Barnmaven

A family is created, a family is lost

Yesterday a friend of mine and his wife became parents for the second time.  They are really wonderful people, and because of some pretty significant health issues, having another baby the "usual" way wasn't an option.  They are already terrific parents to their daughter and I have no doubt they are going to be equally terrific parents to their new son.  He will be loved deeply, listened to, nurtured, nourished and cherished.  I am deeply happy for my friend.

Yesterday a woman I don't know relinquished her newborn son to my friend and his wife.  She chose them as the parents for the baby she and her boyfriend did not feel they had adequate resources to parent.  She was not under duress or pressure from her family to make this decision, it was a decision she and her boyfriend made together.  They were in contact with my friend and his wife throughout the last months of the pregnancy, and invited them to be present at the birth. 

Even so, I grieve for her loss.

Even though I am estranged from my birthmother, by my own choice, I feel that sense of grief and loss every year on my own birthday.  Right along with the joy and gratitude for the life I've been privileged to have, for the love of my parents and my children and the important people in my life, right along with all of that, there is also a part of me that feels pain.  Whenever adoption creates a family, it also severs the relationship between a mother and her baby.

I'm a mother, twice now.  I know the firece joy of being pregnant, the miraculous sensations of life moving inside me.  The unparalleled opportunity to experience what it means to grow and nurture a life with my own body.   From the moment that pink line appeared on the stick I'd just peed on, I was in LOVE with my baby.  With the thought of my baby.  Overwhelmed by the sudden need to protect that new life at any cost.  I knew without a doubt that nothing would separate me from my baby. 

Its easy to feel all of those things when you are financially able, in a supportive relationship, and fully physically and emotionally prepared to become a parent.  Unfortunately, that's not the case for everyone, and I cannot imagine how it must feel to carry a life inside you, feel that life move and grow and have hiccups and kick your bladder and poke toes in your ribs, and then know that you will not be able to mother that baby after he or she is born.

I can't imagine how it must feel to watch another mother hold the baby that grew in your body and know that from this day forward, that person is going to be his mommy and not you.

I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that mother who is being given the incredible privlege of being this baby's parent is grateful to you beyond words.   Your sacrifice has filled a hole in her heart. 

But I wonder, who will fill the hole in yours?

 

 
 

 

 

Rock your suit?

Apparently it is Swimsuit Confidence Week.  Glad I missed the bus on that one.  Its not that I’m afraid to show you what I look like in a swimsuit…I just don’t want to.  OK, well, maybe I am a little bit afraid. 

I’m not as afraid as I was five years ago, or 15 years ago.  But I’m far more conscious of what I look like in a swimsuit than I was when I was 11 years old and I didn’t even realize that a swimsuit was supposed to do anything other than cover up the private bits so you could swim mostly unencumbered but not naked.  All I cared about then was the act of swimming.  I wasn’t self-conscious, I wasn’t even self aware.  Of course, I didn’t have cellulite, either.  So there’s that.

I think I have a subconcious desire to return to the days where I wasn’t so body-conscious.  When I didn’t even know what arm fat was, much less care if I had it.  When I wasn’t concerned about how nice my bewbs looked – mostly because I didn’t have any, to speak of.   At least not compared to now.

On an entirely intellectual level I find this Swimsuit Confidence to be somewhat of a dichotomy. I am not trashing the event, not in the least.   Women can always use more cheerleading to accept themselves and go ahead and live their lives in public, regardless of their shape or size.  I’m all for that, and I like seeing women shed their fears (or at least keep them at bay with buggy whip and three-legged stool) and show other women that its perfectly OK to have a normal body and be seen in a bathing costume in public.  I like that. 

What gets to me are the catalogs and the magazine articles and layouts and the jargon that crops up around the clothing they are flogging.  The swimsuits and bras and jeans and all of it.

Maybe more than Swimsuit Confidence what we need is Stop Telling Us We Look Bad.

I want to see more positive language around clothing and less of a focus on attaining the “perfect look.”  Read any woman’s magazine article about buying the perfect pair of jeans or finding the most flattering swimsuit, and every word of that article directs you to minimize your flaws. Your FLAWS. The catalogs and the photo shoots and the everything, they’re telling you that its OK to wear a swimsuit even though you’re not perfect.  So in other words, they’re telling you to feel okay about yourself WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TELLING YOU YOU’RE NOT OK. 

That’s total bullshit.

Treating women as if their sole goal in choosing a swimsuit or a pair of jeans or a dress should be to make their butt look smaller or their boobs look bigger (or more lifted) or their waist look tinier or cover up their cellulite suggests that if we have any of these flaws, then we are not ok.  These are marks of who we are and how we are made, trophies of the children we bore or the scars we earned.  They are NOT badges of shame to be covered up, masked, and minimized.

I, for one, would like to see a magazine layout stop talking about our fucking FLAWS for a damn minute and start talking about our positives.  I think women should dress in what feels comfortable and good to them, not buy something someone else tells them to because it makes their ass look more “socially acceptable.”  Show me a woman who wears something because she feels good in it, and I’ll show you a woman who looks beautiful not because she successfully hid her “imperfections”, but because she knows she is beautiful exactly the way she is.

You have a responsibility to yourself to learn to treat yourself with love.  Don’t withhold love from yourself, don’t put a measurement on what makes you beautiful.  Don’t say “I’ll love myself more when I lose ten pounds” or “I’ll love myself more when this wrinkle cream finally starts working" or "I'd love myself more if I didn't have these scars and this cellulite."

Love yourself exactly the way you are now.  You are beautiful.  You deserve nurturing.  You are entitled to good things.  You are entitled to be happy, to exist just the way you are RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND.  NOTHING about you needs to be changed for you to be beautiful and loved and love-able.

The more you love yourself, the better care you will take of the precious body you were given.   And the less you will worry about what you look like in a swimsuit. 

Swimsuits are for swimming in. 

On to first grade...or not

I shot an email off week before last to the school counselor to find out when we would meet to discuss progress on his IEP and start making plans for next year. 

One of the things we talked about the last meeting came up in her reply email, and so now push has come to shove and we need to make some decisions. 

Kinder started horribly for my son.  I had worked hard to identify what his day would look like and help him to have reasonable expectations that the school then blew out of the water when they changed him from one teacher and one classroom to another teacher and another classroom, and then screwed up on his bus not just once but twice, and none of that really helped me get off on the right foot with the school, either.  Its not always fun to be the "that parent," but sometimes its useful. 

The year has flown by, and while he's made tremendous progress, there's a long way to go.  Our IEP goals were extremely basic: 

Follow directions two out of three times

Limit disruptions in the classroom

Join activity without continuous teacher prompting

Use kind words toward others

By the marking period mid year, his official progress toward goal was a "P" meaning he was making good progress, the objectives were not yet met but there was a reasonable expectation that they would be.

BUT.  That doesn't mean he's ready to move on to first grade.

Even if he meets the goals for the year, there are still concerns as to whether he has the stamina to do full-day school.  He has more good days than bad days, but his ability to rebound from setbacks is very limited.  In kinder, a bad morning means he only has to hold it together or have an adult observer to stay with him for a short time until he can get on the bus and go to aftercare.  Full day school would be a much different animal.

I'm not sure where we're going to end up next year.  I have no idea what the team is going to recommend and honestly, right now, I'm not sure what it is that I think needs to happen.  My next steps are to understand what the options truly are -- and then look at him objectively and determine where his needs will best be met.  Would he repeat kindergarten?  Enter a special program where he was in the regular classroom part of the day and in resource room the rest of the day?  Do half day of regular school and go to his aftercare group for the rest of the day? 

I want to be able to send him into the next school year with a much better start than we had this year.  I think things wouldn't have been so bad for him if the school year hadn't been so screwed up from the get-go.  I think next year will go better if we, as a team, do a better job of helping him to know what will happen and then make sure things go reasonably within expectations.

Its a lot to think about, and I really need to get this one right.

When and why

My mom usually hands me a stack of magazines whenever I stop by.  There's always some article or the other that she thinks I'll find interesting.  Usually she hands me the Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, that sort of thing.  When I stopped by to chitchat after choir practice on Wednesday, though she gave me the May/June copy of AARP. 

She knew I would find this confusing, so she quickly pointed out the cover photo and article - a piece on Amy Grant and Vince Gill.  Oooh, thanks mom!

I became an instant fan of Amy Grant when i was a sophomore in college.  Somebody had a tape of The Collection (remember tapes!  And having a Walkman!  Damn, I'm old) and she hooked me from the start.  Its not that she had this amazing vocal range or these deep and twisty lyrics, or even that she looked like this glamorous superstar.  It was all of the opposite that drew me - her voice was lovely and just this side of untrained, her lyrics were simple and down to earth and so was she.   There has always been an emotional framework in the songs she performs that says "I have the same challenges and fears and joys that you do, let me sing to you about them." 

It wasn't necessarily as a Christian artist that she appealed to me.  It was just her and the way that she sang.  It wasn't just that she sang Jesus songs - she did, sure, but she also sang songs about life and about feeling insecure and lonely and silly and happy.  I could relate.

I was lucky enough over the years to see her in concert a few times, and she's one of those artists who sounds just the same live as she does on her albums.  I thinks she's been lucky to work with some really smart producers who wisely chose not to overprocess her voice and just let who she really is shine through her work.

Maybe her crossover pop was a little sugary and sweet, but I think there's a place in this world for music that speaks to the simple things of love and family and all the connections innate to being a woman - daughter, sister, partner, parent.  In her music and in her interviews I always took away the feeling that she truly loved people just as they were, no matter who they were, and accepted them exactly where they are.  Of course, the enormous amount of money and talent and time she has given to charity over the years speaks volumes to her deep compassion for others.

When Amy and Gary split in 1998 I was also going through a divorce.  When she married Vince(with whom it was clear to anyone with eyeballs that saw the "making of" House of Love video she was deeply in love), I was also marrying my second husband.  When she was pregnant with Corrina, I was pregnant with my daughter.  I, too had endured the shaming and blaming that happens when marriages end and had left a church because of it; I empathized deeply with what it must have felt like for her to have that scrutiny amplified infinitely, a Christian artist getting divorced in front of the prying eyes of the world. 

I loved the article and the interview. I'm truly happy that Amy and Vince are still together, still in love.  Its hard, I know this, when you marry a person and you intend it to be forever and things go wrong and you realize at some point that its not going to work. Its wonderful when you find the person with whom you have a deep, loving and spiritual connection, who accepts you where you are and loves you unconditionally.

After I finished reading the article I thought about so much of what had been written about Amy and Vince and their respective first marriages/divorces.  As I often do when something crosses my mind, I hit my search engine and Googled a few articles.

I came across an article by Wendy Zoba written back in 2000 for Christianity Today.  The entire tone of the article was at best dubious about whether Amy had done the right thing by divorcing Gary Chapman.  Zoba wrote:

"Anyone who has persevered in marriage will attest that in deed there are moments of "enjoying to the fullest," but that often attends many tedious, sometimes painful, stretches. The best premarital advice I received came from our pastor's wife: "There are going to be times when you'll hate each other's guts." Those moments have been few and far between, but when they have occurred, my husband and I recognized this was normal and would pass."

This is just so offensive to me.

Not that Zoba and her husband are fortunate enough to have the kind of marriage where the rocky times are few and far between.  Not..not at all that.  What chokes me is the assumption that she makes that Amy and Gary's relationship was just like hers.

Now, I don't know that it was or wasn't.  But neither does Wendy Zoba.  Neither does any other person who has pointed a judgmental finger at someone else for getting a divorce.

If two people are so fortunate as to have a marriage where the times they "hate each other's guts" are few and far between and that they mutually recognized that the bad time would pass, then of course I wouldn't expect to see them tripping over each other's feet in the race to find a divorce attorney.

But comparing her own relationship to the relationship between Amy and Gary, which by many accounts was troubled for years, or to the relationship of anyone who has sought a divorce for entirely legitimate reasons, if this is the basis on which she's concluding that people ought to stay together, no matter what, then I cry "foul."

I know a lot of people feel like marriage is supposed to be forever, that you're supposed to stick it out for eternity except in cases of infidelity or abuse.  But I simply can't accept that as the case.

A marriage - or any sort of love partnership for that matter - is supposed to be a bond where the people in the relationship are both bettered by being with their partner more of the time than they are not.  Every relationship, even those where a couple is starry-eyed smitten after years and years together, still has its rocky times.  I've never personally met anyone who has been with their partner for a number of years who has never had a disagreement.  But those couples, even though they've had a fight here and there, or even overcome a very serious issue, the relationship they shared contained more positive than negative, more good than bad, more light than dark. 

But what happens when that's not the case?  Is it really correct to tell people whose relationship brings them nothing but heartache and anger that they must stay married, no matter what?  Can any therapist or minister truly counsel a couple who have spent years fighting, pulling each other down, whose love styles and personalities, beliefs or opinions are truly antithetical that they must stay together?   What good does that do for anyone? 

While other people might have opinions about why my marriage ended, only my ex and I know the whole truth of it.  We were the ones living it, struggling with it day by day. 

Its not that I don't think marriage is important or not to be taken seriously.  Of course it is. But I think people need to be careful when making assumptions about what goes on behind the closed doors of other peoples' lives.  Don't be so hasty to judge.  Most people don't tell you the whole truth, we are taught from early on not to tell the family secrets, to minimize things, to keep what is private, private.  I have been surprised many times by finding out someone was being physically abused or that someone was being cheated on, or even that people who seemed really happy whenever they were around friends and family actually had screaming fights constantly when they were home alone together. The announcement of their divorce was shocking, because nobody knew there was anything wrong.

Ultimately, I don't think its healthy for anyone to stay in a relationship that makes them miserable.  There is no growth in that, there is nothing about it that makes you a better human being, a better parent, or closer to God.  Sometimes the best that can be done is to accept that something is not working and do your best to carefully pick up the pieces and go forward, toward a happier future.

Six

Months, that is.

S and I have been seeing each other about six months now.

For the first time in my life I'm not sweating the "next step."  I'm not worried about WHEN we'll live together, IF he'll want to marry me, WHETHER he thinks I'm too fat, too thin or too old.  I'm happy in this moment, happy with where we are and who we are together, and if it all ends tomorrow, I'll survive and look back on these months as a wonderful time of being in love, learning about myself and enjoying the company of someone I like and respect tremendously. 

There's also an incredible amount of chemistry, but I don't want to make the rest of you feel bad, so I'll not brag.

We don't even fight.

Well, we had one fight.

Okay, so maybe HE wasn't fighting, but I was certainly giving it my best shot.

I'd had this really horrible day at work.  I was mean and crabby and just looking for a reason to put my fists up in the air.  He was trying to explain a concept to me based on what he thought was a question I asked (it wasn't a question, I was BITCHING about something, how DARE you think that was a question, mister) and I just lost my shit.  I started crying, told him to stop patronizing me and if I remember correctly, I think I hung up on him.

I went into my standard "I don't want to talk about it, I'm going to be mad at you all night but I don't want to talk about it" mode.  You know, the thing where you give him the cold shoulder, expect him to try and make it up to you for whatever mysterious thing he did wrong, sigh a lot and say "I'm FINE" in that terribly terse tone of voice when asked "Are you OK?"

He put up with about 20 minutes of it and then carefully unfolded himself from the couch, put on his coat, and said "Look, this is uncomfortable for me and I don't think staying here is going to do either of us any good.  I'm going to go home and we can pick this back up tomorrow."

OH MY GOD.

What I love about being horridly codependent is that I don't hear what he's saying.  I don't hear "Hey, I like myself and I won't sit here and be treated badly by you.  I like you, and I think you need space to work through whatever it is that's bothering you.  Since you don't seem to want to talk about it, I'm going to go somewhere else until you feel better."  I don't hear any of that.  My codie brain hears "I hate you and I never want to see you again."

It was not a good night for me, certainly not one of my best.  Maybe not one of my worst, but definitely not one of my best.  And fortunately, for this relationship, it has not happened again.  I learned something from that night.  I learned that you don't have to try and carry on a conversation that isn't going to get you anywhere.  I saw and heard someone respect themselves so much that they very politely declined to be treated badly by someone else, and even if I didn't recognize it at the time, I remembered it and I learned from it.  I looked at my own behavior and I saw something I didn't like, something I wanted to change. 

The next day, and the following days, I also was treated to the solidity of a person who DID come back, who DID pick up the conversation, lovingly and without animosity.  

I learn a lot from this man, about knowing yourself, about how to be loving to yourself and to others, about how to voice your needs without being overbearing or pushy.

All that aside, I am also incredibly happy, incredibly loved and in love.  I am with someone whose company I enjoy to a degree that is ridiculous.  Whether we are out with others, home watching a movie, discussing something deep or laughing about something silly, I like being around him.  I like how he patiently listens to my kids and doesn't get his feathers ruffled by their issues.  I have no idea how long this will last.  I hope its forever.

So anyway, six months.

That's something.

Admit it, you're jealous

I suppose I should have some shame that I keep bragging about my commute, but I really have a hard time not going on about it.  Almost daily I'll be in the middle of my drive home and be struck by something beautiful -- a Northern Harrier flying next to my window as he searches the field for dinner; a beautiful field of alfalfa with nothing but sun and blue sky behind it; a cloud formation so striking that it takes my breath away.

I left the island in 1983 for the city to go to college.  After college I got a job, and then another job, and then eventually I moved to New Jersey for yet more jobs.  All of my commuting, for 24 years, was in the city.  I either drove or took the bus, paid for parking, struggled to find parking, and except for my home street, pretty much all the road was a minimum of four lanes.  Four lanes FULL of cars.

I've been in Central WA for four years now, and I don't think I'll ever take this drive for granted.

This is what it looks like as I leave work on a rainy day:

No, I don't know what that smudge on my window is, either.

Then I head down the hill and into the Horse Heaven Hills for about 20 miles.  All I see is this:

Yes, I know what THOSE smudges are.  Lots and lots of dead bugs.  I don't bother washing my car much this time of year. 

Finally, I come to the really fun part of my commute.

I push the button for my 4 Wheel Drive, and I need it:

 

For about five miles its nothing but a gravel road in the fields.  So far I've seen coyotes (alive and dead), the skeleton of a dead cow and a dead sheep.  And some antelope. 

Oh, look!  Off in the distance!  TRAFFIC!

Hard to tell from my crappy cell phone picture, but that's a farmer discing his field.

All too soon, I head down the hill to the end of the dirt and back to pavement.

Still, though, I'm not struggling with a bunch of other commuters.  The locals look like this:

Its not all fun and games, though.  I do have to put a few miles in on an actual highway.  I don't like it.  I think its ugly.

Soon enough, though, I cross the Blue Bridge and turn twice, and I'm on my street:

 

That's my white fence and mailbox on the left.

I don't care that its a 45 mile drive each way and that it takes me almost an hour.  I don't care at all, because I used to have to drive on the Garden State Parkway to and from work and it took me almost an hour and I was only going 20 miles.  Being flipped off, cut off, yelled at and stopped dead in traffic was the routine. 

Here, in the spring, I squeal in delight as I see the first new foals and the calves, legs still splayed as they try standing for the first or second time.  I see endless sky and mountains that fill me with wonder.  I see the Columbia River, mighty and broad, sweeping her way past the Wallula Gap as she turns the corner and thrusts herself toward the Pacific Ocean, falling over dams and skirting thousand-foot high cliffs.  I see countless Red Tailed and Sharp Shinned Hawks, California Quail, Red Winged Blackbirds.  I see eagles, sometimes, and deer.  I see rabbits and badgers and foxes.  I regularly watch kestrels drop off the wire and grab something right next to my car on the road as I swerve to avoid hitting them.

I wouldn't trade this for any city job, ever.  I dont' ever see myself going back to "civilization."

 

Our bleeding hearts

My parents would gently admonish me.  Friends would roll their eyes.  Boyfriends (and later, husbands) would think at first that it was sweet, cute, but eventually they, too, would just sigh and shake their heads.

It could be a dead cat on the side of the highway.  A goose with a broken wing, or one that had lost her mate (they mate for life, you know).  A dog stranded in the middle of the road near the concrete divider.  A racehorse who shattered her leg in the final hundred yards of the race and had to be euthanized on the spot.  Anything.

My heart would crack wide open, the tears would come.  I would imagine their pain, their fear, their suffering, and suffer right along with them. 

The older I get, the more I learn that not everyone loves them the way that I do, that tragedy and loss are a part of life, that we can't fix everyone's suffering.  At least, I pretend to learn these valuable lessons, but secretly, deep inside, I go on grieving those souls.  Animals cannot speak to us in words, but our pets,they give us the best that they have, they love us unconditionally.  Animals in the wild live purely and without guile; they don't know how to be anything but exactly what they are.  They are beautiful beyond words, beyond breath.

My daughter, she has this bleeding heart too.

Picking her up at the aftercare place the other day, I find her tear-streaked and sad-eyed.

"What happened, baby?"

"The other kids were laughing at me.  They were horrible."

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart.  What were they saying to you?"

"Well, there was this CAT, mom and it only had three legs.  And it was kind of hopping along, and it was just so sad that I cried."

My heart cracks in two right along with her.  "Oh, baby."

"The other kids all laughed at me and they were teasing me.  They were saying horrible things like about a dog that got hit by a car and another dog that broke its leg.  One kid was telling me about shooting squirrels.  Shooting them!"

I hate their cruelty.  Not just to my daughter, but that they could be so callous about the pain of a living creature.

 

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.               

             ~Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

 

Yes, she has her own thoughts, her own heart.  

 

A bleeding heart, just like her mama. 

Missing her

Its been over a year now since I lost Lady. 

Occasionally she comes in my dreams, at odd random times, as if to let me know she loves me and is watching over us. 

If you're in the mood for sappy, try this on for size.

 

Now that I've totally depressed you, have a nice weekend. 

 

Bits & Pieces

We have a new foster in the house.

Meet Katie:

Katie is an 8-month old retriever mix.  Horrid photo, I know.  She's such a beautiful deep black that its hard to get a decent photo of her with the camera phone.

Katie was adopted once, but the dog at her new home started being really nasty to her, and finally Katie started to fight back.  The original dog is a lot smaller than she is, so her family made the heartwrenching decision to turn her back to the rescue.

She's a real sweetheart, Katie is.  She gets along with the other dogs, she respects the cats, loves the kids.  Mostly perfect.

Her new nickname, though, is "Katydid." 

As in...

"Who chewed up my shoe?"

'Katie did."

"Who chewed up this toy?"

"Katie did."

"Who chewed the vacuum cleaner power cord into THREE SEPARATE PIECES????"

"Katie did."

Sigh.

 

 

No Zombies Here

Before I medicated my child, I was completely opposed to medicating my child.

I viewed medications as evil, unnatural.  I didn't want to turn my beautiful little girl into a soul-less, will-less zombie.  People who medicated their children just didn't know any better.  They should be doing this special diet and that behavioral therapy and blah-de-blah, blah, blah. 

God, I was such a judgmental asshole.

I tell people that the decision to medicate didn't come easy.  I think that's true, in a way, but not entirely accurate.

Its not that the decision itself was hard.  By the time I reached that point, I didn't take any time to think it through, to get yet another opinion, to view all my cards and see which ones hadn't yet been played.  I literally reached a point where I thought I could not. go. another. step. and so I said "OK.  Let's try that."

And it worked.

I didn't turn my beautiful girl into a pale reflection of her former self.  Not at all.  What I saw was transformation of the most amazing sort.

Before medication I had a child who could not go one single day, and often not a few short hours without raging and screaming at the top of her lungs.  I had a child who hurt me on a regular basis, scratching me, hitting me, kicking me.  I had a child who could not be put into a time out alone for fear she would hurt herself, either deliberately or inadvertently.  I had a child who could not seem to do what she was asked to, even when the request was entirely reasonable or would result in some tangible benefit for her, like, sit in your chair at the table so you can have a bowl of ice cream. 

I had a child who could not make friends.  Who could not be in a standard daycare setting when there were no other options available to me.  Who would not be able to learn in a standard setting.  Who was, there is no doubt in my mind, completely miserable.

We tried medication.

My child is still stubborn.  My child is still oppositional.  She still has rages.  But she doesn't have them every day, or even every week.  Sometimes she goes MONTHS without losing it.  Her impulse control could be better, we all know that, and some days she has the attention span of a gnat, but all things considered, she is miles ahead of where she was a few years ago, and we didn't see that change until we medicated her.

Medication saved my child from herself.  Medication allowed the best in her to come forward, helped her to have more control over the things that were driving her relentlessly into the dark waters.  Medication allowed her to make friends, get invited to birthday parties, just like the other kids. 

Her medicine allows her to be a happier person.  And that, in and of itself, is priceless to me.

When I say that all I want for my kids is for them to be happy, its not a simple statement.  Not in the least.  I want them to be happy more than they are sad, though I realize that sadness is a part of life.  But I don't want their sadness to overwhelm them.  I want them to be secure and to be able to make good choices, because their happiness gives them confidence and lets them love themselves and treat themselves with respect.  I want them to have fulfilling relationships with people who enhance the happiness they feel.  I want them to do something with their lives that is meaningful and enjoyable to them, to have life paths that are positive.

And so we medicate.

When I posted about how hard it is to get C to take his medication, I need you to realize that its not just about 'winning' the battle with him.  I see that medication as being a crucial tool in the things we do to help him succeed in life.  I don't want him to be better-behaved because it will be easier for ME.  I want it because it will be better for HIM. 

I never hesitated to medicate my son, not after I saw how much it changed my daughter's life for the good.  I waited as long as I felt was appropriate to wait, but I knew that eventually he would take medication, and I have few qualms, if any, about making sure he takes it.  About making sure my daughter takes hers and doesn't hide the pills, as she sometimes does.  I make sure they take their medication.

I try to teach them that taking their medication is as much a part of their daily routine as brushing their teeth or getting dressed.  "Mommy takes her medicine.  Daddy takes his medicine.  Poppy takes his medicine.  S takes his medicine.  We all take our medicine, every day." 

Because I love them.  And because I want them to be happy.