Thankful

This Thanksgiving weekend, I have had an epiphany.  Every time I've felt those familiar pangs of desperation,
I've combated them with a few pithy and highly useful slogans that seem, so far this holiday season, to be keeping the blues at bay.

While shopping the other day, I saw some holiday stationary similar to what I used to send the letter along with Simon and Jude's birth announcement explaining his diagnosis of Down syndrome. We wanted people to hear it from us first, and we wanted to put our own spin on it. In reality, we were reeling with fear a whole mixed bag of swirly-twirly emotions, but we wanted to set a positive tone. We sure didn't want people coming up to us after the birth of our beautiful babies and tell us they were "sorry".
That was a hard letter to write. We agonized over it.  Seeing that stationary took me right back to that place of uncertainty nearly six years ago.  I could almost smell the hand sanitizer of the hospital NICU and hear the shrill beeping of the apnea moniter that sounded every time Jude had another episode of bradycardia.
Standing there in the Target, staring at the package of stationary with glazed eyes and a pounding heart, I said to myself:
"You were so lucky to be surrounded by supportive friends and family during that time."
or something simple and postive like that.

On Thanksgiving when Jude drew some attention to himself by filling grandma's toilet to the rim with toilet paper and my cousin-in-law was nice enough to fish it out as there was simply no way it was going down but then found that there were little Jude turds beneath it all...
instead of focusing on the near plugging of the plumbing and the embarrassment of seeing Dwight dragging soiled tp out with his bare hands (ew!), I said to myself:
"Jude went to the bathroom all by himself! I am not changing a dirty pull-up right now. He is really making progress."

I'm not trying to turn into a pollyanna. I mean, have you met me? That's just NOT happening.  I'm just trying to stave off the dark, dark darkness that crept in last year at about this time and lingered until late spring and that, in fact, nothing but pharma could help.  I could probably really benefit from therapy, but I'm way too cheap so I just write on this blog and talk to myself. Don't judge: it's working so far!

Here's a few more examples:
I get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. I see more of me than I want to. I look old.
I say:
"You have a healthy body that works the way it's supposed to. You have two arms and legs, hands and feet that are going to take you to all the places you need to go today and accomplish all you need to do. You are so fortunate to have lived long enough to see age in your face.  Here's to 41 more!"
 
I feel worried about something trivial and I let it spin out of all proportion in my mind.
I stop myself short and say: "Don't sweat the small stuff. It's not ALL small stuff, but this is. Let it go."

The holidays are an especially hard time for missing loved ones who are no longer with us.  As always I try to remember that the pain I feel in missing Seth is proportionate to the amount of love I had for him while he was here.  I was so lucky to have him in my life and to have loved him so very much.

I feel sad, then begin to beat myself up for feeling sad when there are so many in the world who are enduring true suffering at this very moment.
I stop in my tracks and offer a silent prayer for all in the world who are hungry, who are grieving, who are sick, and who have no home.  First World problems here, for sure. 

Anyway, there's no magic of course, but so far it's helped me navigate Thanksgiving and a weekend of shopping and Christmas in my face without despair, so I'm going to keep practicing it.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for this simple discovery.