Recovery From Hazardous Parenting

I spent seven wonderfully engrossing hours yesterday, because I could, outside in one little patch of my Big Back Garden. Formerly an older compost pile, one year I just threw blocks and rocks around the remnants and called it another permaculture bed, but finally I had time to clean it all up properly, pulling out fragrant mint runners and the ubiquitous quack grass.

I was listening to some Tony Robbins CDs I'd found at a yard sale, my Dave Ramsey podcasts, and keeping one eye on the sky, such a warm day, but I knew rain surely would be coming soon. Right, God?

Tony Robbins served as a brain scrubber, I have so many negative emotions that I know I need to work through, to rid myself of, the many resentments and stressors have nibbled away literally at what little intelligence I must've once possessed.

Several emails, a text, and comments from folks wanting to know when Dr. Brenda McCreight's ebook will be ready, she'd told me another month possibly. Clearly this book was written by someone in the know, someone who'd lived under these same demands and challenges, constantly fearing for one's life changes one forever.

When there is a loss, there is grief. Yet, all grief is not the same. For some, there is a disenfranchised grief which means that the negative feelings, the sadness and the losses are not validated by others and the person expressing the grief is given the message that the feelings are not acceptable. This often happens in adoptive families when others don't understand the depth of the love the parent has for the acting out child, or, the parents are told, "you asked for this, you didn't have to adopt a child."

The message of disenfranchised grief is that your feelings, your sadness, your losses in this parenting experience are not okay and no one wants to hear about your pain. There is also complicated grief which occurs when there are other factors involved, such as the strength of the attachment to the child; or, a co-existing depression in the parent; or, the parents' co-existing anger at the acting out of the young adult.

The parent may also have guilt over bringing into the family a child who harmed the lives of the other children in the home.

Honest to goodness, hearing these words from her book Recovery From Hazardous Parenting: How To Reclaim Your Life After Raising Children With Behavior Disorders has been such a balm to my ravaged soul.

I fantasize about taking a long salt air soaked sea cruise alone, all by myself, so that I can eat when I wanna eat, sleep when I wanna sleep, read when I wanna read, or just sit and stare at the ocean.

I honestly can't fathom how long it'll take to recover completely.

I keep expressing how quiet it is here now with only a dozen children, they are such great kids, the normal noise is fine with me, there's no fighting, not much destruction, what does occur is accidental, I can deal with that aspect of raising rowdy sons.

Two more teenagers are riding the bus home this afternoon to eat supper with us and to go to Youth Group, an activity we couldn't have done previously, as there were kids here then whose behaviors made company all but impossible. Their own prickliness and severe emotional disorders made them less than popular at school, indeed rendered friendless, as folks were scared of them, and one of them in particular couldn't stand other human beings, lashing out verbally and physically all the time. All. The. Time.

See? I keep re-living the severe mind-numbing trauma of the last 17 years.

I feel as if I've been beat with a bat and left for dead. I really do.

The grieving may occur for years without acknowledgement and without being recognized for what it is.

This is all so very complicated.

I keep reading and re-reading Brenda's words, finally I thought my brain would explode from over-thinking the complications, the kids were all full from supper and were bopping around the house, doing homework, laughing with each other, being silly, so I plopped down in the living room to read a beautiful book, Fields Of Plenty, very slowly, savoring each word, and loving the pictures.

Lily was playing the guitar there serenading me, and Tabby was rearranging her second semester notebook - she's only a third grader, but already planning to be a teacher, thinking ahead about a gradebook and lesson plans.

Tony, who took the above photo of Tia, Lily's Yorkie, was googling a stainless steel exahust fan that he wants me to get when I venture to Lowe's for a new stove to replace the one that had exploded.

If not today, then it'll be a Dominos night.

$64.10 for ten large pizzas with one topping, a real treat for my kids, I try and do this once a month for them.

I'm just trying to breathe regularly once again, now able to recognize grief and other complicated, conflicting emotions for what they are - part of the process.

Sarah wrote a lovely post.

Thank you, Brenda, for getting your book into my hands before I'd sent off the following order...