October 30

When I dropped Sarah off at school one morning I saw an eighth grade girl bend down to make smiling, welcoming eye contact while reaching out her hands to greet Sarah. I hadn’t witnessed that before and my heart just melted that these students have embraced Sarah so literally and figuratively. 

This week Carl and I had an IEP meeting with Sarah’s main teacher and the program director. I feel so good about Sarah’s school and how all of the grown-ups seem to truly appreciate her.  I feel like there is thoughtful creative care being given to Sarah. They said they have already seen progress since the beginning of school. And Sarah’s word recognition was noted as impressive! YES!! 

That said, IEP meetings are interesting emotional affairs because I compare Sarah to “normal” more than I usually do. When I stay with only comparing Sarah to Sarah then I continue to be amazed at how thrivingly bright and incredible she is. When I compare her to where I think she maybe should be or to Amy or neurotypical peers then I can go down a sad and sometimes fearful road, guilt-ridden that I should have somehow done morebetter. That should really be a word. Morebetter. It also feels strange to move back into regular parent mode instead of Sarah-Rise Team Leader mode. One could say I am still the team leader in the way that parents maybe always are, but I am no longer the one running the meeting, setting the goals, and answering questions. I am still contributing, but it is different. Part of me wants to get my empowered, enthused team-leader self back in action and the other part of me is so glad that self can just go take a nap. 

Amy is doing beautifully in school. She is learning things so spongefully, quickly, and delightedly. I do not have to work at it a dang bit. I will take that and run with it. Or rather, not run with it, because I don’t have to!

Tuesday morning Amy was given a hall pass to go see the nurse to get weighed and measured. When did she become such a grown up as to go off on her own with a hall pass to a place where I don’t even know where it is???

In general, Amy has been doing a beautiful job of assisting Sarah with small easy conversations, which is one of our goals for Sarah as she learns to interact more with peers. This is all Amy’s idea of play. Amy will try engaging Sarah in a back and forth discussion regarding their favorite colors or other favorite things. She will tell Sarah what to say if Sarah is silent. While normally Amy’s attempts to control Sarah don’t work and are not my favorite, in this case it seems to work wonderfully.

Last weekend we went to a Halloween party. The girls were clamoring to go as soon as we got up in the morning so it was rather a long wait until 6:30pm. That gave Carl time to make my new BFG shoes. He took some of his old shoes and attached blocks of wood to them. They are much easier to walk in than the 5” heels I used the last time I wore the costume, but they still take some work. They are heavy! They are roughly 4.5 lbs for each shoe. Anyway, the girls did wonderfully at the party and we let them stay up way past their bedtime. When I finally tucked them into bed Amy said, “Mom, I love you. And I love Sarah. I really really really really really like Sarah a lot. I love her. She is the one I love the best.”  Ok, melt my heart now. 

Friday night we went to another Halloween party and this one involved a lot of walking. People wearing normal shoes may not have noticed that there was a lot of walking. And that there were stairs! Have I mentioned that my shoes were heavy?? The sacrifices we must make for art!

Towards the end of my SR time on Thursday Sarah asked how much time was left. I checked. Three minutes. She was already on my lap and we were facing the mirror. I threw my arms around her and said, “we only have 3 minutes to snuggle!” I hugged her and kissed her enthusiastically while she laughed. Then I paused. She repeated that we only had three minutes to snuggle, although you probably wouldn’t have understood a word because she was instantly in her super excited speedy speaking mode where all sounds blur together. We had a wonderful three minutes.

When we returned from gymnastics yesterday Amy got hurt a bit as she exited the car. I sat on the front steps with Amy on my lap. Then Sarah came over and sat on me too and said we only had three minutes to snuggle. I knew what that meant! Exuberant snuggles for all! I loved this moment for itself and even more for the contrast with the moments just prior when I had been feeling annoyed at my children and annoyed at how injury prone Amy is. When I first sat with Amy I reminded myself to just be as present as possible because usually in the present moment everything is actually ok. I love how being so present allowed me to let go of my anger and then led to that amazing snuggle moment. 

