Forward

Dear Addie,

I know what you are probably thinking…

Dear Mom,

Where do we go from here?

Well, my dear the answer is always… forward! Let’s climb out of the hole and go forward. Sounds easy enough, right?! Not sure where we are headed or into what, or how much paperwork this will involve but forward seems like the right direction.

This past weekend was a holiday. A holiday to honor those that gave the ultimate sacrifice of their lives for our freedom. For our ability to gather with family and friends. While the intentions and purpose of Memorial Day were not lost on us, the typical celebratory gatherings most are accustomed to (and looked forward to this year perhaps more than most due to the pandemic) sounded daunting with our most recent struggles. So, what to do?

Move forward.

If I’m being honest Ad, moving forward right now feels like I’m going about life wearing concrete cinder blocks on my feet. Anyone who has suffered from stress & anxiety may understand that sentiment. Doing some of the smallest mundane things can be nerve wrecking and exhausting. If you’re not exhausted, you’re numb. Some days just seem like moving around checking boxes. The silent struggle is often the effort of avoiding pity from anyone, as it is an internal battle with ourselves. The last thing anyone struggling wants is someone to feel sorry for them. Just this week a friend of mine was telling me about her daughters’ anxiety. A young lady that I always saw as confident was deeply struggling and I had no idea. Rule number one in life - kindness.

You absolutely never know what battles people are dealing with so lead with love and kindness always. Seems easy enough of a concept right, but I promise you there are people, adult people Addie that choose a life otherwise.

But we move forward.

There’s this advice we are given on day 1 of this journey that rings nonstop in everything we do – “exposure is key,” but so often exposure to anything takes multiple failed sometimes traumatic attempts before seeing any progress. It can wear not only you down, but all of us. After a while we wonder to what is this “key” to exactly, because maybe we don’t want it?!

We move forward anyway and try again.

Seeing it was a long weekend that our family could spend together we decided to try again. The place we had lovingly coined our “Happy Place” was not so happy the last time we were there, but thinking in some deep way someone gave their life so we could have this all too important “exposure” so back to the beach to try again and see if progress, however small was in fact being made. Would we find happiness there or a WWF wrestling match with an audience of a magazine perfect family happily making sand castles? Only one way to find out.

Move forward.

Now this might make me sound like a complete train wreck, but did I ever tell you I’m terrified of bridges? I know crazy right?! I’ll spare you the details as to why, but it takes 3, yes 3 white knuckled, teeth grinding bridges to get to our happy place. We were going to take 3 bridges to maybe see progress. 3 bridges for exposure. 3 bridges to just try again. 3 bridges at a chance for family time - all of us – together.

I’m happy to report that I’m penning this letter to you which means I didn’t have a panic attack getting across those bridges (yay me!), but the odds weren’t exactly in our favor when we got there, so whatever progress was made in the last few weeks was going to be front and center almost immediately, welcome to an ocean too choppy to play in.

I’m not sure if there is a greater love for you in this world than salty ocean waves knocking you over, but today it wasn’t going to happen. Rip current warnings = no waves for Addie. Every ounce of my being was preparing for SADdie or MADdie even, but we were across the bridges and in it to win it now.

Knowing the ocean was rough on this particular day, we decided to not change into bathing suits before walking down to the beach. Not exactly an earth-shattering sign that you’re not going swimming because who are we kidding, you don’t discriminate when it comes to swimming attire. Bathing suit, sweatpants, jammies – anything is perfect for ocean play. But today we were just going to walk the beach and sit on the bench to take in the scene. Could we do this? Were we moving forward?

As we approached the beach you went straight to the bench to sit down. Stimming with an over exuberance of excitement, you took your shoes off and buried your feet in the sand. You were happy & calm. I mean you were bouncing like a jumping bean on the bench, but this was our calm. It didn’t take long before you bolted for the water, but much to our surprise you ran a few feet and dramatically, laughing fell into the sand, looking back to see if daddy was chasing you. You were playing a game. This was no WWF wrestling match, this was progress.

After a few times of playing this game of chase we headed back to the house with absolutely no issue.

The next day was equally as unfriendly for wave riding so we decided maybe the aquarium was the perfect spot for some exposure and boy were we right! You were gleaming with joy with just us talking about going to see jellyfish! Once again nothing but progress. You efficiently made you way through the entire aquarium not once, or twice, but three times in 40 minutes. We were so proud of how well you did, yet question who came up with the suggested amount of time being an hour to make it through this aquarium?

Of course, we ended our positive progress with a visit to the brand-new Surfin’ Spoons for a chocolate ice cream treat to celebrate because why not right?! (If you don’t know, Surfin’ Spoons is one of our absolute favorite places in Nags Head, and they are big supporters of Surfing for Autism – hence the dollars in the ceiling! More on that another time…)

Addie, some people learn to dance in the rain, and some get hurricane force winds to deal with and it slows them down a bit. It’s not ours to decide who gets what, but whichever is your path baby girl, KEEP MOVING FORWARD. Life is in no way a race. Pack up all your fear, anxiety, doubt and bring it with you across those bridges, because your feelings are valid and while it may not seem so at the time, the thing about storms is they don’t last forever. Eventually you will see the sun peak out of the clouds or maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get a precious glimpse at a rainbow. When that happens, you can set that bag down and really take it all in. You might even smile a bit as you gaze back toward the bag that you carried all that way as it now rests as evidence that you weathered the storm.

There are sure to be more storms on our journey, but we will keep moving forward.

Love,

Mom