This past week was a much better week and I’ve been feeling great overall. I had a helpful talk with Samahria (the original Son-Rise mom). I said all of the things that I hadn’t wanted to fully admit to anyone about just how deeply I could resent my sweet Sarah for her condition, her behaviors, and how much I felt like my life was impacted by all of it. I realized that sometimes I scare myself about her health, worrying that she will die, in an attempt to get myself feeling loving instead of resentful. Ugh. Airing it honestly helped me let go of it more, as did her suggestions regarding when Sarah had big upsets when Amy was in the bathroom and to put myself more front and center of my life.
Sarah’s upset when Amy uses the bathroom often comes and goes so I can’t be completely sure that the reason it stopped this time around was my own internal shift, but maybe. We seemed to go rather abruptly from Sarah having extreme screaming and banging-on-the-door times, even doing so after she had been in bed for an hour but then heard Amy close the door and thus got up to protest…to Sarah not reacting at all. The shift coincided with me deciding to react not at all the next time Sarah got upset about the bathroom situation. I talked with Amy and Carl about this too, so we were all in agreement that we were going to completely ignore it as if it wasn’t happening. And then we never got to put it into practice because Sarah hasn’t gotten upset about it again!
I have been reading Emotional Inheritance by Galit Atlas and has given me a lot of things to contemplate with more compassion and understanding than I normally do. Instead of just berating myself for my tense spots in parenting and life, I have realized that maybe I came by all of that honestly. Maybe my relatives going back multiple generations also had such struggles. It is humbling to only now really be contemplating the internal emotional life of my grandparents and what that might have been. Did they also always worry about doing well in school and in life? I know that is such a common thing for people that we don’t really even question it that often. This week I have started to question why I always strive so hard to do well at everything and need that approval from others to feel safe in life. Who was I before I started thinking I always needed to do everything for everyone? Before I needed to get an A on parenting and life?
The really big realization was that I have perhaps been seeing Sarah as an assignment that I needed to do well on. I know I have also diligently worked to support her as who she truly is and to give her lots of room for that, but there is still an undercurrent of needing something from her to feel ok about myself and my choices. As if when the homework assignments of babies were handed out and I realized my kit was missing some components, I just dug down deep and also tried to hurry to catch up to everyone around me. I know I realized rather quickly that catching up wouldn’t be a thing, but part of the drive to try all the therapies and all the dietary things and give all the love has been hoping that it would work. That we would be deemed good enough. That I would be safe and ok. I think that is what a lot of it really boils down to. So, this week I have often reminded myself that I don’t have to always do everything well and it is ok to make mistakes. It is ok, really really really ok for Sarah to be Sarah. Even with parenting Amy and running the household, there is perhaps more breathing room to make choices that aren’t always about taking care of other people and the house. I know I do make such choices all the time and it’s not really new, but to really not feel guilty about reading my book when there are dishes? Well, that is still a work in progress.
We have learned by experimenting that Claritin really isn’t strong enough for Sarah’s allergies so we have switched to Zyrtec. The Allegra was annoying with the twice a day doses or needing to swallow a pill and the fruit restriction. Sarah’s symptoms of phlegm and headaches and acid reflux are much improved overall but we aren’t totally free of them so it is still a journey.
Remember how Sarah really wanted a certain book about a frog? Well, the librarian who helped order a book from a different library was clearly wise and magical. It was in fact THE book!! Sarah has been thrilled to have it and I even remember us having it before. It is jellyfish who come to tea and it only has a frog on the first page, but it does have holes to poke your finger through. Coinciding with the arrival of the book, Sarah has wanted to eat breakfast on her own in the family room while reading the book and listening to music. When she came home from school each day she went up to her room and shut the door to be on her own looking at the book and then to nap on her own. On the one hand that all seems like normal growing up and into teenager hood, on the other hand I missed Sarah wanting to spend time with me! Even though I so often didn’t want to do snuggle time when she wanted to, once she stopped asking I felt bereft. Sarah has also wanted to eat dinner by herself, either being outside while I am inside or being at a different table if we are outside. Since Carl is away, Sarah still wants to sleep next to me and our interactions overall have been loving and connected, but it is definitely a little different with how often she wants to be on her own.
