I'm so glad you decided to hang around. We are an opinionated bunch here---mostly because we've been there/done that---I, in fact, own several t-shirts. It's a really difficult road to walk. And doing it alone can be so taxing. I've been here for a long, long time---my difficult child will be 21 in May, I think I joined when he was 14 or 15. The aim is to survive these years.
We all have to choose what is best for our on family in our own communities. I know that after difficult child had wrecked him truck 3x everyone here thought I was crazy for letting him keep it. But I live in a small southern town with no public transportation---no car=no job,no school, no future. I did what I knew I had to do. Others disagreed, but we agreed to disagree.
If you are going to survive the next few weeks, months, years---however long it takes for your difficult child to choose a different path, you will need this place. And even after he has turned the corner and seems to be heading in the right direction, you will need this place. We all seem to suffer from at least a small amount of PTSD after raising a difficult child.
You know, that feeling you get when the phone rings in the middle of the night---and your heart races and all the horrible things fill your head----and you can't breathe and you don't want to answer because you know that something else has happened----
But here---we learn help each other deal with those feelings. We vent, we cry, we encourage, we advise, we laugh, we praise, we applaud----but we try hard to never, ever judge.
