by Band Back Together | Jul 8, 2013 | Adult Children of Addicts, Adult Children of Mentally Ill Parents, Alcohol Addiction, Compulsive Eating Disorders, Guilt, Sadness, Shame |
Addiction is a beast that spins yarns of lies that we often believe.
These are the struggles an addict faces:
Encased in a swishing bell jar of beer, my brain screams at me. Hungover. Again.
I am a professional. It would astonish my co-workers to know that I am holding back vomit while they talk to me, that I was awake mere hours ago, drinking, drinking, drinking.
My body is almost used to this dull feeling of the next day. I used to take a day off when I felt this shitty, but now it’s more often than not, so I am accustomed to this silver fish headache razoring my head.
Addiction is the root of my family tree, and I tell myself, I am no where near as bad as most everyone else in my family. I justify the excess even though I know this is not healthy.
Healthy should be my goal… But, I poison myself.
When it’s not alcohol, it’s food. Consumption is key for me, it seems.
My beautiful friend has been working on her dissertation for years. She explained to me once that her inner voice tells her only smart people deserve a Ph.D., so she doesn’t deserve this distinction. She is brilliant, but her mind lies to her.
I feel like I don’t deserve to be healthy. To be sober. To be thin.
If I wanted those things, wouldn’t I just achieve them? I have always achieved everything I have set my sights on.
Instead, it seems, I’m content to wallow in the murky bottle, to deny myself nutrients and instead eat processed garbage.
I have worked so hard on so many areas of my life that I feel like I just need a break. My breaks include booze and fried food. Why?
Comfort food makes me feel very uncomfortable. And yet, I choose to eat this way every day.
I want to be my best self, and yet, maybe this is it.
Maybe this is who I always will be.
by Band Back Together | Oct 8, 2011 | Anniversary Reactions, Baby Loss, Child Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Coping With Losing A Child, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Loved and Lost |
Maybe you will read this and nod along thinking to yourself, “ugh, why do people say stupid stuff” or you have a friend or coworker that needs comforting and you don’t know what to say. Here are some tips on what to say and what NOT to say to bereaved parents.
WHAT NOT TO SAY:
“It’s so much better that it was so early or he was so young, or she didn’t have to suffer.”
No parents should bury their child. No matter HOW old or young they are. It’s just the wrong order of events.
“You’re young and have time to have other children.”
You don’t know how long we’ve been trying to have THIS child. You don’t know that I haven’t had a hysterectomy because of some terrible disease. You don’t know any details that would lead you to think this statement would be true.
“I know how you feel, my dog died last week.”
This was actually said to me at Charlie’s visitation. Kid you not. Enough said.
“Please call me if there’s anything we can do for you.”
This is a really sweet sentiment. But we don’t know what we need right now. I’m sure we need our grass cut, some meals, somebody to babysit our other children, or any number of other things-be creative. But we don’t have any clue what day it is or even how to put one foot in front of another. So we sure as heck don’t know what our to-do list looks like.
“Things happen for a reason.”
This is probably THE most insensitive thing anyone can say. Though this is true, that there is some “order of events” that our lives take and things happen in the order they are supposed to. BUT this is not a comforting statement and one that most people who are grieving a loss of a child, a diagnosis of a severe or chronic illness, a major accident or surgery that is life-changing, find offensive. If you take nothing else from this, DO NOT SAY THIS STATEMENT TO ANYONE. EVER. Thanks.
So, CharliesMom, what CAN I say to someone?
People get really funny around situations they are uncomfortable with. They panic when they don’t know what to say. They freeze and THAT is when stupid stuff is said.
Here are the basic rules:
1. Acknowledging the situation is better than saying nothing.
2. Saying nothing is better than saying something stupid.
3. Giving a hug and saying “I just don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am” is better than saying nothing OR saying something stupid.
Other ways to offer comfort:
Send a card with a gift card to a local restaurant. It’s not flowers that die and it will get them out of the house which is normally needed.
Call and tell them you are going to be mowing their grass, shoveling their snow, pulling their weeds (or whatever fits) on Saturday.
Remember that food, flowers and help flows in for about two weeks. Then it’s like the rest of the world picks up and moves on quickly without the grieving people. The rest of the world doesn’t remember, or care that they lost their child or their child is sick. About a month later, or two months later, offer to help or to bring a meal or to take the mom out for a pedicure.
Acknowledge the child in the future. I cannot tell you how much I love this one lady. To this day, and it’s been seven years, when she sees my son Henry, she calls him Charlie. Every. Single. Time. She blushes and gets embarrassed until I tell her that it’s flattering to me that she remembers my baby that she actually never met. People like to hear their child’s name. And they like to know you remember and think of them.
Continue reaching out. If you are really close with the bereaved person, call regularly. I know I never returned calls, turned down lunch dates, didn’t want to go to parties but I had friends who were persistent and at a certain point, I was ready. And I said yes. Don’t give up on the person. They are hurting and are scared to have to leave their comfort zone.
JUST BE THERE. And don’t freak out when we start talking about our situation. If it freaks you out, you just need to listen and offer hugs and support. If you are a good friend, it shouldn’t make you uncomfortable, though.