Carl is away in British Columbia doing a 7 day intense mountain biking race to honor his friend who died over a year ago, with whom he was originally going to do the race in 2020. The original plan was to do the race to honor the friend’s son who had died. So now Carl is biking to honor both of them.
Sarah has been interested in listening to a version of “Amazing Grace” sung by an acapella group from Swarthmore college from when Carl and I attended. It is my favorite version of the song and I used to sing it to Sarah when she was little. What surprised me this week was that she asked me to sing it with her!! She never does that! She never wants me to sing anymore. But now she does. And she wants me to play the song on repeat, which I’m happy to do. Amy didn’t believe that there were other songs on the album that would feel non-Christmassy so I did play a snippet of “Kiss the Girl.” A little while later, as I still sat at the dinner table with Sarah (an unusual meal together), she sang, “La la la la la… kiss the mom,” and came over to give me a kiss! The timing was perfect as I was feeling sad about something unrelated to kids, worrying that somehow I had messed up in another area of my life. She asked why I was sad. I said I had nickel feelings. She hugged me and said, “there, there, mama, it will be alright.”
Amy was interested in possibly dying her hair so I had ordered Manic Panic, some temporary dye that comes in fun colors. We did a super temporary dye that unfortunately resulted in Amy’s hair feeling like dry twigs that might snap off. It took a ton of brushing to get it to feel like hair. The next day she washed it out and we used the regular dye to put a purple streak in her hair on either side of her face. I used a different purple to dye all of my hair, and the places where I had white hair are definitely the brightest. Sarah got into the dye while I was on a phone call and attempted to dye her bangs. I think she didn’t put in enough dye for long enough and maybe used the wipes meant for cleaning dye away. Her bangs didn’t actually change color, which is just as well because her school doesn’t permit students to dye their hair. Honestly, part of me wishes Sarah had been successful because I wanted to see what her school would have done. But I’m not going to flout the rule on purpose so I’m leaving her hair as it is.
Amy’s school bus did not in fact come any earlier in the mornings than it ever did, except maybe by 5 minutes. She had been told it would come 15 minutes earlier but what that really meant was that she just waited an extra fifteen minutes at the bus stop. Now we have been told she will be on a different morning bus altogether and she has to be out there even earlier. Fingers crossed.
I got out of jury duty! I turned in my letter from the pediatrician and was exempted within a few minutes of my arrival. The exemption is good for five years! So I took the bus to get home, stopping at the library to pick up THE frog book for Sarah. Then, instead of ubering or busing (I had ubered downtown rather than deal with parking), I walked all the way home from the Squirrel Hill library. For those of you familiar with the east end of Pittsburgh, you know what a long walk that was, especially with the Fern Hollow bridge still out of commission. As I round the bend on my 6 month new-hip-versary, I am so pleased to be able to do such a long walk.
Lastly, I listened to some episodes of Glennon Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things in which she interviewed Dr. Becky Kennedy, a parenting expert. Dr. Becky’s way of explaining things was reminiscent of many things I have learned or thought about, but said in new ways and at the right time to be newly helpful. One metaphor she uses is that the parent is like a pilot of a plane. When there is turbulence, if you are a passenger, you want a pilot who will be confident and steady, even if they leave the screaming passengers alone while they go to the cockpit. You don’t want a pilot who also gets scared by turbulence (big feelings from kids) or asks if there is anyone else who knows how to fly the plane. She also talks a lot about active listening and honoring the experience your kids are having, even if you aren’t going to change your answer that they may be resisting. Anyway, I highly recommend those particular episodes.
I have been watching The Great British Baking Show. Amy has joined me the past two nights and that has been a lovely snuggly time together on the couch. The only trouble with watching the show is that in my dreams I seem to be trying to bake things or need things to be just so. There was a night when Sarah needed to get up to pee, but in my confused dream state I was trying to stop her because we all needed to look the same and stay in our boxes! Last night I can’t tell if Sarah had a few startle seizure moments or if I was just in my baking show dream state and trying to stop her from moving. Maybe both. I don’t know.
Anyway, I hope you are well and that you have someone to listen to your deepest feelings and help you forge ahead into new freer living.
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