IAD, it's a struggle for me too. Cedar gave you the resources that helped me too. That talk by Brene Brown is wonderful. The books which helped me a lot are Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown and really any of Pema Chodrons books, but I really liked Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and change.
For me, it is a spiritual opportunity for living within all of the strange paradoxes of life, all of the remarkable joy and the undeniable pain, and trying to maintain some kind of equilibrium. It ain't easy. We're dealing here with the people we likely love the most in our lives and when their lives explode, the almost natural tendency is for our lives to shatter along with them. However common and real that is, I personally don't think it's inevitable...............BUT and it's a big but, it's a lot of work to be able to pull that off.
For me, it has had a lot to do with facing what scares me, my fears. When it comes to our kids, there is a lot of fear. Perhaps the biggest one is that they will die, but there are so many others........that they are in jail, that they make a choice which ruins their lives, that it is something we did or didn't do that prompts their demise, that they don't find any joy in life, that someone harms them..................perhaps all the usual fears of parenting but brought to huge proportions because of their mental issues, substance abuse, poor choices, whatever. Living within that constant fear about our kids can ruin our lives.
I think the Pema Chodron books give a very good explanation of how to live within all of the uncertainty and chaos, putting it into a spiritual context of having each episode of facing our fears being used as an opportunity for awakening. For me that makes sense along with the Buddhist philosophy of recognizing that attachments are what cause our suffering and that if one looks deeply, one can find some meaning in that suffering. And, to find and let go of our attachments, whatever they are.
For me, in addressing it as a spiritual journey goes hand in hand with making sure that I bring the same compassion and care to my self. Often I think, as women, our care of our kids supersedes our self care. Over time that can do serious harm to us in depletion of our own resources. We may not even identify it because we're so used to doing it. So self care becomes extremely important. And, I believe it goes way beyond getting our nails done and having dinner with our girlfriends, although I believe that is important, what to me is monumentally important is that we have compassion for ourselves and that we love, accept and honor ourselves in the middle of this painful landscape. I had to look deep in to my own issues with self love to recognize the places where self cruelty, judgments, self blame, unreachable expectations, control, shame, fear and denial were hidden.
What I used to think was self care in reality was a drop in the bucket in what my practice in that area looks like now. It had to do with taking away the enabling stance of external focus and making it an internal focus. For me, that external focus on my daughter was detrimental for both of us. At some point when our kids grow up, I think it is a natural occurrence for that focus to shift back to us, but with difficult child's that doesn't usually occur, so we end up in an unnatural connection which, in my opinion, is unhealthy and harmful. When our kids are mentally challenged or suffering in substance abuse, those lines of demarcation become very difficult to determine.
I often think that the stages of grief are what we go through here on this site. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We slide around all of those feelings for a long time. At one point in my life I worked with people who were dying and their families and it was an extremely sobering and enlightening experience for me. Some people get to that acceptance before they pass and it is a remarkable and awe inspiring event. It taught me a lot about how I wanted to live my life. I thought, why wait until I am about to expire before I learn about that kind of acceptance. Well, then life threw me a curveball with my daughter and I was thrown into those 5 stages of grief on a daily basis. I thought I might have been more careful about what I asked for!
Your son and my daughter may be living this life for the rest of our lives, (I know, a sobering thought) or not, we don't know which way it will go. I can't jump into the future and force any outcome, so I am right here in the present moment and that's where I have to put all my energy now. It's all okay right now. Meditation helps a lot. Things like yoga, or Tai Chi, anything that keeps your mind occupied or disengaged so that for just a little bit of time, those fearful thoughts, or what if thoughts, are not holding us hostage. When this first began with my daughter about 2 1/2 years ago, my intention was to find a way to have inner peace in the midst of all of it. That's my daily practice. I get there and I fall off, repeatedly, but the moments I can sustain that peace, even for a tiny amount of time, make a huge difference in my experience of not only this stuff with our kids, but the rest of my life as well.
I look at life as lessons to learn. This is my lesson to learn acceptance. It's a big one. When I read all our stories here, I think that lesson is prominent here, so, for me, in that regard, many of us are on the same journey. I have great compassion for all of us. So much of this, for me, has been learning to turn that compassion onto myself. Out of that, I believe, acceptance of what is, becomes a little easier to find.
