Brrrr

It's cold today - a bit of a shock to the system after the heat we've had for such a long time over summer.  I'm not complaining though, I much prefer the cold.  It's also insanely quiet in my house. That's something that is a rarity and I cherish it when it does happen.  JJ is off on a camp and Miss A went to visit family, so it's just the boys and I currently. Ironically it's my boys who are the most quiet when the other kids are away.

B man is a very solitary young man who loves being alone, but also love time with his Mum.  Monkey Man is not normally quiet *at all* but with the girls away and no one to egg him on, the only noise coming from him is his near constant monologuing about everything he does... but today, so far he's quietly watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

I can be a control freak at times, and have learned to get huge amounts of tasks done in a minimal amount of time.  Being term break, my homeschool whiteboard is currently filled with a list of jobs waiting to be checked off.  The first day of the holidays we used to get stuck in and do a heap of cleaning around the house - especially of the bedroom disaster zones, which meant from there on things could be taken a little easier. However, with the girls away, instead of plowing in and getting it all done, I've stepped back, let it go and yesterday did the bare minimum of what was needed. (cleaning the kitchen... oh boy was that needed!!) I'm using the quiet to relax, hang out with my boys playing games, curling up under a pile of warm blankets watching a movie or reading.

I'm sure several of my kids would prefer school holidays to be a time of going out and doing more, but I find for us, they're greatly needed as a chance to rest, re-coup, and regenerate before jumping head long into a new school term.  It's a chance to sleep in instead of 5am starts, to stay in our Pjs should we choose and just take it easy... and that taking it easy does us a world of good. It allows us to start the new term ready to go instead of starting it worn out from being busy all holidays.

Bedtimes are let go of in the first week and we kinda just stay up and do whatever, but in the second week, for the most part I bring back regular bedtimes which means the kids are back on schedule for school.

Reality though is it's not always this blissfully quiet on the home front. School holidays can be difficult at times, especially with all the kids home. They get in each others personal space, become irritated by each others habits or actions. B-man gets the most irritable. He likes quiet and calm, and having everyone home does not promote quiet and calm!

The girls love to sing... loudly. Sometimes together, sometimes different music at the same time from separate rooms. Monkey Man is currently obsessed with 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' and will carry around the iPad with him playing it on repeat (we're into day 5 of that one) or giving a running commentary about whatever game he is playing or activity he is doing (while still playing ITHOTMK in the background). The three of them bounce from one room to the other interacting on various levels - frequently this includes getting on each others nerves and pushing buttons that make one or more of them explode into an indignant temper tantrum.

On those days, the quiet, calm and peace that I'm experiencing today, couldn't be further from my grasp if we tried!! I spend those day acting more like a referee than a Mum, selectively rotating kids through "solitary confinement" (aka individual down time in their bedroom to recoup before coming back out to the family) and I go to bed exhausted wondering how on earth I am going to survive the entire term break.  Ultimately though, we do survive, we do make it through - and relatively unscathed, it's just hard to see that while in the middle of the crossfire.

So today, the cold is a blessing, the quiet is a gift, and I shall enjoy my time with CB and Monkey Man.  I hope you also manage to find even a moment of quiet and calm in your day to regroup, gain some peace and reenergise.

Strength and Faith...

I've been having a running conversation the last few days with a group of friends about strength and faith.  They often comment to me about how strong I am to have faced and gotten through everything I have in life, yet still be able to smile. Some have said how they wish they had that kind of strength.

I was telling them today how I feel that strength is subjective. What we face in life is also subjective. What we do or don't face, what we work through each day is different for each of us.  If we sit back & judge who we are, what we have done, our level of strength or faith based on what we perceive to be true about those around us... we'll never find the courage to really and truly accept our own strength. Our own faith for what it is. We will continue beating it down, hiding it away because we don't accept that is truly IS enough. That WE are enough.  

I'm guilty of doing that myself, all too often. Then at times, I'll have a moment of clarity... an "aha" moment & be able to see parts of me for what they really are instead of what I perceive them to be. In those moments it's like a window opening and the light shining into the parts of my being that I work so hard to hide from myself... yet they're the parts I should be allowing to shine instead.

Instead of writing it all out again, here's the crux of what I wrote to one of my friends last night:

Honey, that's the thing with the big picture.... it's big.  We don't have to understand it all, we just have to get through our piece of it & do the best we can in our little corner of the world.  What is my best or your best or someone else's best are 3 completely different things because we're three completely different people.



Besides... if you had been dealing with everything I have dealt with... it'd mean you had 5 Autistic kids. BE GLAD you don't LOL.



My best today was sitting on the couch with a hot drink & doing nothing.  Yup, nothing all day long. I just couldn't face anything else.  Sometimes life is overwhelming.  It's a fact.  Have you curled up & died?  No you haven't.  You fought to get back what you had lost, you're doing what you have the capacity to do with every part that you can manage to do it with.  That's enormous girl!

 

I've been tearing my hair out with stuff myself this week. It's stressful, frustrating & I don't know how or when things will get easier in certain areas. But you know what?  It's ok.  It will continue to be ok.  I always say one way or another, no matter how *I* feel things are... God has always, ALWAYS seen me through.  I just keep putting my faith and myself back in His hands.



The challenges I have faced in my life... I firmly believe I agreed to this path. My kids needed someone strong enough to hold the course no matter what. To get them through everything while still being willing to kick their rears & not allow Autism to become an excuse for anything.  I can do that! I do do that & always will.  The things I've been through have shaped me.  If I hadn't been through so much, could I be here today supporting you, loving you, inspiring you like you said I do?  No... it wouldn't be possible, because I wouldn't be who I am. Without my past I'd be different. So to me, it's worth it. I'm grateful for the path I have travelled, I really am.