I have been focusing more on my left side. My left side is never the problem and never complains but that means I tend to ignore it. What if that is part of the problem? I am figuring that I just need to shake up whatever has been an unexamined habit, such as always carrying bags on my left arm. Maybe paying more attention to my left side can give my right side more slack to release some tension. Everyone once in a miracle moment I also have the image of responding to the girls in such a way as to give them more slack when they are struggling. Often I respond to whining and screaming with my own grumpiness. This week I have had at least two moments of knowing that their upsets were probably due to overload or hunger and I have been able to cleanly respond with love, giving them slack instead of adding to their tension. One specific moment was when we got back from the Halloween party on Friday and Sarah was screaming about not wanting to get out of the car. I asked if she was overloaded from the party. She said yes and allowed me to easily scoop her into my arms. I love how body learning helps me so much with parent learning and vice versa.

Lots of love to all of you. I hope you know that you are already wonderfulbest.

October 22

Henceforth, Amy's favorite color is no longer pink. It is red, to match her new dress. Her favorite letter is now R (rather than A, M, Y, or S). On the drive to take Sarah to school on Wednesday, Amy belted out a song about all of this. I loved looking in the mirror to see her with her eyes closed and her mouth open wide as she joyfully sang as loudly as she could. Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, our little gym-uniform-lover decided to start the day half an hour early and be dressed and ready to eat at the time she is normally being a light bandit and turning off every light we turn on.

On the drive to school another morning Amy said she had a bite on her neck that was itching. She said, “I think I know how I got it. It was at recess and I think there was a bug that saw me and I didn’t see the bug. It might have been a mosquito.”

Over the past few weeks I have changed how I do dinners and desserts for the girls. I used to always let them have a treat in the morning (as long as they had a veggie first). They would rarely get an evening treat. Now they sometimes have a morning treat (after a veggie) and basically always get an evening treat if they do a good job with dinner. I am not giving them choices anymore as to what is for dinner. It always includes one or two veggies and those vary. Before implementing this change I realized that we were basically down to each child eating one kind of veggie and they weren’t the same. Amy ate frozen peas (still frozen) and Sarah ate dilly carrots. Now they are eating more variety with less complaint. We even had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup one night! Sometimes doing things so normal feels incredible.

Amy’s school had a fall festival. For part of it there was a concert of students playing various instruments. Both of my girls immediately sat down and listened and clapped after each song. Are these my children? I was rather stunned. After a few songs Sarah wanted to stand and wanted me to leave (she always wants me out of the room when she watches tv shows too). Still, I hadn’t anticipated how much they would like the concert and attend to it with no prompting on my part. 

I love how Amy moves through the world. She is so delighted to see her classmates outside of class. It is as if she has discovered a treasure each time. When I take her to school in the morning they all greet each other with joy and they say goodbye at the end all of their own accord. I love how Sarah moves through the world, delightedly using a person’s name and then telling them something, such as that the next day is Wednesday and she can wear gym clothes!

About soup: there is a woman who cooks delicious soup with local ingredients and sells it to people in the neighborhood! All I have to do is order it online and then pick it up on a nearby porch on a designated day. I have known about this option for a year but didn’t try it because I make my own soup. Yes, but. This is so awesome to pay someone else to make soup for me! Lots of different kinds of soup! Delicious soup! This is changing my life!

On an only slightly more profound note than this amazing soup discovery...

I experienced grace this week more deeply than ever before. I could feel that grace, love, and wellness were there for me and all I had to do was accept them. I didn’t have to change or become better first. Grace comes from letting go, letting in, letting be. I felt like I had taken my broken imperfect self to God’s workshop and God said, “oh we just need to do a little of this and a little of that to help you feel better.” And there was grace just waiting for me. It was like standing in the surf and having the water move really far back so I could see. Then the water rushed back a couple days later and I felt like I had been knocked over by a wave and I couldn’t tell how to get back to the air. I cried about everything. Carl held me and listened while I poured out every detail. Sometimes it can feel as if all the little details that may usually be of small concern build together into the wave that knocks me down. I am feeling better today, though I’m still struggling a bit with who I am and how I am in the world.

