Monthly Archives: November 2013

family, home, Motherhood

An open letter to my daughter.

2 Comments

My beautiful amazing young woman.  You are perfect, just as you are.  You are brave, smart, loving, fun, spontaneous, beautiful, and kind.  I am proud of you.  I love you.

I am terrified for you.

You are turning into a woman.  You will soon have more and more freedom in your life, and while I know you are smart and thoughtful and will do your best to make good choices, I also know you are kind and generous, and may be mislead by the people in your life.

I know that the world holds opportunities and pitfalls, heroes and villians, teddy bears and monsters.

I can no longer protect you from life.  I cannot wrap you in my arms and make it go away with a kiss and a chocolate.  Now you begin to face the real world.  You will begin to see the harshness in addition to the beauty, the pain in addition to the joy.

Now the growing pains begin in earnest.

There is no way for me to stop you from embracing life and all the bruises that follow.  All I can do is promise you this:

I will speak openly and honestly with you about topics that embarrass us both so I may better fit you with appropriate weapons for your future battles.  I will not let discomfort prevent me from sharing with you the knowledge I gained from my own encounters.  I will hand down my armor in the clearest way possible.

I will keep the lines of communication open.  I will let you know that nothing you share with me will ever make me stop loving you, and I will reinforce the fact that there is nothing you can’t tell me.  Tell me anything, tell me everything.  I would rather know it all and be in a position to help you through it, than blindly fumble in the dark while you suffer.

I will not judge you.  I will worry about you.  I will work hard to make you understand the difference.  I will listen to your troubles and talk with you to help you make the decision that is best for who you are, not who I am.  If I get angry or sad about what you tell me, I will let you know the source of that anger or sorrow, and I will not let it get in the way of helping you. I will continue to love you and to listen.

The world is full of sharp and dangerous places.  I can’t stop you from wandering into them.  My parents couldn’t stop me.  All they could do was listen.  All anyone can do is provide you with a soft place to land when the sharpness cuts too deeply.

Let me be your soft landing place.  Let me be the place you run to heal.

I love you.

health, Migraine

Ring theory, Practical Paleo, and issues of control.

Leave a comment

Today one of my closest friends posted this wonderful article on “ring theory”.  It better describes what I was trying to say in my recent post “Losing my voice“.  It discusses creating a ring for a person suffering from illness, or trauma, and then adding progressive rings around it, with their family, friends, and caregivers in increasingly outer rings.  The idea is a way for people to provide help to those in lower rings and seek help from those in outer rings.  (Dump out, Comfort In.)  I think this analysis is beautiful, because it acknowledges the difficulties faced by all people in an ill person’s life.  They have the illness to contend with, the guilt caused by the effect that illness has on everyone in their lives, and often only enough energy to try to care for the people in their immediate circle, usually their partner and children.  The partner has the role of caring for the ill person and picking up the slack that person drops in caring for their finances, house, children, etc.  Further, the partner often has to deal with concerns of friends and family who don’t want to burden the ill person, but still want comfort.

The article is powerful to me because it acknowledges that seeking comfort when someone we care about is ill is important, but points out that seeking it from others who aren’t as close or closer to the ill person than you may be better for everyone.  I call it a must read.

Now onto other things…

This week I started the Paleo diet at the suggestion of a friend.  She was kind enough to send me a book, Practical Paleo, after reading my headache whiny posts and feeling for me.  This is exactly the type of help I welcome.  She not only showed me her love for me by thinking about me, but she provided me with the materials I needed to learn about controlling my own health issues using diet.  I have been too low on spoons to parent, work, exercise, and devote a lot of time to researching my own health issues.  I try to look into all the things my family and friends lovingly suggest, but usually when I get to the point of the day when I have the time, I lie down and go to sleep.

However, when Marie sent me the book, I didn’t have to do anything other than read it.  I placed it next to my bed, so when I awoke randomly in the middle of the night I could read it while I waited to fall back asleep.  By the end of the week I had read the philosophy behind the diet and I have to admit, it makes sense to me.  So I started the diet.

It’s day four.  I find it intriguing that I don’t have a headache now, and I haven’t had one for two days.  I am off all medications.

The author wrote something that really stuck with me.  She said that we all turn to medicine to solve our health issues, but we don’t realize that we control the majority of what we put in to our bodies, and therefore we control our health.  For the first time in years I feel like I am in control again.  I feel as though I have a choice in my own health, and that I am not simply going from doctor to doctor, diagnosis to diagnosis.

For the first time in years I have hope.