Emotions

As I look at you sleeping in my lap, the smile tips the corners of my mouth,at the same time as the tears sting the corners of my eyes. 

I watched you fight a battle I have not seen in a while as you faded not so gently off to sleep tonight. While you have needed to know I was nearby lately, it has been a while since I have seen the pure panic in your eyes as you fight with all your being to not sleep. 

Wiggle the legs.....fiddle with the fingers......shift position...... now shift again.....whatever it takes.... don’t go to sleep, just keep checking. 

At last you curled on to me and asked “am I safe?” And the past came forward once again and the whispered mantra of many nights slipped from my lips. “You are safe, mommy is here. You are safe, I will not leave you.” Slowly, softly until the panic subsides, your head nods in agreement and eventually your body accepts and drifts off to sleep. 

And so the smile plays with the corners of my mouth as I look at you my beautiful son, sleeping with your head in my lap. Knowing that I am mommy and that those words, that reassurance relaxes and comforts you to sleep. I smile, my heart fills.

And yet...

The tears threaten to come as I look at the scar on your forehead from a nightmare that got you, before I could get to you. As I watch, even in sleep the tense movements of your body. I sit waiting for you to relax, for true comfort and rest to win. The tears silently slide as I wonder how to heal a hurt I can not truly comprehend. 

And yet for some reason this mix of emotions in both of us seems almost appropriate this night..the eve of Mother’s Day weekend.

The sweet taste of success

 Little Man has been seeing his therapist for the last 18 months. She is an amazing woman who has saved my sanity more than once. She has made hospital visits, answered phone calls and generally been available whenever we need her.  This week we had a session that was a sweet taste of success for all the work that he has been doing. He spent 55 minutes creating stories, laughing and playing with a sparkle in his eye that even made her comment.."wow what a great sparkle his eyes have."

His stories he created were age appropriate, 4 year old fight the bad guy, make him good bring him to our side little boy stories. There were no scary moments in the story, there were no babies being left by mommies that didn't want them, there were no people jumping out of the darkness to grab him, there were no ghosts trying to take him away. Nope none of that. There was just giggles and full out belly laughs as he played with his therapist and I.  Quite a change from a week ago when he role played a mommy who looked at her baby and said "I just don't want you go find another mommy"

Progress is so sweet. That laugh...that sparkle (which I do see in him more and more lately) make every penny I have paid and am in debt worth it. His happiness, safety and security are worth it all.

Grow and heal Little Man...embrace the world and show them your strength. You are unstoppable!

Standing humbly before you..

There are moments in life that strip you bare and leave you raw. Some of them are wonderful amazing moments, but lots of them are hard, tough moments. Whatever kind of moment they are, the final outcome is almost always growth.

Becoming a mother was a strip me bare and leave me raw moment that was both wonderful and hard. I think most parents would agree that parenthood does that to you whether you have a biological child, adopted child, step-child or foster child. And most certainly there has been growth out of that moment when I became a parent.

I live for those moments that are wonderful and amazing and I believe that I revel in those. People at work are probably sick of the pictures I share or the funny "Little Man-isms", but those moments, those funny statements, those happy pictures bring such peace to my soul. Those moments bring hope..bring the future to me now.

At some point when you are parenting a child from a "hard place", you lose the realization that you are facing those strip you bare hard moments until the one that knocks you flat to the ground, down to your knees. I don't share much about all the medical stuff Little Man is going through because it is his privacy and because there are lots of people who don't/won't understand all that he goes through.  I am choosing to share a little more today because I am on my knees, picking myself and him up.

Little man was diagnosed over a year ago with PTSD and has been seeing a therapist. She is awesome and he is doing amazing. She and I often sit back in amazement, looking at each other with questions in our eyes about how 'old" he really is, not on paper, but in his soul. He "remembers" things and shares things that break me...shatter me...and rebuild me all in about an hours time. "He was so little,"  "He was just a baby"...I have said those things, fought those thoughts and realized that my knowledge of what the body/brain holds on to..."remembers".... is limited to my world.

His world before me was not my world it was hard in ways I can not imagine, nor do I really want to, but I listen to him...I learn from him...from my 4 year old. He teaches me to reach further, to try hard, to laugh and smile at the moments that make you happy.

His medical struggles continue from there...they involve seeing specialist in both GI and Neurology. But for his privacy I chose not to divulge it all on my blog.

Why am I sharing any of it, you may ask?  Because the recent loss of our dog has triggered things in Little Man that set us back a few paces. That brought both of us to our knees slightly bloody as we fight to get back up. I will fight along side him, because he truly is the greatest inspiration to me. He can be fighting a demon I can not see, cuddle up to find comfort in me..sleep for a few and then awaken and find the beauty in the world, things to laugh at, flowers to pick and reasons to say I love you.

