How is it already halfway through 2014?

I have missed being here on my blog, writing and interacting with the community of fellow bloggers who have been such a support and encouragement of me for the past two and a half years.

Here’s the sitch: A little over a month ago the cable/internet and television, along with the king sized bed and a couch moved out of my apartment. So, without a wifi/internet connection inside of my apartment, I’ve been primarily limited to using the little iPhone 4s screen to connect with the interwebs and the larger world that exists. At the same time, there’s an infant and her family occupying the large bedroom while my Princess Tomboy alternates between using her little bedroom when she’s with me and the other “adopted” extended family member, a young friend of my daughter and her boyfriend. I “sleep” on the remaining piece of adult sized furniture in the apartment, the sofa/couch – depending on which part of the world you live in. Consequently, sleep and I have become even less well acquainted than ever before . . . well not ever, after all I have parented three infants of my own over the course of the past 28 years.

What all of this means is that tired, bleary, blurry eyes, and poor body mechanics have increased the difficulty of writing blog posts using the WordPress app. Additionally, without the internet or television to distract me – oh how do I miss them – I’m actually faced with being present in my circumstances, symptoms, and daily life as I navigate what life without being in an “intimate” relationship with Keith looks like, while figuring out parenting schedules and finances, in the midst of continuing to work through the recovery and process of figuring out how to live within the context of Bipolar II and PTSD, now that I have actual diagnoses and not just what I’ve suspected and self-identified.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the whole being a new grandma thing! Loving the little Moonchild, but seriously, I had somehow believed that my days of showing and getting into clean clothes only to be urped on were in the not so distant past. Silly me.

I’m turning 45 in a week and if I count helping to care for my cousin when I was 14, I’ve been responsible, to one degree or another, for the care and well-being of people 0 – 18 for 31 of those 45 years. Considering I didn’t even know how to be responsible for my own care and well-being for the majority of that time, it’s truly a miracle any of us are alive to tell the tales!

Which brings me to the current update on the reconciliation dance between me and Marco, my son. Suffice it to say, I’m being called as part of my spiritual, mental, and emotional healing journeys to do the very hard thing of putting myself into the context of his faith community on a weekly basis, starting last week. It was brutal, for both of us. We both have a crap ton of wounded brokenness from our individual childhood and adolescent years, PLUS our relationship with each other, mixed in with the life experiences we’ve both gone through as adults. It’s a big, hot, soupy, mess. However, it is becoming undeniably evident that in order for either of us to continue to move into our futures while living in the present, we need to face and resolve the pieces of our pasts where some of our deepest wounds come from.

It is terrifying and excrutiating to look into his eyes and see the depth and breadth of pain in his heart, mind, and soul. It hurts because no mother wants to see that kind of pain in her child’s eyes. Amplifying that is the understanding that his experiences with me as his mother laid the foundation for significant portions of that hurt. Attached to that is the child/girl/young woman in me who experienced similar wounds with no one to look at and work through them with.

The guilt and shame I once held onto and wore like a cowl and robe are mostly gone, although their remnants still linger in the PTSD and depression, trying to assert themselves. I’m learning to forgive myself and trust that God is walking with us, carrying us, and working us through our separate healing and recovery journeys. At least I do my best in the moment to act on that knowledge/belief.

Standing my ground and doing the hard thing, even when it’s the most terrifying thing I think I’ve ever done, is something I’m learning to do. It’s taken a while, but I think I’m finally “getting” that in order to move into who I am intended to be, I have to face the fears and hurts of who I have been . . . and I have to do it while acting on the things I want to experience and manifest in my life: healed and reconciled relationships, parenting Princess Tomboy for her needs and strengths, and supporting my Delightful One, the Mermaid Mommy of Moonchild, to navigate the experience of motherhood.

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” That’s the this about all of that.

Until next time, be blessed, prayers appreciated.

xoxo
Lillian

Mental Health and Obesity: When Being Fat is More Complicated Than That

I was invited to guest post on Crazy Good Parent for a second time! She must like me or something. Janice, your editing is amazing and you are wonderful. Thank you!

Crazy Good Parent

Hi, my name is Lillian, and I am a compulsive over- and under-eating carbohydrate addict.

Seriously.

This is generally my opening at online Overeater’s Anonymous meetings. It is often an uncomfortable thing to admit to. It feels as if I make food choices to deliberately screw up my life and my health. There are two key words here: compulsive and addict. Both are directly connected to my mental health conditions, Bipolar II and PTSD. The symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, hypomania can be triggered at anytime by situations and interactions with others. When these things are active, my eating and food issues generally get activated as well.