Seven years down the road, the letters you sent, the meals you brought, the ear you lent, the shoulder you offered, the memories you helped us keep will be remembered.
And the insensitive stuff other people said will still sting when you think back on them
by Band Back Together | Aug 7, 2011 | Encephalocele, Loss, NICU, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Special Needs Parenting |
The old me died in a puddle of tears on that birthing table as my daughter whisked freshly from my body was clucked over and examined and I was left paralyzed from the waist down, terrified and alone. I was reborn into a new world where all of my old besties and allies were no longer at my side, where my husband was gone, and where I was, again, alone against the world.
It’s not terribly different, I guess, than how any of us are born, it’s just that I was older and not covered with that cheese-type stuff.
For eighteen months now, I’ve carefully picked up the pieces of who I was and assembled them back into a reasonable representation of who I am now. I discarded some of the old things I didn’t need: the anger that I’d held onto for so long and the inability to let people in and the long-held opinion that I didn’t need anyone but myself to be happy.
In turn, I’ve added some new things that I think I always needed but didn’t realize: I’m warmer, more loving and I’m more thankful of the people who do love me. There are bad things woven in there too, of course. You don’t go through major traumas without picking up some hell along the way. The darkness inside me is heavy sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if it’s more than I can bear.
These shards of who I am now are stitched loosely together with the belief that the universe is far less random than I’d ever thought it was and that someday, it’ll all make more sense. I have to cling to that idea or I’d probably go crazy and shave my head and tattoo a fire-breathing scorpion on it.
Monday morning, I will go back to the place that I was born. Not Highland Park Hospital, where on July 15, 1980, Rebecca Elizabeth Sherrick* was born, but Central DuPage Hospital, where Becky Sherrick Harks was born on January 28, 2009. I haven’t been back since her surgery.
My daughter, her curls like a halo, finally masking the scar that bisects the back of her whole head, she and I will march into the place where we were both born on the very same day. My ghosts will roam the halls with us, carefully holding my hand, gently guiding me find the place where I will take my daughter to help her find her words.
I hope that when I pass the ghost of myself in the hall I can send her a hug; some silent signal of strength from her future self. Because while the darkness is omnipresent, the sadness an integral part, there is always hope. I hope that she knows that the future is large and that while she will rage, trying to fit in to a world that no longer exists, in all that she has lost, there will be more that she gains.
Monday, the flowers in the vase on the desk will be fresh, and the volunteers will smile, confused by the visibly upset young woman and her beautiful daughter. They will not understand that sometimes, it just hurts.
They will not understand that sometimes, you slay the dragon.
Sometimes the dragon slays you.
Today, Amelia, Princess of the Bells**, she and I will slay my dragon.
————–
*what? You didn’t think my parents named me Aunt Becky, did you?
**Amelia, by my amazing friend the Star Crossed Writer
An army stands ten thousand strong and tall,
But you shall rise above the bloody fray
And rain down vengeance ‘pon your enemies
And all those who would stand against your will.
When darkness threatens fainter hearts than yours
And calls ring out for champions to arise,
The cries will cease and everyone will see
Amelia, the Princess of the Bells.
by Band Back Together | Jul 7, 2011 | Encephalocele, Neural Tube Defects, NICU |
Human anatomy I’ve always found to be a strikingly tender science. Certainly, I always loved the dryness of the carbon chains and the satisfaction of growing new strains of bacterium, but seeing the human body and lovingly learning all of the nooks and crannies, all of the ways that we are all the same underneath, that is beautiful.
I always heard civilians shudder when I explained that I would be assisting with a dissection.
“Gross,” they would say. “I could NEVER do something like that.”
When pressed, I never got anything more specific from them, which meant that they’d never seen one, because the body, well, the human body is not gross. It is resplendent. It is powerful. It is amazing. It is beautiful.
All of the organ systems functioning in synchronicity so that we are able to walk upright, speak, form words, paint beautiful pictures, draw pictures with our written words, love, that is not gross. And that is what human anatomy is.
Inside, we are even more beautiful than out.
Rarely, however, do the names of the parts of the body reflect their beauty.
Often, they’re named after the anatomist who found them because scientists are about as self-serving and obnoxious as bloggers. The Islets of Langerhans, for example may bring to mind a nice set of islands found off the coast of Ireland, but no, they’re actually endocrine-producing cells of the pancreas.
Even the very word pancreas sounds more like something you’d find dead on the side of the road than something that creates the body’s most important enzymes. But to say it aloud sounds dirty, something you spit out of your mouth, a splat, an inelegant word for a very elegant organ.
The day we learned of the heart, I came across the words chordae tendineae, and I stopped for a moment. Latin words make me happy, which is probably, in part, why I am so attracted to virology. Continuing on, I read what this curious, elegant term meant.
The chordae tendineae are tendinous cords of dense tissue that connect the two atrioventricular valves to their papillary muscles in the hearts ventricles.
The chordae tendineae are the heart strings.
That is probably the most graceful and magnificent term I have ever heard and the best representation of why I find human anatomy so intoxicatingly lovely. We human beings actually have heart strings.
