Category: fear

I Won’t Give Up

I wrote the following words earlier this week: As I listen to the discordant, high-pitched voice trample my love and concern, I dream of the day I don’t have to be my own champion. I wrote them in a fictional setting, but these sentiments follow me into my real life quit often. I thought I had gotten to a place where I wasn’t quite so invested in the behavior of my number one son. I tend to take it personally, though I know he has a number of medical diagnoses that exacerbate the severity of his behaviors, that the words he screams in anger don’t mean anything to him. Yet, I keep running to my room in tears, with my heart-broken and my body heavy with the weight of despair.

I have written in the past about my autistic son who also suffers with anxiety and oppositional defiance disorder. So, he has trouble with executive functioning skills, he has poor memory, he is terribly impulsive, and can’t stop talking to save his life. Also, like most children, he is the center of the universe and wants what he wants. Lately, he has become aggressive again. This time around he is bigger and stronger and louder. I leave rounds of aggression with him and am covered in bruises, and two minutes after he calms down enough to apologize he inevitably acts like there wasn’t a hurricane of emotional tantrum with him at the center. Right this moment, for the second time today, he is screaming about how hurt he is, how much we hate him, how we don’t listen to him, how it is basically our fault as his parents that he is screaming and kicking walls loud enough for the neighbors to be concerned. He is harming himself and breaking our hearts and I don’t know what more to do for him. Have you ever wanted to give up? I WANT TO GIVE UP, I WANT TO GIVE UP, I WANT TO GIVE UP! But I don’t. I DON’T give up. Every day I get up and do it all over again, because he is my child and I love him. But, I am not going softly into the abyss. I continue to work at getting him the best medical care and therapy I can. I am just really afraid that one day soon, the decision on how to care for him will be taken from me and my husband.

Does he understand what he is doing and uses the extreme behavior as a way to escape the things he doesn’t like and doesn’t want to do? Does he really not remember, or understand how he is hurting himself, how he is hurting those around him? I feel I no longer know what is prepubescent boy and what is ASD, or Oppositional Defiance, or Anxiety. Hell, maybe it is some nice combination of it all. That is usually how this works, right? Hardly anything dealing with the mind and body is completely autonomous and I should know that. Only, it is hard to be dispassionate and calm in the face of such anger. I know that I want him to accept and respond to help for this latest crisis, I want him to not only realize his potential but reach it too.

I am scared. I am tired. I am hurt. I will pray and continue looking for a good therapist to add to the roster. I will get up every day and do it all again.

Parenting Through The Hurricane

I am back and running after a week of preparations, moving targets, and no power after Hurricane Irma came through. I feel blessed to have come through with our family intact, along with our home. As we continue the clean up efforts, I want to talk about parenting through hurricanes, or any storm. Particularly, parenting exceptional children of differing abilities. In my family, the differing ability we struggle the most with during storms is anxiety.

Anxiety is often thought to be the exclusive purview of adults. It is also portrayed as a person who is afraid to go places or to start things. I’ve learned that anxiety can look like anger through actions and words. It can inhibit sleep, and yes, just plain make you worried about the smallest chance of something going wrong or being different in your well-ordered world. For anxiety sufferers, storms might be right at the top of the list of things they never want to encounter. That is because storms are inherently unpredictable and bring more unknowns than they feel comfortable with.

We have spent years helping our children embrace who they are, including the anxiety. With that, comes lots of plans on how to calm our bodies and redirect our thoughts to what is more likely to happen, not what seems to be the worst scenario. With storms, we try to follow a plan of action meant to minimize their fears and keep them participating in life, rather than focused on the storm. The plan includes being truthful and direct, talks about what we will do in different outcomes, and reminders of past success of making it through storms. That is for the kids. For the parents, the plan is a lot looser. Parent Plan for the Hurricane is a lot less regimented and designed to help us not go crazy trying to manage the fears of the anxious ones. Remember though, it is hard to help anyone with fears that don’t always look like fear and leads them to act out, regress, and spend a bunch of time destroying things in their attempt to control their environment. So the parent plan includes adult beverages and laughter. The adult beverages help the laughter, which keeps everyone calmer.

As Irma made its way towards our state, leaving death and destruction in its wake and on the heels of the devastation in Houston, all parenting had to be done with laughter and love. My kids were scared and extremely concerned about everyone in the path of the hurricane as well as those affected in Houston. Parenting through this time requires patience and dedication. And really, I am a little skeptical that parenting and patience actually go together anyway! Irma caused a lot of damage, yet we were minimally impacted. We will spend time cleaning our home and helping our neighbors to show them how we come back from bad things. I hope it helps, because, hope is all we have. No one knows how well we are helping them, they can barely articulate their own feelings. I also don’t know how well we handle the patient part after the millionth questioning on the same topic. But we try, when we screw up, we talk about how it isn’t easy for adults either. We all just have to keep at it. And then we do that, keep at it. This week we won while parenting through the hurricane. I pray you get some parenting wins this week too.