I think when we lose the sense of grace it is like searching for the pencil that we stuck behind our ear. We are carrying it with us the whole time. 

I hate losing my pencil!

October 15

These updates have changed a bit from their original Sarah-Risey focus. If you only read the blog format and would like to be added to the email list, send me an email at jbriggs1@mac.com. I will no longer post regularly to the Son-Rise Facebook groups. That said...

I think how I respond to myself is how I parent. I have compassion and creativity in many situations. And sometimes I get tight and panicky and have zero space or tolerance and I yell and demand immediate changes. CALM DOWN darn you! RIGHT NOW! RELAX! LISTEN TO ME!!!!! Unfortunately, this proves time and again not actually to be the most effective route. I also think I could perhaps learn from my loving parenting choices about how to be kinder to myself, telling my tight muscles what a good job they are doing and how much I love them.

Wednesday night, Sarah had a party in the middle of the night. Luckily we have two parents, one of whom is patient and kind even in the middle of the night. The other parent is me. I went instantly to threatening to take away things if I was not listened to. I was desperate. Carl not only handled Sarah calmly and kindly, but he gently mentioned to me that he didn’t think threatening to take away things was the route we wanted to take. I love this man. I love that he can be so steady that I can learn from him even in the wee hours. I often go from zero to 60 on my panic-ometer very rapidly. Either I am so clear about things that I won’t panic and get tight at all or I skip any intermediary process and go right to full on tight-panic-threatening mode. (why waste time, really?) I do this with my body pains and with my children. I am hopeful that untangling either strand will help the other strand unfurl.

When Amy suddenly gets sad she describes it as her snuggle tank being empty. This week I had a few moments where I felt like my snuggle tank was suddenly empty. They were moments where I felt incompetent, frustrated, and like a failure of a parent or person (for relatively minor things). Interestingly enough, my shadow headache and strong tension patterns were immediately active. So was the self-judgement and panic about the tension. Things didn’t really calm down until I was talking with my mom and she commented on my language choices when describing my situation. She suggested that perhaps there could be gentler language and a kinder regard for my situation. Once I shifted to more kindness then my tension abated. So obvious and yet so continually elusive!

Recently I had tried increasing my headache meds (under the supervision of my doctor). She had me do an EKG to make sure my body was handling it ok. It wasn’t, so I backed off to my original levels. Part of what I experienced with the increase was extreme fatigue that reminded me of being pregnant (I am not, nor will I be), where I just sort of wanted to pass out sleeping all the time. I felt better once I returned to my normal level. After healing from my bad cold, I had a couple days of feeling the intense tiredness again so I decided to back off the meds another level. One theory with the meds is that if my body gets headaches then it will keep getting them because it becomes a habit. Given my new levels of awareness about the various things I do with tightening my body and my success with getting headache whispers to ease if I let go of the tensions, I think I am ready to do this. I do actually want the feedback of headache whispers if I am tensing my jaw, tongue, psoas, etc.

My Jenny-Rise sessions felt as profound as usual, as if I must have instructions written on my skin of where to go and what to do to exactly target what is feeling like a mess of muscle-sick. I had a long moment where I felt like I was experiencing with compassion many years of selves that had been so traumatized and scared by my headaches. I mean, really, how unimaginably awful to wake up many nights in a row (40-ish nights in the original clusters) feeling like a knife was stabbing through my eye and for years no one had any clue as to what to even call it. I have spent so much of my life being scared to go to bed or in such pain that bashing my head on a bathroom sink seemed like an attractive option. This has been happening for some part of each year for the past 20 years. Anyway, during my time on the table, I felt sympathy for my past self (and current self still living with fear), and I felt like J’s hands were there reassuring me that it was all ok and would all be ok. It reminded me of when animals (and people) need to shake after being scared, as if waves of old fear were moving out of me. 

