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Showing posts from July, 2019

Rising up...

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In the spring after Javad's seizure, I began attending Portland Timbers games fairly regularly. Slowly, I found my tribe. People who accepted me for me, not forming their opinion or relationship with me in regards to Javad. I was struggling emotionally and having a distraction that I loved, soccer, was a way for me to begin to heal. That year was a strange one. Javad and the Timbers. That was when I was writing more. I wrote about  Javad, the Timbers and the MLS Cup  that year. When you are desperate to find hope because you see none (or little), you begin to look for things that will keep you grounded. Providence Park became my safe place, my home, my church. It became the place where I could see myself as whole. I wasn't whole by any means and am still putting the pieces of myself together. Now, after watching Javad, I know that healing doesn't come quickly. Watching his body struggle to heal, piece by piece, helps me to see why it is taking so long to heal. The mind,

Letting yourself grieve

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Know thyself, or at least keep renewing the acquaintance ~ Robert Brault When you have a child with a major disabiity, you enter a fire of instruction upon birth. You have painstakingly prepared for you child, have done all the classes and research and in the blink of an eye, you have to toss that away and focus on your child's health.  From the beginning I didn't doubt that Javad would be okay. Apparently after many conversations, I may have been the only one. Javad was tiny and so weak. As I said, he was like a living doll that was breathing but absolutely no movement. He didn't cry. He just laid there, silent and still. I am not sure I ever really allowed myself to fully grieve that. As a parent, you have dreams and hopes and, although I was thrilled with Javad, the dream of having him run with his brothers and sisters, learn to drive a tractor with his Papa, and garden with Grami, were gone in a moments notice. Over the years, these losses were felt, but I wo

One Year Later...

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  July 18, 2018 . One year ago...almost to the date since I last wrote. It has been an interesting time. I have thought about writing but haven't had the words. Me? No words...seems unbelievable. The last few years of my life have sped by and crawled at snails pace. It is like my life was thrown in the air like skeet then shot into a million directions. The last few years has made me confront some things about my life that I had pushed back, see things about myself in a light that I may not have wanted and confront fears I was a bit unprepared for. I used to write a lot, it was a form of therapy in many ways so I find it interesting looking back that writing was too much, too personal. I am ready to be back, writing, processing the world through the eyes of a woman, a high school math teacher and the mother of a medically fragile son. These are viewpoints that sometimes work in tandem and other times pull me in very different directions. They say statistically that the divo