Many times while writing for this blog, I’ve shared my worries, my sadness, my frazzled feelings as a mother of twins who need more. Some parents seem to have so much figured out while I feel like I’ve been floundering, searching, hoping for six years that I’d find the magic solution to fix it all. I hoped that if I just kept looking and worked hard enough, we might eventually attain a “normal” life. Hearing others say, “Hang in there, it will all work out,” was encouraging but it didn’t bring me the peace of mind I was seeking.
My boy’s improvement has become my obsession. Some days I feel like I make no headway, crossing one thing off the list and adding two more. Even when their teachers praise how far they’ve come, I keep going back to my list of things undone thinking, “but we’re not there yet.” But lately I’m coming to realize there is no “there” to get to.
Last week I began reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön. At first, I wasn’t reading it with my boys in mind, and yet, the pages seem full of advice for parents who are struggling—struggling to cope, struggling to accept, struggling to see the light in their child that gets overshadowed by exhausting undesirable behavior.
Chödrön says,
“…abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put ‘Abandon hope’ on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like ‘Every day in every way I’m getting better and better’….We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what’s going on, but that there’s something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.”
Today I put a note on my fridge that says ‘Abandon Hope.’ Of course, that doesn’t mean we’ll cancel therapies or wallow in despair. Instead, it will remind me to transition out of my obsession with what we are not, and to appreciate right now, even when it’s pushing me to the edge.
