Challenged Parenting

Doing Something. Towards Solutions. 

This time it was late in 2007 and Sabrina was a little over two years and baby Maya was 4 years old.  Michael and I were going through dark times.  He was in a bad place and I was left to hold the fort, but I was in the dark myself.  Unsure of what was happening to my partner.  But I knew this was big and I um, started having what I know now to be panic attacks.  There were times that I was curled into a ball in a corner of a room while the girls played and I would pick a friend of Michael to call.  "What is going on....?"

The answers ranged but were similar in that they listened and told me that I would be alright. No answers but lots of comfort.

2017 and no answers.  But I don't ask questions that no longer matter.

I was not comforted, I was afraid of how I was going to function through this round of tough times.

I found a listing for a parent group in a local newspaper and it sounded interesting.  I called, went through an intake process over the phone and I was invited to meet with this group when it met one night a week.  And there was babysitting so to bring the children.

There was a couch and two facilitators and several parents that greeted me.  After introductions, parents one by one shared.  My turn, I just cried...  box of kleenex was handed to me and I let it all out.  

The next few weeks I cried less and between blowing my sobbing nose in tissues, I started to share and I put everything that was happening on the table.  We would together commisserate, advise, relate to one another, ask question, discuss, refer to authors and books, make notes all while drinking hot cups of tea on big comfy couches. 

A respectful group in a safe place.  I focussed on parenting and on the needs of my children - one step at a time.  Here I was able to blow away the clouds of life and hunker down on parenting skills and building family in times of uncertainty and in times of my own anxiety elevating.

No one thing can fix everything.  But because I had focus and I CHOSE to focus this period on my children's best I was able to find some footing and the parent group helped direct all of this.