The Year of Living Hopefully

Actually, a lot of thanks. This day is the appointed one for verbalizing our gratitude. Luckily I’m thankful most of the time, or at least grateful, so it’s not hard to come up with a list. This list resides in me every day, even on days when I have a migraine (and occasionally ponder “why me?”) or get frustrated with Maddie or lament a new roof leak.

But today I’m not going to write a list. I’m going to focus on one thing: The Struggle.

Sometimes I wish things were easier. Well, a lot of the time I wish things were easier. At least as a parent of an autistic kid. But I believe I can’t compartmentalize the parts of my life conveniently into good and bad parts. My life is a whole, an inseparable mishmash of privilege and wanting, joy and pain, humor and sadness. I take all of these things as the entirety of existing, and I welcome it all. Including The Struggle.

We all have The Struggle in some capacity. Mine moves and winds it way across the areas of my life.  I struggle with eating too much sugar. I struggle with spending too much. I struggle with anxiety at times. I have struggled in the past with relationships and fear of failure (oh, that’s a big one) and wondering if maybe I wasn’t doing enough to “live up to my potential” (another big one).

At the moment, though, my biggest struggle is in parenting. When Maddie was little it was so much easier. She was clearly behind developmentally as an infant. We just waited and watched and didn’t worry too much, and when she was 18 months old we couldn’t just wait anymore, I began the work. For many years I just looked at The Struggle as work. Nothing to be alarmed about, nothing to fret over, just work. The work was hard and it was constant. Working with foam letters in the tub to help her develop her speech by putting one sound with another, picking her up every few steps when she fell down after finally learning to walk at 23 months, and wiping yet another bloody lip. Driving her to this appointment and that appointment and then that other one. Calmly responding to her screaming attempts to communicate. Then teaching her sign language as a way to get through the toddler years. And then driving to her to the special two-hour preschool class that was 30 minutes away and trying to figure out what to do with my one-year-old son for those two hours rather than driving home and back out again. It was a lot of work, but it was simple. I knew what to do and somehow figured out how to do it. It was exhausting and sometimes even a bit overwhelming, but I could do it.

When Maddie began elementary school, everything got so much more difficult, and as the years have gone by, more and more complicated and challenging.  I was having to try to explain my mysterious kid to her teachers, who, although they wanted to try, didn’t seem to get her at all (with a couple of notable exceptions). Even the resource specialists, who work with these “different” kids, were puzzled. They would literally look at me for answers, and I would just shrug. Were they not the experts? I would have to listen to these people refer to her as “odd” or “stubborn” and hold back tears until the meeting was over.

And then when she was in third grade, the shit hit the fan. While other girls her age were getting sassy and emotionally more complicated, Maddie was struggling more internally with her emotions. She was unable to identify exactly what she was feeling, which made the already difficult task of expressing herself beyond her capabilities. So she started to hit me. Wail on me, really. An unrelenting barrage of punches and grabs from a startlingly strong kid. If I said no to something or tried to take something from her, I would see the look on her face change and I knew it was coming. It was as if a switched turned on and she had become someone else, and then she unleashed. She was little then, fortunately, so I wasn’t really afraid for my safety quite yet, but it’s beyond alarming to be beaten by your own child. I would beg her to stop, I would try to get away, she would grab my clothes and not let go. A few times she bit me. Hard. It was devastating. I loved her so much, and I knew she was struggling herself, but I was unequipped to handle this. It was like an out of body experience. I was in such disbelief that I’m still not sure how I felt. I would cry, but I had to forcibly conjure up tears in hopes that she would see them and maybe the spell would be broken and the whole thing would stop.

Several years of the occasional outburst later, Maddie doesn’t do that anymore. And I don’t even think about it much. Maddie has become calmer. She remembers those days very clearly and knows she has changed. She is much more connected to her emotions and has learned how to communicate them more appropriately and effectively. I sure am grateful for that!

Am I grateful for the biting (I had some whoppers)? Uh, no.

But I am grateful for all the work I have had to put into raising Maddie for a simple reason: I am a better person for it. I have developed the patience of a saint. I have experienced intense love and empathy in the worst moments possible with the object of that love. When I tell my kids there is nothing they could do that would make me not love them, I know that is true. What if I killed someone? they ask. Well, I would be so sad, but I would still love you, I say. And I really do know that’s true.

The Struggle has developed and honed my empathy and my ability to look for the best in people, to look beyond their worst aspects and love them anyway. I’m not perfect at that by any means, but I know I have it in me. But I can still do better. Perhaps that will be my New Year’s Resolution.

As I typed the words above (privilege and wanting, joy and pain, humor and sadness), I noticed something. The words that sing out to me most are privilege, joy and humor. The others fade into the shadows. They are there, to be sure. Especially the pain part, what with the never-ending migraines and all. It’s all there. But what I try to do is have gratitude for it all. I try to revel in the joy while recognizing the gifts of the pain. I try to enjoy my privilege while understanding the benefit of lacking some things (I don’t want for much now, but my childhood and early adult life were lessons in austerity). I laugh a whole-body laugh at the humor, and know that sadness means I loved and lost, or dreamed and failed, or cared so much it hurt. And those are things to be grateful for, the loving and dreaming and caring.

May your day be filled with thankfulness for all the aspects of your life, the easy and the difficult, the fun and the miserable, the richness and the yearning. And may this day, and every day, bring to you the madly unconditional love you all deserve.