But this fight is costing money and lots of it. I am a single mom, who is a teacher. I love my child and I love my students. Economic times are hard and salaries are frozen while medical costs increase. I have reached a point of not having enough. But I won't stop his care, it is too important. So here I stand humbly before my friends and family asking you to join my fight for this precious boy. Prayers are always welcome. Phone calls and visits are a blessing. But in being real and honest finances are where the help is most crucial. I have set up a place for people to donate if they can. Any amount helps. If you can donate we are thankful, if you can't but will pray or call or visit we are just as grateful. If you would share the link and ask for help on our behave, I will have to pick myself back up from a stripped bare raw moment of gratitude.

I set the account up last week and was blessed rapidly with $500 in donations, it is a start on the mountain of debt I have accumulated. But I have to keep asking for it will not magically fund itself.

Thank you to all who have supported us along the way. To those at work who hug me, reassure me and listen to my stories you are a greater blessing than I can ever repay. To all who have walked this journey with us knowing or not knowing the details of the  struggles, your presence in our lives is a blessing.  While I am working my way to standing up and cleaning up. While I am holding Little Man high up so he can reach victory I am remind that God is walking with me, for he has placed you all in my life.

http://www.gofundme.com/2k7248

When new loss triggers old loss

This post is long overdue, but things have been a little crazy. So it is catch up night on the blog.

About  4 weeks ago, our doggie suddenly passed away. Cassi had been with me for 9 years and had been Little Man's best buddy from the beginning.  Cassi was patient, kind and generally wonderful as Isaiah crawled all over, including on her! He would use her to pull up on and try and walk and she would just sit there patiently letting it happen. He would "exchange" toys with her, because in a babies mind the one the dog is chewing on must be more interesting than my toy :) And she would even help him clean his plate at every meal!

I knew it would be hard when she passed, but I really thought I had a few more years with her. Little Man handled it for the most part amazingly well. He commented that "Jesus took his dog", not in anyway angry about it just kind of matter of fact. While he still occasionally asks for her or where she is mostly he has moved on..during the daytime hours.

What I forgot to anticipate in the midst of my own grief, was what loss was going to trigger for him.  It has been 4 weeks and we are mostly back to a normal routine. For the first few nights he was a "popcorn" child....up and down, up and down checking, rechecking and verifying that I was still here, that I had not disappeared. He would only fall asleep if he was touching me, could see me, feel me. His world of safety had been disrupted. Everything he had grown to believe would be there, the things he had trusted would be steady were not anymore. He is too young really to understand death and that life will end. And while he can not verbalize it completely, while he can not truly comprehend it all at 4, his body remembers loss...his brain stored the emotions..the fear..the hurt. And so we take a few steps back in order to move forward. We pause..regroup as a family and re-establish safety. We talk..oh how great it is now to be able to talk to him and have him talk. I love the growth we have experienced and while those weeks were hard I love seeing where we came to on the other side!

We love you Cassi girl and we miss you tons. Waiting to see you again at the rainbow bridge!

Bald and beautiful

      So yesterday I made a small contribution in the fight against kids cancer.  I say small because I recognize that it will take much more than the $900-ish dollars I earned or even the $24k my team earned to make a sizable dent in finding cures or even just better treatments for kids cancer.

    Now I recognize on a different level than money, I made a much bigger contribution. I have had more conversations in the last 24 hours about kids cancer research than I probably have in ever.  When you go from having hair halfway down your back on Friday to no hair on Saturday it makes people stare, it makes people ask questions, sometimes appropriately and sometimes not :) Now as someone who chose to shave my head I expected the stares and questions and am not bothered by them. (and having a child of a different race has made me well aware that most people do not know how to ask questions appropriately.) I have also been the recipient of many compliments.

   My goal in shaving was to raise some money, donate hair ( was 17" donated when I cut it yesterday), stand beside one precious little boy (Mr M), lets lots of kids know I believe in them and their fight and most importantly strike up some conversations with people about research for kids cancer. I think I have accomplished all of those.