Get Up Anyhow


This past week has been plagued with illness and ridiculous defiance in the face of truth, and that was just my house. You may remember me talking about my oldest son who has ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), Anxiety, Aggressive Mood Disorder and is Gifted. He has what is routinely described as asynchronous development and is twice exceptional. You can read about those terms here and here. For the past two years my daughter’s behavior has deteriorated at a rapid rate and while I knew she is Gifted with asynchronous development, we thought otherwise she was a neurotypical girl, so did the doctors. Yet, I know that has now changed and our daily interactions just bring it to the forefront. Now I am in a household with two people struggling as I struggle to learn how to help them. Soon she will be going for a round of new evaluations but until there are not only answers but solutions to try, there is just this space filled with strife. It is debilitating to live in this constant, daily strife and I often fill angry at the turn of events. I also feel so guilty about these feelings, but after 6 years of dealing with my oldest son, I know that feeling the guilt is normal and you have to learn to acknowledge and move past it. My son has come a long way with the help of a lot of professionals, and it seems as he gained more control, my daughter lost more control. He still has a long way to go and now I am having to start over again with her. I feel beat up, beat down and despondent many days. I don’t want to engage, I don’t want to face another day where people I love are constantly using me as a whipping post. Knowing that they don’t mean it, don’t do it on purpose, and barely are aware of their wrongdoing doesn’t always help me cope. So I have to learn to help them, myself, and other people to understand the struggle that doesn’t look like struggle at all. We look like the typical family, they look like every other kid many would call normal or fine. But they aren’t. Daily they struggle with the world around them, the world in their head, the expectations of everyone they meet. They can’t always keep instructions straight, things they do daily are often forgotten from one moment and day to the next. They are literal, and truthful, and hurting, and scared, and smart, and funny, and loving, and caring. They are multi-faceted like me and you but most people can’t see past the differences in them to embrace them. I am praying to be strengthened moment by moment to help them bridge the gap, to raise awareness, to be a good example. But let me tell you, I am not always a good example, I lose my cool, I yell, I use bad words and I walk away and cry over the reality of my existence. I scream at the unfairness, I rail against the pain of waking up every day to do the same things, I worry if they will always need me as they think they do, sometimes I want to give up and I voice it out loud. Yet, I get up every day to do it, to find another study, doctor, therapist, school, book, video, and tool to further their growth and development without killing the things that make them unique and extremely special. I am tired, I am weary, I get up anyhow. They look to me for everything and while it is draining, it is also a bit amazing. The amazingly beautiful things they accomplish keep me going and are a part of why I can Get Up Anyhow.

I have found this book by Tony Atwood to be helpful with High Functioning Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome. Most have heard of the groundbreaking work of Temple Grandin and this book is one we have in rotation at home. I have heard wonderful things about this book for Gifted/2E children and it is on my wish list. This book about emotions in Gifted/2E children is also on my wish list, as it describes my daughter well. Maybe you have found other books or sites helpful, feel encouraged to share them in the comments.

Words Can Be Abusive



This is a hard post to write as it will talk about the often overlooked subject of emotional abuse. Often we hear about physical abuse but emotional abuse is often far more prevalent and is designed to make us think less of ourselves, question our motives and actions, isolate ourselves from friends and family and truly leave our substance in the abuser’s hands.

An often used definition of emotional abuse, also known as psychological abuse, is “any act including confinement, isolation, verbal assault, humiliation, intimidation, infantilization or any other treatment which may diminish the sense of identity, dignity, and self worth” which I took from the site healtyplace.com. I know that emotional abuse can be slow moving, insidious and happen to anyone at any time or any age. You may think of yourself as tough, independent, and strong minded. Doesn’t matter, it could still creep into your life, perpetrated by someone you trust, and change you into a person who questions everything about yourself. I knew myself to be strong minded and tough, with firmly held  beliefs, but I too was caught in a web of lies told to me by someone who professed to love me, but really just wanted to control me and my environment because that made them feel better. It was hard to hear friends tell me that they were concerned for me, I couldn’t even see what they were talking about. For me, the wake up came when physical abuse tried to rear its head, I immediately got out, but it took physicality to get me away, then time and therapy for me to understand that the years of words structured to hurt had actually harmed me in ways I hadn’t noticed. Some signs include yelling and swearing, mocking, ignoring, and victim blaming. Please listen to those around you with insight and if you fear you are someone you love is being abused emotionally, understand that often just breaking up isn’t enough, they may need help to stay safe and to work through the mental fallout of the abuse. Mental health providers are especially helpful in these situations. There is a list of hot lines available at healthyplace.com also.

