When you are sitting in the room with the specialist that is giving you a diagnosis for your child, it changes your entire world view. It changes who you are as a person and who you thought you were as a parent. I never truly understood my own strength until I had to become someone else's voice and advocate. I never realized how deeply I could feel about the treatment of other's until I could see it from both sides of the situation. I never thought about how much I wanted to make a change, a difference until I truly realized the world that we are living in. I can only speak to my own views and feelings about being a parent. My family is my entire world and I feel like I can never do enough for them. I constantly feel like I don't tell them I love them enough, that I haven't taught them how to handle situations or haven't taught them to stand up for themselves. I question every decision I make and then feel guilty as though I haven't given it my all. I have massive amounts of mom guilt from working and not being there for every small achievement at school. I sometimes feel like my daughter gets the short end of the stick because of the times we have to cater to our son with special needs. Other times I feel like my son has the short end of the stick because our daughter is a person that demands attention and loves to talk while he sits quietly on the side lines. Then there are the days where I hug them and ask them, you know I love you right and they say yes mom and tell me how much they love me to. There are the days when my special needs son looks at me and says, "Mom I'm happy." There are the days that my daughter looks at me and says, "You are the best mommy in the entire world."
For all the days where I question every decision and feel the mom guilt, I can only say one thing, Thank the heavens for my support. My hubby, the man who gets the kids ready for school every day. The man that is on every field trip, who takes pictures and videos of every performance I can't make it to and who is there being the most amazing father to both our kids. Every person at the school knows who my husband in because he puts in that kind of effort. I am so utterly grateful that he works from home making it possible for me to be outside of the home working. I am even more grateful that he is the kind of father he is because it makes it so much easier knowing and trusting that the kids are in the most wonderful, caring and loving hands other than mine. It is difficult being a special needs parent, there are meetings, IEP's, therapies, conventions, research, offensive people, people who are rude, stare, point...There is just a lot to face, deal with and conquer. I am so utterly grateful to have my hubby by my side. He is such an amazing support system. He is strong and my rock and I definitely don't tell him enough how much everything he does means to me. So hubby you are amazing and I love you more than words can ever express. You are wonderful and an amazing father and husband.
Over the past year we have faced several deaths in the family, changing of jobs, a new school year with all sorts of obstacles and mom guilt galore. There have been long hours, stress, questioning of choices and feeling like I have not done enough for everyone. I have been overwhelmed and hugely locked in my own head while I worked through everything. I am finally coming out the other side and feeling more like me. I do not like feeling out of control and over compensate by kind of shutting everyone out. It happens occasionally and is a horrible flaw that I am trying to get away from. So now that I am out of my head and ready for the new year, new possibilities and putting more of myself out there I am back again to continue sharing my journey of an everyday, emotional mess of a woman and mom...
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