A Thousand Thoughts

At no point in the last two years could I imagine running on sand with my two children, hearing them laugh, watching them fall over in water and get up again, still laughing. I could not imagine it ever happening.  Nor could I imagine that we would have been able to drive a few hours from home and stay in an unfamiliar place – you know, doing that thing called a ‘holiday’. They’re not dysregulated. They were up for it. One was able to tell us in the days leading up to our trip that he was feeling nervous because he didn’t know what the place would be like, and also, that he still really wanted to go.

They are coping so well and I know that their ability to experience and enjoy things here in this different place is because of the safety and security we have built for them, which ultimately has only come out of the profoundly hard, fucking gut wrenching, painful personal work we have had to do as parents, individual humans, and two people in a partnership.  I mean, they definitely are having times of dysregulation, which is totally healthy. It’s just not their entire state of being, or what was an inevitable response to anything that alerted their nervous systems.

I couldn’t imagine a time where I would be part of my oldest kid living a happy childhood. It’s surreal that often, he now is. Nor our younger one, whose whole early life has been affected by the trauma going on in our family, and who was so self-protectively withdrawn for so long.  We have massively challenging things every day, but that’s not the whole of it anymore. I pinch myself at the beauty in front of my eyes, and I feel so many mixed and painful emotions at the same time. Having come through fire leaves its mark. I don’t know how I’ll experience things further into the future, but right now, the beauty and pain is all melded into one, and I actually have no intention of separating it.

At the beach again this morning, back in the waves for the second time in years (first time was yesterday). Feeling the thwack of the breaking waves against me. Come at me, motherfuckers. Hit me. Hit me hard. Because that kind of contact feels like some kind of physical match for the mental trauma, the emotional searing and scolding that has been my life in this leg of the journey.

We had and have no interest in forcing this to happen. We didn’t even think about it, or arrange it until we had thought for quite some time that it *might* be possible. We did a day trip a few weeks ago which gave us a sense of what it might be like. We are always prepared to pull the pin or change plans because that’s what it takes.

When I first connected with other neurodivergent people and families two to three years ago, I searched desperately for people who might be a living example of how things could get better, and yet, it felt so impossible for us. I feel I’ve lived enough for several lifetimes over in the last years. There are no certainties.

As I said yesterday to one of the most authentic people I know, the depth of the joy comes only through having fallen so far down. Satisfaction with so little, but that satisfaction has an honesty to it that I would never ever give up now.

There’s so much more, obviously. It’s always complex.

[Photo description: The first photo shows the back of a tall, light skinned man walking across sand and towards the ocean, following our young boy running ahead. The second photo shows me, a light skinned woman, reaching out to two kids, who are jumping and running towards me from different directions. We are splashing in the shallow waves at a beautiful, bright, clear beach on the east coast of Australia. We are all wearing regular clothes because we didn’t plan to get wet, but that’s what happened and it was great.]