Recently I visited a very close friend at their home. They were excited for me to meet their new love interest and I was excited too. Only the excitement was short lived as the reality intruded and their loved one spent the weekend scaring me witless with their screaming vulgarities and aggressive behavior. My beloved friend was worried it might not be working out, but scared this love interest would harm themselves if asked to leave. I was terribly afraid we would be harmed because they had not been asked to leave. I was torn between leaving in a hurry for fear of my own safety and a deep need to stay and support my friend who I was just as afraid for. I made accommodations and talked myself into staying in a volatile situation for the care of someone else. See, I was already not listening to my inner voice which shouted ‘RUN!’, but I let the emotions of the situation dictate my actions. It is so easy to fall into this type of thinking and inaction. My choices did nothing but waste my time and make it more difficult to leave when the time came. Conflicting schedules kept my friend and I from ending our weekend on the high note it started on. I left without ever talking to them from the heart, without being able to hug them and reassure us both about what I had been a silent witness to on the fringes of the relationship, known but never even seen to the new love interest. I still don’t know what the lover looks like, only what they sound like in heaving anger and screaming blame. Only the fear they instilled in everyone in that house and my own that the fear and anger would leak out to stain us all.

I left things unfinished and unsaid. I pray that you won’t do that. I ask that you speak out, seek help, and fight for the psychological health of those around you. I must return to this situation and try to assist and I write this in hopes it touches even one person in their time of need, or one person who then recognizes the need in someone else. Change takes courage, I pray the courage of us all.

United States Presidential Election 2016 Feelings

Since this is my space and I need to get out what I feel, today you get to read all about what I am processing in my soul after the United States of America elected Donald J. Trump as the next President of our country.

I am the daughter of a woman and man who spent most of their grammar school time in segregated schools in a segregated community. I grew up listening at the feet of the granddaughter of slaves, and the daughter of The Great Depression and The Jim Crow South, in a town where 20 years before I was born, it was still segregated into Whites Only and Negroes. I grew up listening to the memories of people who lived through some very divisive times, times marked by indiscriminate persecution, belittling, injustice, murder, oppression, and suppression. A time where all the people in charge of making and enforcing the laws of the land truly believed that if you didn’t look like them, you were mentally inferior and lacked the ability to think for yourself or take care of yourself without the saving intervention of the ruling class. As such, you had no rights, the rights you thought you had were systematically dismantled in new laws written for the express purpose of reminding you that you belonged to them and needed them and their kindnesses to survive this life. I lived through my own instances of intrinsic and subtle racism, stories to add to the great diaspora of mistreatment and injustice rampant in this country. As this person, I share my feelings, those which I clearly understand that I am still processing.

I sat up all night watching Election 2016 coverage. From the beginning you could see that things didn’t seem to be going the way the many historical pundits had predicted. Soon, everyone was sputtering to come up with words to explain what they were witnessing. Many, like me, stared at the unbelievable, but not surprising, results with an impending sense of doom. As my kids fell asleep and my husband abandoned me and I tried to drown out the results with the words of a novel, I could feel the collective gasp of people around the world who really could not fathom that the United States would vote an unknown political entity, who had crafted a race built on baiting the worse in many of us, to the highest office in our land. Yet, as the dread seeped in my bones and the tears tried to seep out, I was still thinking, I can’t believe they didn’t take him seriously, the threat seriously, the history seriously. I can’t believe I am possibly about to be forced into an United States reminiscent of my ancestors memories. After nodding off for about an hour I had to get my kids up and started on their days. I also had to tell them that Mr. Trump had won the election. I could barely manage to not cry as they teared up in despair of what Mr. Trump being President would mean for them and their friends. I explained that while we didn’t know what would happen in the future, we certainly knew Who held the future. We are Christ Followers, commonly called Christians, and we believe that God’s Will in the world will prevail, even when we don’t understand, even when we don’t agree, even when attacked. For my kids this helped, but I could tell it wasn’t over for them. They like others around the world, needed time to process. Before I had even got them up, I was being bombarded with the ongoing coverage. My television was still on, I was obsessively scrolling through Facebook and Twitter feeds trying to absorb all the responses and feelings from everywhere and meld them in my mind. Trying to make sense of them, of my own thoughts, of how I could be honest and supportive under the laws of the land which God had placed me. I didn’t delve too deep, my kids still needed my attention to move on with their day and I knew I was just waiting for space and peace to delve a bit deeper.

