Well

There’s something I’d like you to know about what I mean when I tell you I am doing well. I mean that yesterday, when I felt the surge of anxiety as I listened to my geriatric pug panting excessively and my daughter start to request a kleenex every few seconds for an increasingly runny nose, I was able to sit with it. I was able to recognize the anxious thoughts that were leading to anxious feelings and recognize why I may have been more susceptible to these thoughts and feelings (too much Twitter, end of day tiredness, grief). Then I was able to do some things that reliably help me to feel better. I put down my phone. I rage-cleaned the floor that geriatric pug was obsessively licking. When C used her talker to ask ‘Mommy, wanna chill?’, I said, ‘Yes, I sure do!’ and collapsed on the couch. And later, after bedtime, I was able to do a virtual dance class to Lady Gaga, the absolute best remedy to anything that ails me.

But what I’d like for you to know is that mediating my anxiety in the ways I describe above has been a labour of self-love over the last nine years of my life. And without the advent of a small human that was born almost 11 years ago, I may have never discovered that there were other ways of being. That it was possible to learn ways to accept negative feelings rather than rail against them. That the feelings of nausea incited with fearful thoughts could be quelled (though not dispelled!) by recognizing those thoughts and providing some alternative, more compassionate options for thinking. That rolling into a ball on the floor willing anxiety to let me be was actually not going to be the greatest long-term plan for getting through the stresses of parenting a child with a disability.

I want for you to know that the wellness I present to you today was spawned in a time when I was truly, decidedly unwell, when I necessarily and urgently catapulted myself into the world of proper self-care. And so I tell you this story.

Nine years ago I was a new mother, back at work, struggling to make sense of my new role as a professional who was also a mom, who was also a professional working with children with developmental disabilities and also a mom to a child with an unfolding developmental disability of her own. My work environment had changed significantly while I was on maternity leave. I came back as an SLP team leader to a new office space, a new data-keeping system, new team members, and a service delivery system that had been completely made over in my absence. On the home front we had begun the process of ‘investigations’ into C’s developmental delays, which meant many, many, many stressful appointments. At one of those initiating appointments the pediatrician gave her the ‘failure to thrive’ label because of her slow weight gain. It was a lot. And I was oblivious to the need to care for myself through it.

On November 30th, 2011, we had a ‘team building day’ for work, and I was dreading it as I parked my car in the pouring rain and hustled into the facilitators’ offices. I think of the work we were doing at the time as group therapy, really. The team was struggling to work well together and we needed help, so we were fortunate enough to be supported by our director in our efforts and get that help. There were a lot of tears in the room as we talked things through. I remember, after sharing something that led me to be the one in tears, the facilitator remarked that she was wondering what the tears were really about. It wasn’t directed specifically at me, as there were others in the room (let’s face it, most of us) who had also broken down, but it made me pause to think. I went to the bathroom after the session, when we were all returning to our cars to transition to a ‘fun afternoon of bowling!!’, and I couldn’t. stop. crying. Walked to my car, crying. Drove to the bowling alley, crying. Somehow pulled myself together and bowled (!), but the floodgates had opened.

The weekend following, I woke up feeling ‘jambly’. It was the word I made up for the queasiness that I had come to expect every morning when I started anticipating the day ahead. It had amplified 100% by the time I had to go to work Monday morning. I don’t remember exactly how it played out, but eventually there came a day in early December 2011 when I was in fetal position on my living room rug saying ‘I just can’t do it’, or something along those lines. I asked my mom to come in to take care of C so that I could go to the doctor and find out what this ‘jambliness’ was all about. I am grateful to this day that my doctor saw me so clearly. She told me straight up that it was emotional stress, that it would get better, that I had to talk to someone about it. My memory about that whole month is kind of spotty, but at one point I remember calling in sick to work, bawling my eyes out, and bravely asking my colleague for the contact information for our employee assistance program. I made the call, got an appointment with a psychologist, and started the work.

The first assignment was finding pleasure again. It wasn’t until I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Portland, sipping a glass of wine and reading a magazine, that I realized how truly deprived of that feeling I had been and for how long. I spent four days with my husband sleeping, eating (finally feeling like I had an appetite again), buying self-help books that were recommended by my therapist, and reading those books ravenously. I am so grateful now that I am the kind of person who loves a program. When she gave me that list of book recommendations and suggested some time away from parenting and work, my therapist basically gave me a program to follow. And I am THE BEST at following programs. So it worked. But I had to do a lot of work for it to work, and I’m still doing that work today. Nine years later.

2011 feels like eons ago. Light years ago. I think about how C and I were ‘failing to thrive’ and my heart doesn’t break any more as it once did. We were both different people then. There were times when I let myself think about how my ‘non-thriving’ practices might have negatively influenced her. I don’t do that anymore. I know that my process of learning to thrive has influenced her greatly, and there are more years put in now where I’ve considered myself to be well than there are months where I was unwell. Most of all I am proud of myself. Proud of the courage I have been able to muster to ensure I continue to evolve.

The practices – daily stretch and meditation, mindfulness exercises as needed, observing my thoughts and shifting them, moving my body regularly in ways I love – have served me through some big things and countless small ones. My dad reaching his own pinnacle of failure in the thriving department and going to hospital and then residential care in 2015, my diagnosis of breast cancer after my very first screening mammogram in 2018 and the treatments that followed, the pandemic of the last seven months. It is in observing my responses to these hard times when I realize the impact of the work.

It all started because of her, it continues because of her, I am better because of her. I say it all the time, I will say it for all time. She is my greatest teacher. That is what I want you to know.