or dealing with a potentially deadly illness, you have played the “What do I do if my spouse dies game?” You may have played it anyway if you are the type of person like me who wants to have a plan for every contingency.
I say “game,” but it’s not a game you ever want to play. But this is the reality of life for people in these situations.
When my husband was deployed to a war zone, I met another spouse whose husband was also at war. She said when she can’t sleep, she figures out how she is going to spend her husband’s life insurance. She plans out his funeral. As he is double insured, she had lots of money to figure out how to spend. For his funeral? She planned on getting Clay Aiken to sing because her husband couldn’t stand his singing. She thought it might be enough to make him rise from the dead if she did that.
Those of us who find ourselves in situations of life where our spouse could die, find that there are necessary conversations that must be had. There are contingency plans that must be made, that while others might make them, for us, the reality is that the chances are much higher we might have to enact that plan.
If your spouse dies, will you stay where you are? Move closer to the family? Change jobs or go back to work? How will childcare be handled? How will we handle life? These are the thoughts that run through our brains in the middle of the night. This is a fact of life for us.
1- If it happens? We have a plan. Not everyone has one.
2- We highly value the time we do get with our spouse because we know that any day, things could change.
So here’s to all the other spouses and families out there playing the “What Do I Do If?” game. May you never need to use it.
“It means a lot to me that you feel my words are of enough value that you take a moment out of your day and spend time with me reading what I have to say, writing comments and sharing my words with others. Seriously, thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Read more-
