When Bad Choices Happen To Good People

What if the next thing that you were going to do for your kids was to take better care of yourself?

I started writing this piece with all sorts of ideas for healthy choices for moms in the New Year like Glowing Green Juice, or why drink water with lemon first thing in the morning but then I realized something. You guys already know about all that stuff and you know where to find more info on it. What’s more interesting to me is why we don’t choose to take care of ourselves?

When knowing better doesn’t translate to doing better.

Some of the excuses I’ve used not to take care of myself:

“I’ll do it when he’s recovered.”

“We don’t have the money.”

“I need to focus my full attention on Nick’s needs.”

“This is so awful. I deserve _________ (insert vice(s) of choice).”

 

When your child is in crisis of course you aren’t thinking about starting yoga or getting a walk in everyday, right? You’re focused on pulling your child out of the dark space you’ve found yourselves in. But later, sometimes years later, it hits you - your child is getting better, things are calmer, and you could squeeze in a little more me-time. You check in with yourself and realize you’ve weathered a hell of a beating along this ride.

 

Some nervous questions arise:

’What’s going to happen if I don’t start taking care of myself?’

‘Can I keep going as I am long term?’

‘Truth be told I don’t feel great and I look worse.’

But there are other thoughts too, darker and less healthy thoughts full, of rage and fear that quietly push us to our go-to comforts, our grown up versions of the binkie: booze, junk food, cigarettes, because we’re hurting.

It hits most of us sometime after our child’s first few bio med appointments. Their issues are our issues; inflammation, toxicity, sensitivities to certain foods, poor digestion, fatigue, or chronic infections.

Added to our chronic health issues is the incredible stress from the horror of watching your baby decline, the kick to the gut from the autism diagnosis, the adrenal high wire act as you jump into action to save your child and family from this hell, meanwhile grieving and worried right underneath it.

Then we layer in kids who have chronic sleep issues, so mom is getting no sleep and no break in the evening to unwind. Paralyzing OCD. Being constantly vigilant about children who bolt in public places or escape from the house and school. Crapisodes. Feeling chronically on edge for kids who have terrifying seizures. Constant stimming. Or the outright trauma of children who are physically violent to themselves, to parents, and sometimes to siblings. All of this adds up to maximum stress 24/7 year in year out. It’s a wonder we survive at all.

But we do survive because we have to; because we’re pretty sure there isn’t anyone else that would love our child enough to deal with all this. So we push through every day stuffing down the hardest feelings. It makes perfect sense that we feel entitled to whatever gets us through the night, right?

I will never stand in judgment of another autism parent’s choices because I wouldn’t want to be judged myself. Every one of us is doing the very best we can.

The shitty part is that some of the temporary coping strategies start to fall apart after a while and kick you in the ass. Like my relationship with sugar.

Sugar is legal. It doesn’t hurt anyone else if I eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s after an awful day, (or every day). My head is still clear if my child needs me in the night. It doesn’t make me hung-over in the morning or rob me of my patience, or make me bitchy if I’m woken super early. I might look forward to it during the hardest parts of the day: ‘This moment is hell, but tonight it’s you and me, Ben and Jerry!’ It feels devious because I hide the container in the back of the freezer so my kids can’t see it and I eat it alone in front of grown up tv maybe even in bed! Eight years of rage about my son’s vaccine injury shoved right down into about 450 calories a pop.

Not so simple.

We’re full of self-loathing and quiet self-talk squeezing in words of caution:

‘I know better than this.’

‘Bet this is full of GMO garbage and enough antibiotics to kill a moose.’

‘There are good reasons I don’t let the kids eat this shit. Why am I?’

‘I look like the cow on the label.’

 

So why don’t we simply stop? Some moms do. They take beautiful care of themselves.

 

What gets in the way for the rest of us?

‘This is so freaking unfair.’

‘The IACC couldn’t suck any more than it does.’

‘I am so angry with myself.’

‘I can’t bear the sadness and worry.’

 

Bad stuff happens to really good people. It’s one of those things I’ve struggled with my whole life. That you can follow the rules and do the right thing and that doesn’t necessarily insulate you from the bad stuff happening. Life is unfair sometimes.

 

These things are fundamentally true about autism families.

We love our children.

We did not choose this, nor is it our fault.

We are traumatized both individually and as a community.

We have choices about what we do with our grief.

 

It occurs to me that old, stuck behaviors, the stuff that’s bad for you and you know it, the stuff that’s easier to justify when you’re in crisis, can go on autopilot and we can forget to reign it back in. Like when I needed three back to back glasses of wine, in less time than it took me to say “that hospital is so lame”, after a seven hour ER visit following one of Nick’s seizures. Justifiable for the event, doesn’t work so well for me on a day-to-day basis. But more importantly, I think is the way these coping mechanisms, our binkies, keep us in survival mode. They keep us attached to the trauma and they get in the way of healing and moving on.

 

The trauma of what we’ve been through with Nick is still very real to me. My anger is still raw, so is my worry some days. But, like every person who has something shitty happen to their family, I have choices every day in how I take care of those feelings. Taking care of myself is not disowning or abandoning what we have been through. Truly honoring what Nick has endured is done by choosing to move beyond the trauma into living. I mean, that’s what I want him to do right?

 

Things I am learning :

1. There is no perfect time to start. Start today.

2. There is no doing it ‘perfectly’, no MAPS doc for me, just better choices.

3. Don’t have to fix everything today, one good choice leads to the next.

4. Taking care of me isn’t INSTEAD of my kids, it’s FOR all of us.

 

Because….

 

HAPPY MOMMY =HAPPY FAMILY!

 

I’m newer to prioritizing my own well-being so I’m learning right alongside you. And many of you are role models for me in moving forward, embracing optimism and just getting on with it. Thank you for being on this journey with me.

 

~ Mama Mac who promises you she currently has no Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer.

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