Two girls, one dress, eating lunch in their own way a lifetime apart. Our life has certainly been made a little more wild and a lot more exciting by Strawbaby’s addition. But that’s what three year olds are supposed to do. They are not supposed to spend a quarter of their life in the hospital. Since Strawbaby turned three I have had to make a concerted effort to not focus on all that she is capable of - or rather - all that Adelaide missed out on.
Well, the little girl celebrating her 10th birthday in this photo - in all her puffy paint decorated t-shirt glory - is turning 40 on Monday. And you know what? I’m feeling pretty good about it - today anyway. And by today I mean at this very moment that I’m writing this.
Identity is a concept I have struggled with for most of my adult life. Who am I? How do I describe myself? Is it what you put in bio? A list of accomplishments followed by “lives in Maplewood, NJ”? The mom aspect has, in particular stumped me. I love being a mom but have resented my identity being so closely tied to my relationships. Then along came fate and slapped me in the face with a Strawbaby.
It really has been remarkable how seamlessly Strawbaby has folded into our lives. She hasn’t even been in our home for five months and it’s beginning to feel like she’s just always been here.
She wasn’t though.
We all had prior lives that shaped us and that will continue to do so. Whenever I need a reminder of this, I need look no further than Jackson and Strawbaby’s relationship.
Both for my sanity and Strawbaby’s social development, it became evident that she needed to go to preschool. I anticipated that she was going to be a little wary of being left at preschool but couldn’t predict to what degree. After all, she had come with us, three strangers, without protest, just three months prior. What I hadn’t anticipated was my own emotional reckoning - and certainly not for the reasons.
It all happened so quickly. We got the call on Monday and by Friday we were driving away from a CPS office in Texas with a child we had never met before in the backseat of our rental car. The 24 hours prior had been a mad rush to make space in our home. And while there was plenty of space in our hearts, a little rearranging and negotiating was still in order.
“Is she having a seizure?” Miguel’s eyes were darting from the rear view mirror to the road in front of him.
I looked to the backseat. Her eyes were glazed over, she wasn’t responding to her name.
“Jackson, will you squeeze her hand?” I asked.
“She squeezed back!”
“Ok, so probably not a seizure, just, you know, life-shattering trauma.”
A while ago I read a post from a woman who had lost her husband. She referred to the time she had with her deceased husband as a chapter of her life. Which is a very healthy way to frame loss and grief. Logically I know this. Logically I also know that grief is grief AND no person’s loss can be compared to another’s AND that we all grieve and heal in different ways. But emotionally? Emotionally after reading this I felt an all-consuming rage.
“I’m so sorry that you are a part of this club but we are grateful you are here.”
David Axelrod said this to Miguel and I as we were wrapping up an emotional interview that would be shown during CURE Epilepsy’s annual Chicago benefit. It was 2017 and the first time I had heard someone refer to the epilepsy community as ‘the club’.
As I’ve been trying to face my own trauma, I am beginning to understand that, at times, my anxiety is simply its symptom. Not all the time, thank you genetics, but certainly some of the time. There are two times in particular that my anxiety flares that I can now correlate directly to my trauma. One of which has been alleviated with the help of my very own emotional guide... who just happens to be only nine years old... and my son.
One word kept coming up for me this week to the point that I probably shouldn’t ignore it. It is blasting through in my adoption parenting readings, it is top of discussion as we’ve been checking in a little more closely with Jackson and it has stood out to me in several social media posts that continue to nag at me like a child calling your name over and over again until you respond. Yes, I hear you! What do you want from me?!
I’m just not that special, I’m just not that special, I’m just not that special. Big sigh. Ok, I can do this (why is this one so hard to share?!). So, I’ve written a lot about the emotional and mental aspects of grief - these are what people think of when grief comes to mind: depression, anxiety, listlessness, guilt, etc. But there is a physical side to grief as well and for all my knowledge of my own mental health I had not anticipated grief’s effects on my physical health and certainly not on my physical appearance.
