I no longer feel like running in that way is the thing that is needed.
I ran too, at first. Isn't that something, Echo?
We must be much alike. When the running or the cleaning or the drinking or the husband began not to touch the pain, more complex things to learn could still touch and change and steer me through.
Even now, I feel myself gathering. It's like a gathering of intent, as all the portions of self devoted to suffering come home, empty.
Empty, now.
You know that time before the storm, when the wind is just beginning, just faintly beginning, to rise?
Usually smart young adults who are different and struggled in school, but deep inside really ARE smart and capable. Although conventional school was not a good fit for many of our difficult adult children, the streets are more forgiving and accepting and our adult kids can use the smarts they have to survive.
I wholeheartedly agree with this ~ other than the part about the streets being more forgiving. I think street morality is brutal, clear, and immediate.
There are no second chances. Punishment is swift and certain. Foolishness or even momentary inattentiveness will get your things stolen and no one in all the world is going to listen to the child's outraged cries of "No fair!"
And there is a kind of stability in that.
I learned that from talking to difficult child daughter.
Our systems of education have become bureaucratized to the point that they cannot enfold those whose talents and energy levels might flourish in a different environment. Once in Britain, there was a little girl who just could not make it in the school system there. She fidgeted, she was a dreamer, she could not stand to complete her lessons and she hated to read. She was in trouble all the time, and none of the other kids liked her because she was competitive and even, mean. Finally, upon the recommendation of the exhausted teachers and principal, her poor mother took the child to a psychiatrist. Finally, after a long and careful assessment, his diagnosis was that the child moved and heard and experienced differently than the rest of us. For her, school was not a place where her talent, her true talent, was even acknowledged, let alone disciplined and developed.
Upon the psychiatrist's recommendation, the mother began ballet lessons for the child.
The child grew up to became Britain's premier ballerina, choreographed many ballets, and was instrumental in developing the premier ballet school in Great Britain.
She traveled all over the world and received many accolades.
It seems that as our schools are being consolidated and the community intimacy that once existed is being destroyed, those children who are different are being seen, not as kids whose talents are yet to be discovered, but as stubborn or recalcitrant or defiant children, willfully misbehaving.
If it were one or two kids, then we might accept the need for medications to help them sit through the interminable school day. But with so many of our children falling to the wayside, something is wrong with the way we are educating our kids, and I think it has to do with loss of the feeling of community that existed when schools were neighborhood schools reflecting the realities of life so clearly.
That is where gangs come in.
The world is a scary place, if you are alone...and our kids are so much alone in their school lives.
It matters how we think about things. The truth is that every one of our children were wonderful, tender beings at one point. The truth is that in their own circles, they are seen as wonderful beings by those who believe as they do. So, it seems to me that maybe the crux of the issue is for us to see that. The child is choosing to live the life he or she has been born into.
We don't accept that this could be true. Not for our child. We are horrified. We just cannot believe it could be happening. We perceive the child as helpless or inept or victimized in any of a thousand ways.
What if we did not do that?
What if we said, "Whoa! Not a path I would explore. What is it about this lifestyle you find satisfying?" Not "Where did we go wrong?" but "What is it like, for you?"
difficult child daughter posted something about the father of our first grandchild on FB yesterday. The father died some years back. The post was so full of honor for him, and of pride in the child they had created.
?
She sees so differently than I do, but she loved that horrible person all of her life and even after his death.
?
What if we could honestly say to the kids, not "I will save you!" but that we have no intention of funding any path that does not lead where we intended for their lives to take them.
And what if we could then let them go and live our own lives for the incredible gift just being alive, being here at all, really is? In our minds and hearts I mean. Instead of suffering, what if we could devote our energies to creating realities of the things we are curious about?
Or to watching the stars at night.
It is a miracle, out there.
Cedar
Someone of us, one of the fathers, posted that the key to our suffering was to stop judging our children for who they are
and for who they are not.