   What I did not expect is what I would gain from  the process of shaving. I have often felt that as a female in this society I was identified on some level by my hair (how long it is, how styled it is, what color it is and so on.) Yesterday I took that identification away. My hair is a quarter of an inch long now and I have never felt more feminine. Yeah I have felt pretty at times when dressed up for weddings or special events, but now it is different. Now I get to let me shine through. I get to be vulnerable as people ask questions, as people try and identify male or female. Please note the vulnerable thing is hard and scary for me. And identifying myself as beautiful is even harder.  But I have never doubted the internal me, the me that loves and cares with all my heart, the person who sometimes forgets a boundary when caring about a friend. That part of me I knew/know is good. Now I get the opportunity to let that strength be what people see because I can't hide behind my hair. My femininity, my beauty comes out in the caring I have for others, my strength comes out as I say "nope I am not fighting cancer, but lots of little kids are and they need our help. I shaved to financially contribute to St Baldrick's, but also to make people aware that this is an area we need more money for research." Now I get to show myself in my actions and in some ways I get to do it while thumbing my nose at the way society defines beauty.

    Today I see the beauty that my friends have always told me was there. I hope to hang on to that, but I am well aware that there will be times I fail at holding on to that truth.  That vulnerability and societal perceptions will creep in and test that.  As a victim of past abuse I will stumble, the voice in the night will come back. But for today I hang on to the beauty I see in the mirror. I hang on to all the people who have called, texted and commented that I "rock" the bald look, that my "head is nicely shaped", that I am beautiful.

 So tonight as I think it through, the lesson I want my son, my middle school students, the cancer patients young and old, male and female, bald or not to know is that their beauty is so much more than their hair or any part of their physical appearance. Their beauty is the way they care, the way they persevere, the strength visible in their eyes and their character. Their beauty is who they are, how they carry themselves, how they radiate from the inside, and they LOOK beautiful !

Before

During

Immediately after

Glad to have support

Little Man kissing my head. He loves how soft it is, but misses the long hair!

20 days...beauty...where do you see it?

   Last night I attended a friends' wedding. I don't get dressed up with hair and makeup done often, but it is fun to do when I get the chance. People tell me I should do it more frequently, but it is generally laziness on my part that keeps me from doing it :) I admit it.  So this is how I looked last night

Looking at this picture I think it has finally really hit me how much hair I will be shaving off in 20 days.   I have a lot of hair :) I have wondered since I started this process and people have questioned me, if it was about me losing my hair or the perception from society about women and hair.

Last night I got a little sad about the fact that I would be bald. I wondered if people would have complimented me as much with no hair as they did with long curly hair. (Don't get me wrong I know my friends compliments are genuine and lots of them are about the beauty of me as a person enhanced by me being dressed up and done up!) But as I sat in that thought for a minute I remembered the teenage girl battling cancer getting ready for a school dance or her prom and having no hair. Or the elementary aged girl whose friends have pigtails and braids when she can't. I can't imagine how unbelievably  hard that scenario is for those girls or their parents.

It is easy for me in my mid thirties to decide to shave my hair. To chose to face societies looks, stares, comments and questions about being bald. It is easy for me to say hair is just hair and it grows back. But I am not the one losing it as a side effect of medicine. I am not losing my hair providing a daily reminder as I look in the mirror of the battle being waged inside my body.

So while I am nervous and I am sure when I see all the hair gone will be a little sad and maybe even emotional, it is minute as compared to all the kids battling cancer. So friends  I have a challenge, if you see a child, male or female, young or old whose is bald take the time to tell them they are beautiful! Make them smile.

Donate if you will to help Child Cancer research
http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/579066/2013

22 days

                    In 22 days I will go from having hair halfway down my back to being bald. I have been told I am crazy, insane, amazing, weird and a variety of other questions/comments  have been thrown at me as to the why I am shaving my head.  I have been asked why not just donate it to Locks for Love, which by the way I am doing as well. The answers to all of this started out simple and easy in my mind, they have become a little more complex but the root of they why is still the same.

Childhood cancer SUCKS. It has always sucked, but when it touches your life, your family, suddenly the reality of it becomes much more apparent, much more tangible.  This little boy is the reason I will go from long hair to no hair in 22 days.

At the beginning of March 2012 my best friend's life was turned upside down. Her family became the "1 every 3 minutes" that heard the words none of us ever want to hear, your son has cancer. Since then it has been a whirlwind of doctors appointments, treatments, hospitals and tests. Through all of it M has stayed happy and charming. In fact during the "off" treatment times you might not even know he was sick if you didn't know. His parents are rock stars and his big brother is awesome! 

I am far away, the other side of the country, so I don't get to be there to be a daily support. I call and check in but it is not the same. So when my school signed up to do St Baldrick's for the 3rd year, I knew it was something I could do to "help". I wanted to do something to make a difference and show this little boy what a hero he is to me.  I am not sure that at 2 he will understand the symbolism behind why I am shaving, but he will know someone else is now bald like him! 

Hair is a simple price to pay if it helps find a cure!

If you feel moved please donate to my head shaving :)

http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/579066/2013