The roots and causes of my obesity and disordered eating are complex and convoluted. The road to recovery is not as simple as eating healthier and practicing self-restraint, despite what gurus, trainers, doctors, and scientists say.

All kinds of things can trigger a…

View original post 1,244 more words

Six Word Friday: Cloud

In the midst of my personal
trials, tribulations, and stormy seas, I
fell out of touch with other
people’s humanities. The clouds darkening my
skies I believed and other lies.
To witness and see the hope,
love,and bravery of another soul
shining bright, piercing the darkness
of
that other soul’s dark night reminds
me, to exchange bitterness for grace,
fear for love, to release resentment,
hope to embrace strength to endure

I didn’t go to jail yesterday, and other notes.

Grief & Loss: Presence in Mourning

I shared last week the happenings in my life and the lives of my children during the month of March: the miscarriage my son and his wife experienced the week before my daughter’s daughter arrived six weeks early.

A little over two months ago, a loss so profound was experienced by two amazing people who I love so deeply, but with whom my history of being me has created a yawning canyon of separation of woundedness and lack of emotional safety.

Yesterday, they each shared their grief, pain, and loss publicly and, whether they intended to or not, with such courageous vulnerability. I don’t pretend to know what they are experiencing. I can’t possibly know. I’m not them and I haven’t experience what they have. What I do know is that we are told to mourn with those who mourn.

The fact is that in the midst of the everyday demands of my life and in the lives of those around me, there has been little time or opportunity to share in their mourning. Truthfully, my heart aches. It aches for the sorrow, grief, pain, and anger they must experience in unexpected times and ways. Feelings so desperately dark that sunshine must scorch their tears and the joy of holding their niece may be turned to ash by the bitterness of their own loss.

Their loss is also my loss. The loss of hope for who their child would become, a grandchild to hold, help nurture, and love in new ways I’ve been learning to love.

Grief and mourning feel isolating. It feels as if part of you had been ripped away, leaving shredded, shattered, broken pieces of yourself scattered on the ground, to be kicked aside and trampled on by everyone around getting through their everyday lives.

A new friend posed the question;
If your child died, how long after would you still choose to celebrate that child’s birthday? My response was however long I needed to acknowledge and honor that child’s presence and impact on me and my life.

No one gets to say when it’s time to be done with grieving. Sorrow, loss, and pain are part of our human experience and little or big things can and will flip the switch and pull the trigger on it at inconvenient times in uncomfortable ways, which may cause us to feel out of sync within our own minds and bodies and out of step with those in the world around us.

The only way to move through it is to experience it in all its discomfort and messiness and to allow those around us to be with us in it.

The only way to handle someone else’s sorrow and grief is to simply give them the room, time, space, and grace to experience it without trying to make their tears stop flowing or telling them they’ll be okay and happy again, in order to feel more at ease and comfortable within yourself.

“Matthew 5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

Living in Community: A Dream

Last week I misplaced my thyroid meds and missed taking them for several days. I knew the effects of going off of antidepressant meds cold turkey. I’ve experienced it. Not a fun time. I did not expect to have mood and emotional issues as a result of going off the thyroid meds. Totally silly of me, in retrospect. After all, it’s all connected: mind, body, spirit.

By the third or fourth day, I was drained and exhausted, crabby, impatient, and irritable. Of course that was the day my little Princess Tomboy had the day off from school and being off her schedule was discombobulating to her. Since LaLa and her SpiritLove and their Moonchild are living with us, as well as a friend of theirs who is sometimes here while she’s working to find housing for herself in between her work shifts, I had planned to take PT out early to get her hair cut, visit Playland, and then take her out to her grandmother’s so that her father wouldn’t have to come all the way out here to pick her up after work and to avoid all the chaos of trying to keep her energy contained. The difficulty was that I was completely out of sorts and, despite my best efforts and intentions, it was not a good mommy day for me.

I was not fit for human company and desperately in need of respite.

Inner dissonance
Best self fighting lower self
Breathe in Grace and Love

There are so many families in multiple levels of distress: financial, physical health, mental health, in relational isolation, lacking experience, knowledge, and understanding of how to take care of anything other than day to day survival. So many people coming from backgrounds and histories of trauma, abuse, neglect, and poverty who, like myself, have overdeveloped crisis management responses and survival skills, but lack the ability to sustain healthy self-care habits due to overwhelm and exhaustion. It’s so very often a case of the blind leading the blind and the sick and wounded trying to care for those who are in the same battlefield triage.

