I Felt It

Dear Addie,

This week I felt it. The emotional, physical, and mental toll this journey manifests, just got the best of me.

Truth…You are struggling lately. Every day for me kind of feels like holding my breath trying to stay 3 steps ahead, while feeling 5 steps (or more) behind. There’s a lot of unpredictability, new behaviors, an influx of anxiety, a new additional diagnosis, more emotions and I felt it, like hard.

You see Addie, we started therapy again on Monday and it went great, a lot of parent training just really good stuff. It wasn’t until hours later when I was reviewing all I had learned that it hit me. You’re our third child and here we are having to have therapists, teachers and specialists educate us on how to best help you exist in a world that wasn’t designed for you. Sure, gut instincts are a real thing and parents always know their children best, but there’s so much we are still learning and will keep learning for a very long time. That reality right there is heavy. It snowballs into guilt that maybe we didn’t do (or are doing enough) pretty quickly. This inevitably leads to the big picture “why” questions that we will never have answers to. It makes me sad about your struggles. It makes me sad that you have to work so hard every day. It makes me sad that at a project-based life skills school, the life skill we are personally focusing on the most is just existing with others without anxiety.

This week I felt the complexity of this journey, I leaned in and it consumed me, but here’s the thing Addie sometimes I think we need to feel the reality of all this to know just how far we’ve come. No one promised life would be easy and here you are every day doing hard things – some days better than others, but you are doing it – we are doing it together, celebrating even the tiniest of successes and never giving up.

I’m so sorry you are struggling my love, we will get through this. Promise.

Love,

Mom