February 7

Last week when I wrote I wanted to keep everything focused on the positive side because all of what I wrote was so true and I didn’t want to take away from it at all. The details that didn’t make it in had to do with our ongoing potty journey that is most of the time fine and not an issue but every once in a while is an issue. I felt discouraged and as if we will never figure out the food situation or the possibly related potty situation. I think having the nine year mark made things seem more desperate because if it has been nine years we should have this figured out by now. But why? It was incredibly helpful once I realized that it will actually be ok if Sarah and I spend our whole lives trying to figure out the right food situation for her and if she never gets the potty stuff 100%. She is at 95% and if she is there for her whole life that is actually really ok.

I was also a bit grumpy about some misinformation regarding food that I had been giving Sarah. We order half hogs from a local place and when I first started doing this it was because the description passed muster and the sausages were seasoned only with salt and pepper. Or so I was told. Thanks to an error with my latest hog order, instead of being given sausage links I was given bags of ground sausage. Bags with the ingredients printed. Ingredients such as MSG. ACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do not know if these were the same ingredients in the links, but I do know the links were not just with salt and pepper as I had been told. Argh!! I try to be so careful and then this!?!?!?! On the plus side, I am so glad that there was the error so I could find out the bigger error and this will be the last hog we get from these people. Apparently, Sarah is also ok with those crappy ingredients, though I still want to avoid them for all of us.

Yesterday was a very hard day. I was with the kids a lot all week and most of the time it was easy and in flow and even when I had to tell them no it felt ok for me. Having a hard time yesterday seemed like it came from nowhere, but maybe I was just ready to not be so available to the kids. The food and potty situation for both is also on my mind and I’m stressing a lot about it. I try so hard to give them a variety of healthy options and to make sure they get enough fruits and vegetables. They often do have choices which then makes it harder if and when I want to say, “this is what we are having.” They also have different preferences of how they eat their fruits, veggies, and protein and there isn’t a ton of overlap. Most of the time this is ok. But when I do so much and then they still aren’t regular with their bodily functions and then they turn up their noses at something they used to like, then grrrr. I also feel so uncertain about moving forward with Sarah’s food options. I want to much to keep expanding them and I worry that I am doing so both too quickly and too slowly/controllingly. I have been tracking Sarah’s food daily for maybe 3 or more years and I still feel like I know nothing. I know that isn’t precisely true, but that is my feeling. So I had a good cry yesterday and that helped. Before the cry I also growled loudly into the kitchen air while the girls were in the dining room. It seemed to help diffuse things when I turned and assured them that I wasn’t mad at them, I was just feeling mad and frustrated in general.

I have been feeling renewed grief regarding William’s death. I just don’t understand how he isn’t around anymore. It’s not that I spoke with him often or saw him often, but his presence in this world was deeply important to me. He was just one of the best people to have ever existed. I also feel like my belief in the power of prayer and happiness and healthy choices is shaken. If so many prayers from around the world couldn’t change things for William and if his amazing outlook on life and love couldn’t change things then what hope do I have?! This feels very selfish to write because I know there are many who feel his absence more acutely than I do. But it is still on my mind and influencing my being and since this is the forum for sharing all of that, there it is.

Now the flip side… I was teaching Alexander Technique at the massage school earlier in the week and felt myself wanting to protect myself by inwardly judging some of the students or disliking them when I feared they disliked me/the work. I paused. I noticed. I let it go and chose to love them all with no changes to any of us needed. We had a great class. I had a good connection with the students I was nervous about. I felt like I was able to turn on my best Son-Rise self because of practicing that muscle with Sarah, because of thinking about how William moved through the world, because of knowing Sarah and I will be ok if we deal with food issues forever. That moment was such a gift.

Sarah had an awesome day on Thursday. It was her 100th day of kindergarten so they had cupcakes and hot chocolate and marshmallows. They made crazy hats. They wore pajamas. And when she came home there was a Gustavus sweatshirt waiting for her! Gustavus Adolphus is a college in MN that some of the girls' relatives attended. When Sarah was 2 her great grandmother got her a sweatsuit that was gray with black letters spelling Gustavus and stripes down the arms and legs. She loved it. Recently she has been asking for the sweatshirt and no substitute has been good enough. The college doesn’t make the same sweatshirts anymore. So Sarah’s amazing Grandma made her a sweatshirt. Sarah loooooves it. She was ecstatic as she pulled it over her head. Then she asked, “where are the sweatpants?” Ha! Luckily she seems to have let that slide, which is good since she had never mentioned wanting them before.

I hope your days are going well with space for all of your feelings and thoughts and being.