Whenever I am sad, I think of those tiny strings, which I have seen with my own eyes, felt with my fingers, those strings of fibrous tissue, so very much stronger than they look, and I am comforted by the heart strings that bind us all.
On my refrigerator hangs a report from Early Intervention with my daughter’s name on it. It is a discharge sheet that states that she is at or above level for everything. It was true then. It is not true any longer. I cannot bear to take it down, because to take it down would be to admit defeat.
I will not be defeated. My daughter will not be defeated.
When I called my case worker, she sounded so sad to hear from me, her voice mirroring my own. It didn’t help that the only sheet of paper I could find with the phone number on it was her discharge from the program with a jaunty, “We enjoyed working with your family!” on it.
The therapist will come several days after my 30th birthday to evaluate my daughter and to tell me what I already know: Amelia is not normal. Amelia needs help. I am a trained diagnostician and I am aware of both of these facts. I am also aware that I am doing the right things. But knowing this doesn’t make this any easier for me.
There is something between her brilliantly big brain and delicate rosebud mouth that isn’t connecting properly. It fills me with a well of sorrow I didn’t even know I had, because I want so badly to hear her words. All of her words. Stories of Saturn and the planetarium and pleas for cookies and candy and the injustice of it all when I deny her.
I want to know my daughter.
Instead, I kiss her head and rub her scar and apologize to her for what is certain to be a hard road ahead. My heart strings clench painfully and I cry bitter tears, wishing I could make it easy for her, knowing I can’t.
We’re gearing up for a battle over here and we’ll win.
Eventually. Some way, somehow, we’ll win.
by Band Back Together | Jun 24, 2011 | Anger, Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Caregiver, Coping With Cancer, Family, Feelings, Guilt, Stress, Trauma, Trust |
i’ve written before about my love hate relationship with the pump… well, mostly about the hate portion. its rhythmic sucking makes me sing little songs to its always irritating tempo. then they mix around with the gymboree songs already stuck in my head. then i realize how badly i really do need the prozac and ativan.
i don’t know for sure how long it’s going to last. i’m trying to be realistic about the prospect of having cancer, undergoing chemo and pumping for (hopefully only) six months. it’s kind of like starting out nursing. i tried to limit my expectations of myself. i said i’d aim for six months and then see if i could go for a year. that seemed ridiculously long to me at the time, much like pumping for six months does now. but a year came and went and well, here we are.
my husband, nugget daddy, stayed down at my parents’ last night so nugget and i have been left to fend for ourselves for the majority of the past two days, save for a playdate and lasagna drop off yesterday afternoon.
i didn’t get to pump at all yesterday. i can’t pump in front of my daughter, nugget. that would be like asking your pregnant best friend to take you to happy hour. i meant to pump last night once she went to sleep, but i fell asleep, too. my boobs had been angry ever since.
nugget likes to have her naps with me, but this limits my options for the duration of naptime as to what i can actually accomplish with twenty pounds of sleeping toddler strapped to my chest, lovely though as she feels snuggled against me. her grandmamie puts her to sleep in the stroller and i bribed her into it with chocolate chips this afternoon so i could pump, finally, and subsequently blog about it. lucky you!
i was so angry the first few times i pumped after starting chemo. it was like rubbing salt in the wounds. i couldn’t nurse nugget and i had to stand uncomfortably in the bathroom watching my milk fill up plastic bottles instead of a happy baby. and then as i would dump the ounces of heartache down the sink a new wound would appear like a gaping mouth to catch my salty tears and sting my aching soul. what a waste.
you won’t find much if you google “cancer” and “breastfeeding” except for articles about nursing after breast cancer. “chemo” and “breastfeeding” yields the same contraindication tagline over and over, and “cancer” and “breastmilk” mostly just points you to article after article about this guy who drank breastmilk to fight his prostate cancer. those, mostly sensational and local news, articles mention milk banks selling milk to cancer patients when they have excess available to sell. it costs $3 an ounce.
i’ve had plenty of time to think about that guy and those $3 ounces while making up songs to the pump’s rhythm and calculating how much i’d just poured down the drain. warning! here comes the crunchy freaky part. squee! maybe you want to stop reading, uptight next door neighbor guy or old school grandpa, maybe there’s a golf game you’d rather be watching. okay, so seriously, why the fuck would i want to keep dumping my milk down the drain when other cancer patients are paying good money to get their hands on it? i don’t know what exactly it might do for me, but it sure won’t be doing anything at the bottom of the sink that’s for sure. so i sucked it up and sucked it down.
it was sort of gross at first, though why exactly i’m not sure. i think it was the temperature. i can’t think of any beverage i regularly consume at body temperature. but now i’m used to it and pleased by thought that i might actually be doing something to help save my own life.
so, now i have a new goal. i want to pump twice a day for the whole six months, or however long it might be. i know i might get sick. i know i might have to stop if i do. but if i approach it the way i did breastfeeding, then maybe i can make it through. maybe if i tell all of you about my plan then i’ll be hell-bent on reaching my goal. maybe some mother out there trolling the interwebs for a glimmer of hope will find my blog now, instead of all the other useless crap i found.