My Jenny-Rise homework had been to notice my outer right thigh. Just to pay attention to it. Every time I do I realize the minimal regard it usually receives. I also quickly become aware of my right pinkie toe and my leg and foot as a whole. If a person thinks they are holding on to something by just one finger then that finger will probably be working very hard. If they realize they are holding on with a whole hand then that one original finger probably won’t work so hard. I think that my right leg thinks it is holding on by just one metaphorical finger. I think my whole headache pattern is holding on by one finger. Bringing in the awareness of my whole body helps. I also think there is probably a larger scope to consider regarding support from friends, family, life, and love. 

It is astounding how much I can know that I don’t always apply to myself. Sometimes I try so hard to hold onto ease that I get myself into the tightest mess. I try stretching too hard or I yell at myself to relax. After two days of getting myself tight and feeling embarrassed about being an AT teacher who was so uncomfortable, I remembered how I tell people to do myofascial stretching. It is different from standard stretching. I tell people to only go 5% into the stretch so they barely feel like they are stretching. After a couple of minutes they can ease into the stretch more, but still aiming for that 5% feeling. Astonishingly enough, when I did this, it helped! I would also like to acknowledge my kitchen floor. It is always there for me. It is the place I go when I don’t feel like I can manage or know how to function anymore. It can help me find such peace and relief. It is important that it isn’t a bed or couch. It has to be a place that most people don’t consider for lying supine or sitting with no purpose. That symbolically helps me surrender more completely to being exactly where I am internally. I almost always feel better after a visit to the kitchen floor.

Now for the girls...Amy loves school. I am pretty sure Sarah likes school. She certainly loves Wednesdays because she can wear her gym uniform. That is the only day she gets dressed with no prompting. Sarah is excited each morning to see the teacher who helps her out of my car and she is happy at the end when I pick her up. Amy runs to school and tells me about her many friends and all the projects she does. This week each girl had one or two days off from school so they went to daycare. On one of the days I gave Amy the choice of daycare or a pancake breakfast at a restaurant. She deliberated long and hard and picked daycare! I love feeling like the girls are in such good hands wherever they are, whether it is school or daycare or with sitters or SR team members (including the Amy volunteer whose beautiful presence gets me in the SR room). I feel like they are celebrated and loved. We really have an amazing village. 

One SR team member is now moving on. N. has been a truly amazing gift of wonderfulness for the past 4+ years. We will miss him and we send him lots of love and joy and celebration.

During my SR time with Sarah on Thursday we spent many delightful minutes with her sitting on my lap facing me and giving me kisses. She would then say what I usually say: “Oh! Thank you!” We took turns doing this and looking at ourselves in the mirror. It was such a sweet and joyful time. Then Friday afternoon I sat on the couch and both girls climbed on me and we all traded kisses and “oh! thank you” for many minutes. I love the love. The moment with all three of us almost didn’t happen. When they were done watching their tv shows I almost turned things off and walked away. That would have been mom-trying-to-avoid-her-kids. I’m so glad I turned to face forward into being with them.

Thursday night as Carl and I were getting ready for bed, Sarah called out. Carl went in and touched one of her hands to reassure her. She held his hand, brought her other hand up to also hold his hand and then gave his hand a tiny kiss. OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!!! Does it honestly ever get any sweeter or better than that??????  I just can barely contain the adorableness.

Kisses! Oh thank you!