After dropping them off, I found my first gem of discordant tunes in the post of a friend. This friend is a non-POC woman. This friend had been harassed in her car after dropping her older children off at school. The youngest was strapped in their car seat in the back. Her car sported a bumper sticker that evidenced support of Hillary Clinton.  A non-POC man drove close to her bumper, crowding he driving space and intimidating her. He then pulled alongside her and started verbally abusing her with words that called out her gender with common curse words typically used to belittle women and ended with this nugget, “F*cking liberal loser!” My friend was terribly shaken, felt afraid and then took her bumper stickers off her car to avoid a similar situation. And while I felt her fear and was saddened by her experience, on the other side of those feelings I felt vindication and a bit of that Aha, now you see what I am talking about! I felt like saying, yes, now see how you might like living like that constantly not just now because Mr. Trump has been elected President. Because I can’t stop, shaken on the side of the road and pull my skin color off, the thing I am most vilified for. I can’t take my skin, crumple it into a ball and get rid of it to stop the hate from reaching me. Then of course came the post from a classmate who sung the educate yourself and don’t be silly because they can’t do that to you tune of the Trump candidacy. This post was an impassioned plea to not spread panic by telling children they will have to ‘go back where they came from’ because Donald Trump was elected. This is absurd, the post assured, because if you are born here and/or came to the USA legally and/or a naturalized citizens then this IS where you are from (emphasis mine) and there is no WHERE to go back to. This person also included their feeling on how happy they were with the election result because her son would have a fair playing field in the work force and her daughter, in the armed forces, would be safe with a Boss that would have her back. They included how you must educate yourself in order to know you belong here and can not be kicked out. Then they closed with numerous references to God in America and how we traditionally pay lip service to God in this country (saying things like Merry Christmas, In God We Trust, God Bless America and God Bless You) all while they would be standing for the national anthem with their hand over their hearts. Goodness, I didn’t even no where to start with all the assumptions in this statement. While they may believe no one here ‘correctly’ need worry about being kicked out, people are already running through the streets shouting “go back to Mexico, Africa, China, insert foreign nation here!” with enough hate to drive fear into the hearts of small children and old people alike. The problem with leaving this idea as a statement that stands in defense of legal immigration is that the people excited about the idea of deporting illegal immigrants don’t stop to check your legal status or birth certificate when spewing their feelings. Besides, we have been shown that in the United States you can actually prove you were born here and still not be believed, and if you need to prove your legal status to random beings you meet, does this not smack of carrying freedom papers, traveling papers, being pinned with yellow stars of David and forced into internment camps? I mean where does it stop? Do you see? I Love God, I Love my country, but I am not blinded to the faults inherent in humanity, of which I am a part. And I don’t have the privilege of hiding my difference in order to survive, I have to survive anyway. You can’t tell me that now that the election is over we can all go back to some Utopian time pre-election cycle 2016. Let me tell you, for marginalized groups of humans in the United States and around the World, there is no real pre-election 2016 utopia in which to return. Why do you think so many worked so hard to discuss policy that could put all marginalized groups back to oppressed groups and then beg us all to listen and make informed and educated decisions? It isn’t over now, it isn’t in the past and you aren’t at least a good person because(fill in your reason for feeling good)! We all want what is best for ourselves, we get lost when we lose sight that what is best for ourselves isn’t our calling. It is what is best for the collective in which we all live.

I am a follower of Christ and firmly believe in God’s true sovereignty over all. While I will and do pray for the President, other elected officials, volunteers, my country, and the world, it does not negate the feeling of desperation and fear uppermost in my mind and heart. Loving and trusting God didn’t erase the pain of my child’s death. Loving and trusting God does not erase the pain of my child’s absence on the physical plane and by the same note, loving and trusting God does not erase my fear today or keep me safe from those who wish to harm me. Loving and trusting God does not ensure a pain and trouble free life, it does ensure I will be strengthened to endure the race before me because I put God first, seek Him first. It ensures that no matter how my earthly body leaves this plane, my true home will be revealed in God’s glory. This faith helps me and does not erase the practicality of being alive in this time as a member of a marginalized people. You may not have my faith, but I pray you understand that my pain, fear, and distrust are real and should not be erased, suppressed, or disregarded because it isn’t your truth today. I don’t want a bleak Dystopia to be ushered in, I pray that history doesn’t repeat itself, I pray we aren’t disillusioned, decimated, or caught off guard. I pray that as we move forward we find a way to look at the problems in our systems and vanquish them while shining a light on anything we can get right. I pray that while today I feel the need to call on the faith of my ancestors that allowed them to make the seemingly ridiculous decision to get up and face hate every day by going to work, to church, walking down the street, by speaking out, by getting an education, by continuing to live every day with dignity even when afforded none by others. Then by having and raising their children to do the same.