I know not everyone believes in God, and that's ok... you have the right to make that choice yourself. Whether you believe in God, The Universe, Allah or whoever or whatever you choose, I'm cool with that :)  For me, it's God and His Son Jesus Christ.  Some days I am better at holding to my faith than others, some days I feel it has slipped through my fingers and I wonder how I will ever get it back. I usually end up finding it's there, I've just hidden it from myself because I've allowed the mountain of self doubt get too high.

No one is any better than anyone else, we all have different paths. I don't tend to see my path as being harder than other peoples, I just see it as different. I know most people would disagree with me there, because I've been told that time & time again, but I don't see it as harder. Once again it comes down to the subjective view of each person.

Has my path be difficult? Absolutely. Has it hurt? Yes... sometimes more than I ever thought it was possible to hurt. I still carry many of those hurts, hidden deep away inside myself. I'm the queen of hiding stuff away from myself & not wanting to face them lol.  

Bit by bit though, I'm striving to pull back each layer, and finally deal with my issues once and for all. It's hard work, but worth it.  Just as I've grown with each step along my path, I'm finding I'm also growing as I face things. Reality is, I made my choices in life, so it's high time I learned to own them. It's also learning to own and accept that fact that I'm human. I have both good days and bad days. I make good choices and bad choices.  Sometimes I step back & think holy s** I screwed that one up big time, but instead of holding onto that feeling, it's letting it go and moving on.  Each thing I learn to let go of, is one more ray of sunshine in my life... and I'm loving watching that sunlight grow bit by bit, day by day. It's awesome.

~M~

Some days are just plain hard

Sometimes there's not even one specific reason for why the day feels hard.  It just *is*.

Today was one of those days.

There's certainly lots of  things that have been going on here, that when all added together, currently have my heart feeling heavy and I just feel sad, flat and pretty much like I'd rather hide under the covers than face anything.  But life doesn't stop... it goes on, as do we.

Today I felt emotional and fragile.

The housework, phone calls I needed to make, everything just felt too much. I was talking to a friend on the phone earlier & she told me to take a chill pill.  You know what? She was completely right. I had worked myself all into a lather for no reason. Worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about. Causing myself stress where there didn't need to be stress. Creating issues where there wouldn't BE an issue if I just stepped back and took a breath.  Or as she said to me today "You're swimming in the pond instead of looking at it from the edge. Get out & look!" My friend is one smart cookie.

Her verbal kick in the pants was exactly what I needed to remind me to stop being a drama queen. It didn't change the fact things were difficult today or that I felt sad, but it DID change the way I was responding to myself.  Instead of wallowing in negative self thought & working myself up, I stepped back, acknowledged that things couldn't possibly be as bad as I was perceiving them to be & that the only thing making them worse was *me* and the way I was viewing them.

So, I did as my dear friend said, took that "chill pill" (figuratively that is) and today I did... nothing.  Yup, 100% absolutely, completely *literally* NOTHING and I don't feel an ounce of guilt for it.  What I could have used (and my body was yelling for) was sleep, but my head was going in too many directions at once to settle, so I did nothing instead.

Yesterday I had made a list on the whiteboard of what Miss A was to cover in her schoolwork today. This morning I was extremely grateful for that list, as I wasn't thinking clearly enough to finalise her days work. So while Miss A got stuck into her schoolwork, I sat on the couch with a warm drink & just sat there. No blog, no Facebook, no Pintrest, no digital art.... just sat and took the time to simply BE.

  As Miss A needed help with different portions of her schoolwork, she'd ask me a question . I'd assist in whatever way was needed... such as helping melt & pour wax to create an Egyptian wax slate for her to practice writing hieroglyphs on for her History project, but with most of todays work she was self sufficient so I had plenty of time to swallow that chill pill.

We ended up skipping science as I simply couldn't get my head around the new program we were starting. But you know what?  That's OK.  It's not the end of the world if we start the new science unit a day or two late.  After Miss A had put in some steady work, I called her over & we quit school early for the day & curled up and watched an episode of Time Team together instead.  Miss A *loves* archeology, so she was in heaven watching that.

The couple of hours of down time it gave us together did us both the world of good.  It was also helpful that Miss A had had that down time when things fell apart for her a little while later. She had walked to pick up a friend from school and walk her home as she often does. Unfortunately her friend for whatever reason, didn't see her there & Miss A waited for 30mins to no avail. She was heartbroken and came home in tears. However, because of the downtime she'd had, she was able to pull things back together more quickly than she would have otherwise.  We talked about the different reasons that may have been behind her friend not meeting her, and I helped Miss A see that her friend would never have stood her up on purpose. They're too close to each other for that. So once she was calm, she felt together enough to call her friend & see if everything was alright.

It's great when things can be sorted easily & simply.  It's not always the case, but I treasure the moments of 'easy fixes'. Tomorrow is a new day, a chance to start again. An opportunity to wake with a heart full of joy and to move on forward once more.  Today I'm glad I took time to take care of me, and I didn't need to "do" anything special for that to happen.

The housework is still there, bills are still waiting to be paid, calls needing to be made, and they'll still be there tomorrow.  But today, instead of pushing myself as I often do, I stepped back to care for me. It was definitely the right thing to do.

How do you deal with days when they just feel too hard? What do you do to carry on? Do you have special things you do to care for yourself when you need that extra care? (or even when you don't!)

I hope you take time to care for you today too... You're the only *YOU* there is, and that makes you pretty darn special. You're worth the extra effort :)