October 9

I interrupt your regularly scheduled update for a PSA…

Please for the love of all that is love and acceptance and respect for others, please register to vote if you have not already done so. Please vote when it is time. Please vote for Hillary Clinton. The latest on dt is horrid. It is the sort of thing that when Amy asked what Carl and I were talking about we had to pause and think very carefully about how to word things to explain the basics of the situation without his actual words. We often tell Sarah and Amy to listen to what the other is saying and if they are saying “no,” especially to something physical, then the person doing the thing needs to listen and stop. DT didn’t listen or stop. He doesn’t think he should. He missed that kindergarten lesson. That is the gist of it. That is not who I want leading our country. I do not think I would be a good president but I truly believe I would do a better job than DT. That is not what I want in any candidate. There are many people with whom I disagree but I still think they would do a better job than I would at being president. So, please vote for Hillary. This should not be a close race in any way. It is as if the country is a truck with precious things in it and the country is deciding whether to have an experienced truck driver do the job or whether the toddler who keeps bashing his toy truck into everyone would somehow do a better job. This is not a hard decision. Don’t pick the toddler who bashes his truck into people and doesn’t listen when they say no. Pick the experienced truck driver who listens and drives carefully and respectfully.

Now back to the update….

Remember when I wrote that I was being so successful in managing my symptoms and keeping my cold mild and my experience peaceful? That did not last. I don’t know if I was just postponing the inevitable or if the time line would have gone as it did no matter what. Last Sunday afternoon I felt great, as if I was all better. Monday I felt the smack down of symptoms and spent most of the week with a terrible, deep, loud cough and a sneezy, drippy nose. I spent two evenings on the sofa mostly upright. I still feel like I learned from the whole situation though. I learned why my cough tends to be worse in the evening when I think I will relax and watch a movie: I tense my body more then and thus cough more. No movie unless it is really really relaxing, like Windham Hill’s Autumn Portrait. I also reframed my nights on the sofa. Usually I have been miserable because my primary focus was sleep and I felt unsuccessful. This time I decided that mainly I was going to be awake and read and then perhaps I would nap some of the time. I kept the light on all night. Both nights were the most peaceful upright nights filled with coughing that I may have ever had. I also shifted to notice that the coughing was important and to let it happen. That helped me become horizontal more quickly because I wasn’t fighting the inevitable coughing fit. I am now 95% better. I also reread Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton. It was so so so so good the second time too. She is so wonderfully wise and loving and human and funny.

Sarah got a new palate expander put in on Tuesday. On Wednesday it started coming out again and we had to make an emergency trip to the orthodontist to get it fully removed. They will call this week so we can think about other options because this one no longer seems viable.

We had a wonderful visit with Grammy and Granddad this weekend. I love noticing how far Sarah’s language and sparkly eye connection has progressed. This isn’t new, but visits sometimes give me a nice frame for noticing the beauty of it. In the evenings Sarah would spontaneously say, “Goodnight Granddad and Grammy. See you in the morning.” She often used their names when wanting to tell them something. Sarah loves pretending to throw up in Granddad’s hair and then pretends to wash it. I’m not sure how this started, but for the past year she sometimes pretends that Carl or I are Granddad so she can do her scenario. Meanwhile, Amy is in love with Wally and Perrine, the stuffed animals that came to visit too. She also had a wonderful time making art with Grammy. She clearly observed some of what Grammy was doing and started doing it on her own paper too. Both girls were upset when it was time to say goodbye. 

Lots of love to all of you.

October 1

Last weekend we attended a birthday party and Sarah easily made friends with new grown-ups and with babies. I love her self-assurance as she sits next to people she has never met.

When I picked Sarah up from school one day her teacher said, “She’s a riot.” I love that her teacher appreciates Sarah’s humor. Sarah truly is a goof and a half of silly wonderfulness. Lately when she goes up stairs she pauses at each stair and bends one knee to touch the step while saying, “oh no! my leg!” If she becomes a comedian specializing in physical comedy I will not be surprised. 

It has been an extremely full week in terms of Jenny-Rise awareness and realizations. Last week I don’t think I included everything so I will catch up here. When I was attempting to hold back tears, J suggested that I not do that because that would be akin to holding back a sneeze. It’s not good to hold it in and it blocks the flow of energy. I was also amazed at his trigger point skill was when he was picking between three of the trigger points in my jaw that were right next to each other. With the first two he didn’t press on them, just touched them and said, “no, not that one, no, not that one,” until he found the one that then brought my previously mentioned tears and before even pressing it said, “that one!” I so want to learn to have that sensitivity coupled with knowledge!

