Toot Toot (the sound of my own horn)

 When I started this blog it was August 2016 and I was trying to figure out to how move forward from a time when my child had been mistreated abused for months by his daycare provider and I, a single mom, chose to quit my job and stay home with him.

Today it is June of 2025 and let me say: time flies whether you are having fun or not!

That 3 and a half year old little boy who was hurt and had huge trust issues and a penchant for striking out when scared (or running away) has become a 13 year old man-child, who excels at Karate, at musical instruments, who loves nature camp, who has a PLAN for high school and dual enrollment at WPI and a goal of attending MIT.  He has friends, teachers who value him, supportive and encouraging adults that show up for him, he can have a hard conversation and can stand up for himself.  He can mow a lawn, do laundry, clean a bathroom, and cook a meal.  He is ok. I repeat: He is OK. 

I had help of course - therapists and sacrifices and prayer, my friends who listened and loved, and his never faltering big sis - but I did it.  There were dicey moments, scary moments, so much worry and doubt and fear and some of that was recent but... he is ok, and I did that. I've had 6 different jobs since then, working around his needs, but I did it.  I kept us in our same apartment, kept him in the same school district, kept him with the same friends he's known since kindergarten, prioritized a routine to see his father regularly and include his father in every big moment, taught him to love and care for pets, encouraged his older siblings to stay close, and gave him every opportunity to explore his interests and to meet his needs.  I'm tooting my own horn cuz baby? No one else is gonna do it.

In the grand scheme of all that is 'life', there will be mountains to climb and valleys to traverse, and therapists to see still... but what was a terrified and locked down challenge of a hurt small boy has become an evolving and open and forward thinking young man... with a loving and dedicated and consistent momma.  

And now maybe it's time to approach life in the way everyday normal people do: with trepidation and caution and openness and hope instead of sweat and tears and painfully considered double guessed  choices.  Maybe now we can just... live?  No, not "maybe now" but... Now.  Now we can just go out there and live without a shadow over us, without over thinking and doubt and second guesses.  Because he is ok... He is OK... and I did that.  I made him ok after all.

This past weekend we went on a scenic train ride.  We rode outbound on a track to a specific stop, the engine unhooked, moved around or 'switched' position, rehooked, and we came back the same way we had come.  The scenery was different on the way back, the way the air came into the windows and ruffled our hair was different.  The sound of the train horn was different because all of it came from a different position, even though we traveled the same exact track.  Same train, same seats, same track, different view.  Toot Toot...

Listen; life is hard.  The challenges we face are different for each of us and the way we approach and overcome those challenges is going to be different.  Same train, same seats, same track, different view.  Toot your own horn when you need to.  Congratulate yourself.  Appreciate yourself and your efforts.  You did good... toot toot!

August again; 1 year later

Last year I was just turning in my badge at work, cleaning off my desk, and preparing to leave my full time job to stay home with G after what had been a very hard year for him.

The past 12 months have been filled with journeys and travels I never planned on or prepared for, some I didn't even know I was taking until I'd come back, changed by the entire experience.  G has traveled his own path as well, with tremendous growth.  This past year has allowed both of us to leave behind the anxiety and insecurities we brought into it.  We both are more settled, calmer at our core, and stronger.  Sitting down to write this feels less like chalking up another month gone by, and more like having a whole new blog to write.  There is excitement ahead for both of us and I fully intend for both of us to embrace all of it.

Today I registered the Gman for Kindergarten.  It was a hard decision for me to make and I fretted over it for months.  Having just turned 5, I could have held him back for a year to let him grow into himself a little more.  He still struggles with good social skills among his peers but this boy is also reading, doing math, and his busy busy brain is bored.  I can't really teach him the social skills he will learn in school, and the child wants desperately to go.  So he'll go.  Today we drove to his school, a place where he has gone to play in the playground and to ride his bike around the walkways and has some familiarity with.  He was so excited, and yes, nervous too.  It felt very anticlimactic to me, personally, after all the worrying I'd done.  We walked in, met the principal, handed over our paperwork, and that was it.  Done.  G skipped back to the car, buckled up his own car seat straps, and chatted all the way home like he usually does.  It felt so normal.  That is the life we are excited to have - normal.