So many of us are lost in our sense of inadequacy and lack, falsely believing in the lies we’ve learned to believe about our inabilities, impostorship, and fear of failure.

Fear of the unknown
Success changes everything
Uncharted waters

Back when I was young, full of fire, hope, energy, and knowledge – don’t we all know what’s wrong with the world and how to fix it when we’re in our twenties? – I had to write a policy paper for a college writing class. I came up with an idea for a program to serve teen parents and their families. I called it Transitional and Community Living for Pregnant and Parenting Teens. Now, I know and understand that it’s something needed by many families, not just those headed by teen parents.

The issues facing so many families today, which correlate and combine to make it feel next to impossible to do more than survive moment by moment are numerous. Lack of basic life skills:
• Parenting: attachment, nurture, discipline
• Nutrition: menu planning, meal preparation
• Budgeting: shopping, saving, prioritizing wants vs needs
• Cleaning & organizing
• Job search: resume writing, filling out applications, interviewing, follow-up

Often things like unidentified and untreated mental and emotional health issues get in the way of those who find themselves living crisis-oriented lives. As our society has mobilized, compartmentalized, and has destabilized from earlier community interdependence models, we’ve become more isolated and fractured within the teeming urban centers so many are born and come of age in.

My idea is to establish a synergistic community where families in crisis can have a chance to stabilize, learning from and teaching each other, while accessing services and education in order to become equipped and capable of sustaining stability within the context of the larger community.

Establish centers of “mixed” socio-economic housing where everyone is going through individualized assessments to identify strengths and needs and working together from the different strengths to support the needs of all, while everyone has opportunities to learn, heal, recover, and grow.

A place where different service organizations, educational institutions, health care providers, and employers work cooperatively to build up the the people working in and being served by them.

Stabilize housing, transportation, health care (mental and physical), education, and vocational training through mutually supportive relationships and I suspect that societal ills like domestic violence, addiction, criminal behavior, and other symptoms of dysfunction and maladjustment would begin to diminish. Once basic security needs are met, creating and building opportunities for people to learn skills like cooking, gardening, child care, elder care, and self-care will enable them to grow in confidence, trust, and communication. With this foundation, personal exploration and development becomes possible.

Start with a campus that has dorms, studios, family group homes, and apartments. Provide opportunities for communal gardening, food preparation, and dining. On-site case management and advocacy services as well as therapeutic opportunities for individuals and groups with trained and certified child, adolescent, and adult development specialists providing child care and family supports in place so each family member is being served. Using the Family Unity Model to obtain inter-agency cooperation for families engaged and involved in different programs attached to different services: Justice, DHS, Vocational Rehab, and the myriad other programs that conflict and overwhelm or leave gaps and cracks that people fall through.

Engage institutions of higher education to establish internships, practicums, and supervision of students seeking higher education degrees to live, learn, and grow within the context of the community they are serving.

Establish pay-it-forward, give back to the community opportunities at each level of progression with mentorship, peer counseling, and community outreach programs and opportunities.

Provide respite, rest, and recharge opportunities for all stakeholders: participants, volunteers, and staff.

This is my dream.

Join hands together
Living in community
Thriving families

Be As Children

My daughter’s Head Start preschool classroom is practically across the street from a large park. Since the weather started improving and because there is a lot of disruption in our home due her sister’s little family moving in with us after the baby was born, on the drier, warmer days, I’ve been taking her over to the park so she can be her little Princess Tomboy (PT) self.

My little PT, like many five year olds, had this gung-ho gusto way of going after what she wants, whether it’s to pet every dog she sees, climb and jump from every rock formation she passes, or call on any adult in her vicinity to aid her in her efforts to reach the monkey bars. She’s fearless in her desire to achieve her intended objective.

Whether it’s a function of being five or a function of her Aspergers, she’s often so focused on her desire that she seems to not have any consciousness of being in danger or that she could be on the verge of injuring herself or others. It’s enough to drive a mommy like me a bit mad at times. Both definitions are equally applicable at times, much to my chagrin.

On the last day of April, it was like Summer had arrived nearly two months early. I already knew I’d be taking her to the park. So, when I arrived to pick her up and she excitedly asked to go to the park, I told her that was the plan and we left very quickly, both of us forgetting to make sure she went potty first.

On the way to the play area there were several encounters with fur parents walking their dogs and she approached every one of them I would allow. I’ve had to teach her to ask permission and wait for a response. Trying to teach her how to safely approach all dogs and to respect the answers, even when it isn’t what she wants to hear is an ongoing process.