As I find stillness in my right shoulder joint, and as I find 100 layers of letting go possible in the right side of my jaw, and as I discover that I don’t routinely breath into the roundness of my ribs and as I let my back ribs move with my breath, it is as if I am discovering peaceful rooms of space that open inside my mind, in my awareness, where I am welcome to just reside in still beingness. What a gift. What an immeasurable gift. It is as if I have been in what I thought was a room with walls and now I am learning it is filled with doors that open to new beautiful rooms. 

I had a fascinating moment of realization and total body-experience-shifting last week. J asked if I thought I had a lot of insecurity. I said yes because that is how it was feeling as I moved through my feelings of insecurity. Later, though, as I thought about the big picture, I thought the truth is that I must actually feel very secure in my life and the loving support all around or I wouldn’t feel so ready and able to dive into clearing the feelings of insecurity! As soon as I realized that I was actually deeply secure, then that is how I felt. It felt like an affirmation done in the truest sense of just shifting my perspective and seeing a different reality. Sometimes I do affirmations hoping that if I say the words enough they will work like a magic spell and be true, but this felt different. As if with one time of thinking the words they were true, because all I was doing was opening the door that I thought was a wall. Once you see a door you can’t unsee it, even if at times it may seem locked.

So, fast forward to this week when I have been sick. I thought it was a mild cold (and it still does seem to be). Then it seemed to be ramping up right when I thought it should be going away. ACK! No! What if I inadvertently made others sick? I looked in Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life for affirmations regarding coughs and colds. Basically it boiled down to “I am safe. I am loved.” What if I said those in a way to fully deeply realize it instead of in a superstitious panicky way? I was able to do it somewhat! I actually did realize that if in fact I accidentally got others sick, they would still love me and not throw me out with the trash. I made lists in my head of the people who I know for sure love me. I used to do this when I was little and couldn’t find peace or sleep. This time, more than ever, I could really feel and really believe that the love from these dear people would not go away. I slept peacefully. I still had a cough in the morning but I kept reminding myself that just because I had a cough did not mean I was going to go down the road of past horrendous coughs. It just meant I had a cough today and I could focus on having a peaceful body and peaceful breathing. I also took the 365 homeopathic cough remedy that my mom has recommended repeatedly. It seems to really work! My goal with this whole cold is to keep reaching for peace and not to let my body over-react with snot or coughing as it is wont to do. Fingers crossed. I am still sick but it is a better experience than I was fearing. It is a full time job to be aware of my jaw tightening. It is a nearly full time job to keep my body from over reacting to being sick. The girls are getting to watch a lot of tv this week (because Amy has also been sick). At least I am learning a ton.

I feel like I am on a fast track for change and realization and learning and peace and love and wonderfulness. I feel like I am in bodywork grad-school, learning so much with every Jenny-Rise session, with every massage I give, with every time I teach. I learn and grow and become more of who I want to be each time. With my myofascial work I now understand more than ever that it takes as long as it takes. I can really trust myself and my sensing and not rush things. This all feels Son-Risey too. To just be, to follow, to love, to trust. I thank God and the universe and my life for all of the blessings in it. My cup runneth over.

Let it be noted that last night on the heels of all of these amazing experiences and moments of peace and learning, I suddenly felt too tired to keep being peaceful and I started seeing all that I had to learn as a shortcoming (how could I have taught people anything up until now?). This felt like a pot hole in my beautiful road. Carl held me and listened while I cried hard about it all and that helped tremendously. Sometimes I just have to clear the sad out. Then I felt like I could realign with my previous insights and excitement. In the very very very early days of my relationship with Carl I explained my perspective on crying and that sometimes I just need to cry and be listened to and then I will feel better. Thank goodness he has been on board with that. It is what I reach for in the parenting I feel best about, to let the girls’ tears and feelings be there and just hold them and listen without needing to fix or shorten the upset. (I do not at all always reach this amount of space.)

I hope you are all having beautiful weeks filled with space and learning and compassion for pot-holes.