I had a hard adjustment coming back from Hawaii.  It wasn't just the post-vacation blues, it was more. I was heartbroken, and missing my family. The time that I'd spent with my brothers, my nephew, and some old friends, had made me so acutely aware of what I was missing in my life.  It also made me equally aware of what my future was looking like and how much I did not enjoy the view.  I felt very unbalanced, very lonely, and shaken to the core with all the uncertainties I was facing in my life. It took some hard work with a great therapist, and I'm pretty sure I caused more than one of my friends to actually roll their eyes by the time I worked through a lot of old trauma as well as a whole new crop of fears, but I did it.  I came through a really broken heart and fearful spirit to find a new path for myself.  A journey that I am choosing deliberately.

There will always be sadness when I look back at my past, and letting go of hope leaves a discomfort that I'd rather not experience, but none of it has the power to stop me from making a future and being hopeful, unless I let it.  I'm not willing to let it derail me though.  I can have both: I can feel sad, and I can feel happy and hopeful.  It is, as usual, about balance.

It was a long year.  A year of battling demons and I wouldn't trade the demons we battled because the lessons we learned were worth it.  Just the same?  I'm glad to close the door on the past 12 months, and grateful to fling open the door and welcome in everything that the next 12 months will bring.  I can't wait to write about it!

June 2017: I shouldn't have blinked

He isn't 5 for another 16 days but he's already shed all of his babyness and is a full blown "kid".  He grew a full two inches taller since January.  I can barely carry him anymore with his long legs all dangly and getting tangled up in mine.  He likes privacy in the bathroom now.  He makes fart jokes.  He reads street signs and labels and instructions (but only when he wants to), he can look at the calendar and know how many days are left in the week or the month.  When we go to the doctor for check ups, he walks right up and gives his name and date of birth to the receptionist.  When he laughs, it is a wild, full bellied, bent over double kind of laugh.  His arm will be in a cast for another 4 weeks but he's already riding his scooter and running down trails and playing mini-golf...because he isn't a baby, he's a boy.  He made his own peanut butter sandwich the other day.

I thought that I would be ready for this.  I thought that I was just holding on for this exact moment when he didn't need me so much and wasn't sucking the soul out of me with his demands.  I thought that I just couldn't wait until he was a real kid and not a baby... but it happened so quickly.  I think it happened when I blinked.  I might need to avoid blinking for awhile - I don't want to blink and find out he's driving the car and is taller than me.  It feels like it could happen that way.

I started this blog as a written journey of what it was like to give up my full time job and stay at home with this wild boy.  I thought it would be about saving his spirit, about his journey through a trauma back into wholeness.  I didn't have a plan for what to do with it after G was well and whole.  I never even wrote as much as I meant to from the start!  I also didn't plan that it was going to be about my own journey.  I didn't even realize I had a journey to go through.  I was so fully unprepared to embark on a journey of my own, that just like I blinked and found my baby had turned into a boy, I blinked and found myself right in the middle of a life I didn't know I was going to be in, how I got here, or where I'm supposed to go next.  One day I was in Hawaii on vacation with my child, and a week later I was sitting in a vast wilderness of complicated emotions and trauma and brokenness all of my own.

I try to  focus on how the universe brings balance to my life in so many ways.  I feel like its just how my life has been cared for by God (or whatever universal vibe you might want to call it).  Suddenly though, I was smack dab in a place where all the balance had shifted in such a way that it left me spinning, sideways, tipped over, and most definitely unbalanced.  A friend told me some theories show that the universe tends toward chaos and that maintaining order (or balance) actually requires effort.  Huh.  I had to ponder that one for awhile.  It makes sense that to create balance you might have to put forth energy to offset the chaos, but I've always felt that the balance occurring in my life was a gift for me to embrace.  Then I blinked.

I'm a little lost right now, a little adrift, and trying to look for balance, or to create my own balance even.  I have another thought though; maybe I'm approaching it wrong.  Maybe its not so much about trying to find or create balance, but about allowing time to pass and shift and for the balance to occur on it's own.  Possibly I've become a little too used to things happening when I want them too, or when I make them happen, and not enough accustomed to waiting it out.  There is a lesson there, I just have to pay attention to it.  I'll try not to blink and miss it.