Also, being out of his room has to be better on some level. His room was stark, with dark grey walls and a dark brown sheet over the window. He had large holes punched and kicked into the walls. He never would let me in. Nature outdoors would trump that dark 'prison' hands down.
Yes, I think so very much too, Feeling.
A prison of his own creation. A place more frightening perhaps than the streets, where he can hide or create rituals or be distracted by hunger, and can come to know those in the food kitchens, or in the churches where they serve coffee and donuts.
When one of my children is missing, I like to think that in helping the children of other mothers, maybe another mother is helping one of mine. Would it help you, do you think, Feeling, to donate food or volunteer time or cash to a place similar to somewhere your son may be finding food and the sanity of companionship?
In the city where my daughter was homeless, I have volunteered with other women to make and sell homemade pies. (My daughter is not homeless, anymore.) The rhubarb for the summer pies is donated by gardeners in that city for that purpose. The pumpkin for the Fall pies is from pumpkin donated to the Food Shelf. None of the people the pumpkin is donated to help has rolling pins or pie plates or sometimes, even an oven, to make pie. So, the pumpkin was piling up. And the ladies in the churches in that city all bake during the same week, and everyone knows the pies and jam are coming and buys one to support the Food Shelf. Local grocery stores donate butter and flour and sugar. In the summer, strawberry/rhubarb jam is made and sold, too. The money raised is returned to the Food Shelf, and to other organizations helping the homeless.
I did not volunteer there last year when I was home.
I should have.
I was not cherishing what was right there in front of me all along.
Yes I love this. I wish I could remember now how it went, but there is something that talks about
the joy breaking through. Like, all we need to do is look and there it is and there it always was, underneath. Like Nietzsche's love. Or, like in the song Halleluiah, when he sings about the broken places and the Light, shining through.
I am happy thinking about your daughter.
I have never known someone who knew hula. I have never seen it performed, or been curious about those aspects of Hawaii, before. The information you share with us is beautiful, and there is a sincerity to it that I was missing. I am keyed to listen to all things having to do with Hawaii, now.
But I hear it differently.
My middle son in college up north is very depressed. He feels embarrassed to get help. I texted him...He prefers this to talking. He loves his brother and is worried about him. He is finding it hard to concentrate. He is profoundly sad. I have gently told him to go and talk to someone many times.
It could be that it is hard for him to find words to describe it, Feeling. Remember when we were quoting Elie Wiesel? And I think I could not find the exact quote, but it was something to the effect that speaking of a thing in words profanes its sacred horror. My son professes to hate his sister. I think that is his defense. It is horrifying, in the true sense of that word, to love and wish to protect, and to be powerless.
And to have to see it. To have to know the taste of that pain.
Yuck.
Maybe, if you could think of some little treat that he likes ~ not like a gift certificate for pizza or something, but some special cookies or something you could order and have delivered to him there ~ maybe, he would feel very loved then. Like a gush of surprised remembering of those times when he didn't know yet about his brother, and you were just mom and he was himself. Or, something funny, maybe. Or a book that you know he would like that has nothing to do with factual stuff.
Just something loving from Mom.
I do that, but I didn't think anyone really cared whether I did that or not. Then, one day, I said something to one of the grands and heard all about how this one was certain this particular thing had been made specifically for them and no one else could do more than taste it, and someone else ate whatever before anyone else even got any and so on.
So, I thought that was very nice.
They felt loved, and remembered, and seen.
Do you think some little something like that might help your son?
His I.Q. was in the upper 2%. It makes life more difficult for him. He sees everything and feels such pain for people's suffering around the world.
It does. I wonder if it would be helpful to sort of casually address that with him, sometime. Just something about how difficult it can be. I read a book about the childhoods of Einstein and Galileo and DaVinci and Tesla. I think maybe Ben Franklin, as well.
It was very hard for them, too.
Would volunteering at the local Food Shelf, or maybe, finding out whether there is an organization baking pies and selling them to raise money for the Foodshelf that needs volunteer bakers...could that be helpful to him, do you think?
Some way to help his brother without his brother being the actual one he is helping, in the hope that another brother somewhere is helping his.
My son wouldn't do that. He is so angry about his sister.
Each of us deal with our pain in our own ways.
Feeling, please be careful to recognize when your thinking is running you in spiraling circles of guilt over what is happening with your son. There was a time when I had to choose strength. I learned to say: "This is not helpful or strengthening." And disallow it. There is no point in weakening ourselves with recrimination that doesn't lead us to a new solution or perspective. We have to be so strong just to make it from one moment to the next, and we need to learn to be selective about where we devote our time and attention, and where we allow pain or guilt to be uppermost. When I am at a loss as to why it matters whether I beat myself up or not (and there are so many decisions I would make differently had I known what the consequences would be) I remember that I am the mother. From me, my children will learn how to do this, how to cope, how to value themselves and their lives and their time and their own children.
Thinking like that helps me.
I may not know how to do better? But I know that I want to do better, and maybe, just a little, I know what that might look like. So then, I can try to do that, to be that better, stronger mother I wish I were.
That better, stronger mother I wish, with all my heart and every fiber of my being, that I were.
We are right here with you, Feeling Sad.
Though I am so often distracted by that rotten family of origin of mine.
:O)
Did you know Feeling, that we began attempting to clear those old wounds so we
could be stronger, less conflicted mothers for our troubled kids?
Yep.
That is why I am so normal, today.
Cedar
.
