Work In Progress

Over the Summer I did a lot of soul searching. This past year has been a very rough one for me when it comes to certain friends and family members. By family my character and parenting has been attacked and by friends my attitude has been questioned. So I decided I didn’t want to be “that” person who said it was always everyone else’s fault….it can’t ALWAYS be someone else’s fault. I deal with family members who always put the blame on everyone else because it is easier than them looking in the mirror and seeing that they make mistakes…I do NOT want to be like them. So, I stepped back away from most of my friends, stayed to myself with my kiddos and did a lot of thinking. 3 months of Summer gives a person a lot of thinking time…even with two crazy kiddos running around. What did I come up with? I came up with that I have changed a lot since becoming a special needs mom and some of it is for the better and some of it….well though hard to admit to myself let alone anyone who reads this…but some of it was definitely not for the better. I learned that I needed to realize not everyone will understand my journey with Cam and that it has to be ok…I have to allow it to be ok. I need to remind myself that as long as they want to be on this journey then that is really all that matters. I learned that I have to remember even though I have to fight fights every day for my son, whether it be with schools, insurance companies, bullies, family, etc to handle him better, help him better, be there for him better…that not everyone do I have to fight the fight with. Now, I am sure to some of you that makes no sense at all but to me it was like a shining light went off. I had closed myself off to a lot of my friends because I forgot to shut off the fighter hat around them and put back on my friend hat. I am so used to fighting for what is right for Cam, for what he needs and deserves that I became this angry person inside and I wasn’t just hiding it inside any more….I was projecting it for the whole world to see and it wasn’t pretty.

How can I walk this journey alone? I can’t. I need friends in my life...I want friends in my life. But, why would they want to be in my life if all I do is push them away? Is it their fault my son is Autistic? Are they the ones bullying him? Are they the family members not treating him right? The answer to these questions and many others was no. Yet, I still pushed them away. I still found reasons why we shouldn’t be friends. I had become the bitter, angry person that I said I never wanted to be. When I finally stepped back and looked in my mirror my reflection wasn’t pretty and it definitely was not the one that I wanted to see. I once had a friend tell me that I put up walls and she was right. I do. But, as a special needs mom you feel like you are fighting so much for your child that you forget when to stop. I felt that no one understood my journey and if they didn’t understand then they couldn’t possibly be in my life. I was allowing Cam’s diagnosis and the fights that I was and always will be fighting to completely take over my life and put up walls all around me. These walls were so big that I was having a hard time seeing over them to the outside world.

I learned that yes, I am a special needs mom. But, I am also so much more. I am not perfect. But, I am a good person. I am learning to slowly tear the walls down. Not everyone who was around before is around now and though I am sorry for that I am learning to be ok with that. I am learning to stop fighting every fight and more importantly to stop fighting fights that don’t need to be fought. I am learning to be a better friend, better mom, better wife….a better person. I am learning that though life with Cam has a lot of bumps in the road that a lot of people will never be able to understand, that as long as they’re willing to ride the ride with me and be there for me I should count my blessings. I am a complete work in progress…however, I am starting to see the sun through the bricks in my walls so that must mean I am slowly making positive progress.