We just got the Boy's psych evaluation. Forty-four pages of 12 point Times New Roman font. It is a PDF so I didn't do a word count but it was long. I took several breaks reading it.
I called my friend Ellen in the middle. Her daughter did the Wilderness/therapeutic boarding school routine.
"This is a psych evaluation! Of course it is going to be awful!" she said.
"But it covered every shitty parenting thing we've ever done," I said.
"Of course!" she said. "Having a kid with problems causes problems with the family, which then causes more problems with the kid! This is normal."
She didn't mean normal like regular, happy family kind of normal, but more like normal for families with kids in wilderness therapy. As in, this it to be expected.
Still, the whole thing is depressing, but that is why I talked to Ellen. She has been through it and made it to the other side in one piece, and so did her daughter. They both made it to the other side. I am so grateful for her grace and support. I think of all of the small and giant steps Ellen and her daughter made to get her where she is today.
Thinking of those steps and going to the School Board election fundraiser the other night brought back memories of my campaign, which perhaps I need to reflect on now. During my campaign, I called a friend who was deep in with the Seattle political establishment. I can't remember I called her about something good or bad, but I remember her response after we discussed the issue at hand.
Onward!
I might have won an endorsement, I might have lost an endorsement. In any case, I needed to move on to the next thing. Onward means when things go well, keep moving forward. When things crash and burn, keep moving forward.
In the campaign, I also learned that every day is going to be different and you are going to learn something hard. This is a campaign to get my son's mental health to a palce of stability. This campaign is intense and hopefully, unlike a political campaign, there will be more than one winner at the end for all of the kids in Wilderness.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment