calm -ish -

Three months since my last update...
the fallout from the Birthmom package and the subsequent Birth Grandma visit, was somewhat constant until just recently.

Hardest was definitely Youngest Daughter with stunning flashes from Youngest Son and the upset was tough for everyone.

There were flashes, the tiniest flashes of time when I really wondered if I was going to be able to ride it out, if there would be an end to it all.

Most of that had to do with realizing how tenuous my bond to my youngest daughter could be in some ways and wondering how much farther it could stretch and not that I was afraid it would break off but how scared I was that maybe she couldn't love me.

Those were the darkest moments though, the scariest, the hardest - thinking that I was pouring so much of myself and my love into what was a black hole but one shaped like a little girl with huge eyes - and realizing I didn't have a choice, that I couldn't turn it off, that even if her attachment was broken and she could not love me back that she was MINE and that it didn't matter and that would be sad.

Thankfully there were times, far too brief as some points, where she did reach back, where it did not feel fake or for an audience or manipulative.


It has been somewhat settled and what I guess is real life kind of relatively happy normal - but I do feel the urge to erase that, after looking furtively behind me to see if I have just alerted the trauma winds to our presence.

I have not written because I also hate the idea of the one sided representation that I give of our family, of my children, of myself.

It really is unfair to give what is only my perspective and only from that chunk of time and present that to world as what my family is really like.

My kids are great, we do have so many great days and they forgive me sooooooooooooooooooo much and deal with my struggles to be a good parent...
and we laugh.

I am so thankful we laugh.

Too often I don't sit down to write about my youngest daughter's burgeoning sense of humour, her sly puns, her growing and strengthening relationship with her sister and her loss and fear and confusion as she sees her brother, my youngest son, begin that journey of becoming a teenager and in some ways leaving her behind.

You haven't heard about my youngest son's increasing periods of cuddling, of curling up against me of giving me kisses on the cheek, of cracking up so hard over something funny I said that he is a danger to himself if he is eating or drinking.

Older daughter is emerging slowly but surely, shaking out and drying those fragile, damp butterfly wings of who she is. Knowing more about how to handle things like the dark waves of depression, having more insight sometimes at 14 than I have at 41.

Oldest son is almost easy to take for granted because he is there and does what is needed and is both older than and younger than his years in surprising ways. He accepts with dignity and equanimity his place as oldest child and often takes on more responsibility than he needs to or should. He is a fine young man.

Finally I wonder about my right to my children's lives.
They are mine, with every breath and beat of my heart, they are mine but very importantly, I must recognize and respect that they are their own and their stories are their own and how I traverse that awareness and the need to share my story, is something I have been struggling with.

They all know about my blogs, this one and my photo one, and I don't think they read them on their own and ....

I don't want to put aside this blog, it and my other one Building The Bigger Family, mean so much to me and have brought me friends and an important support system, but posting will not happen much until I find the right way for me to do it.