We finally arrived at the playground and I sat on the bench with her stuffed horse she’d taken to school for nap time, while she ran from play structure to play structure, fearlessly taking it as her due that any adult in her vicinity was there for her to ask for their help, regardless of whether they were already occupied. She decided to play on the teeter totter and when no one was available to see-saw with her, she figured out how to play on it by herself, using it as a tilting balance beam. She became a leader of the pack when two other kids joined her on the teeter totters on either side of her.

I was so fascinated and enamoured of her I shared this comment on social media:

“At the park with my mommy hat on, watching my Princess Tomboy be fierce and fearless. Can we bottle that energy, curiosity, and confidence?”

It reminds me of an encounter between Jesus, his disciples, and some children.

Mark 10:13-16 HCSB
Some people were bringing little children to Him so He might touch them, but His disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to Me. Don’t stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you: Whoever does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” After taking them in His arms, He laid His hands on them and blessed them.

Children are not simply innocent of the ways of this world. They are curious, fearless, focused on what makes them happy, willing to take risks, try new things, and expect the best of those around them. At least that’s how they are before the learn from painful and harsh experiences this life has a tendency to teach.

What if we approached God, each other, and our lives in these ways, today? Do you think we might enter the kingdom of Heaven while experiencing this life on earth?

28 Days of Writing

I’ve missed blogging this year. For those who have been on this healing and recovery journey with me, my absence may have been worrisome. For my absence and silence, I apologize. There are many of you who have been interactive, sharing your encouragement, support, and concern. Hopefully, you know who you are.

One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, I’ll have the time and wherewithal to catch you up on the comings, goings, and transitions I’ve been experiencing over the course of the last five months. For now, a brief synopsis:

December 2013: My youngest daughter turned five. There was a major conflict between her father, my (then pregnant) oldest daughter, and her boyfriend. This conflict precipitated and triggered a near nervous breakdown for me. I took our daughter and left for several days. During that period I decided on a separation of indeterminate duration in order to get focused on my well-being.

January 2014: I finally got government sponsored health insurance due to the ACA. A complete medical physical revealed that I had a variety of health issues, related to lifestyle and stress which combine to create Metabolic Syndrome: Type II Diabetes, Thyroid Imbalance, Cholesterol Imbalance, and Morbid Obesity. In conjunction with those things is Fibromyalgia. During January I got connected with mental health services as well as support services for domestic violence and trauma survivors. Please note that “domestic violence” identified in my case was not physical, sexual, or even overtly verbal. It was the conflux of two imbalanced, toxically codependent people in a closed system, in an almost 20 year pattern of mutual destruction of autonomy.

February 2014: Through the mental health provider I received confirmation that I do indeed experience a bipolar disorder, as well as PTSD – both of which were present, unrecognized, and untreated prior to the beginning of my relationship with the father if my youngest child. My youngest got very ill with the flu and pneumonia.

March 2014: My son and his wife experience a miscarriage the week before my daughter went into labor, birthing my first grandchild six weeks early. Then my daughter’s family lost their housing during the three weeks they were living in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. This precipitated the final breakdown in the relationship between my daughter’s father and myself. During this time I also received the final evaluation report from the Early Childhood Services team at the local school district that my youngest experiences Autism Spectrum Disorder on the higher, functioning end of the spectrum, indicating Aspergers. By the end of March, there were five of us living full-time in my tiny two-bedroom apartment, with the father if my youngest staying on the weekends. My adult daughter returned to work at three weeks postpartum.

April was spent adjusting and transitioning with all of these changes. My eldest daughter’s boyfriend was given a part-time job under my son’s management and her work hours have increased. Last weekend three major items moved out of my apartment so that my youngest and her father are now able to spend their weekends together elsewhere. He still has a lot of things here, which REALY need to go ASAP, but with the bed, the extra large flat screen, and sofa gone, the weekend tensions have been reduced.

There continues to be many things needing attention and resolution. There are many meetings, appointments, and classes requiring my time, energy, and attention. Putting as much focus and energy into parenting, grand-parenting, and self-care as possible in the midst of it all is my focus. Thus, the lack of writing.

I need to get back into the writing. This month the 28 Days to a New Me personal transformation group has a writing focus. I have committed to writing out an inspirational thought or poem and creating a shareable graphic wit it for the first 28 days in May.

I started on April 30th with this one:

I choose to be entertained rather than offended. It disarms the ignorant and idiotic while empowering me to have a better day. ~ Lillian E. Moffitt

Here is my official Day 1 of 28 entry:

Present in the now
Experiencing the warmth
Acceptance is Peace

So, each day for the next 27 days, I will share what I put together for this month’s challenge.