Part of PTSD therapy -well, the part I learnt when I was studying- is to have the client recount the traumatic event over and over again (Not in the same session) until it eventually no longer brings about the same strength of emotion that the event usually does when thought about or spoken about.
I got into an Uber recently, and after greeting the driver, asked him, “Tell me..where do you never enter? Are there any areas you do not enter?” He said, “Yes…You can try guess….” Of course, knowing crime is more rampant the higher the level of poverty, I asked, “Gugulethu? Khayelitsha..?” He said, “The first one. That one… I don’t go there.”
I probed, “Is there a specific reason? Or you just know there’s more danger there?”
Of course the answer then came… He had answered a call for a ride into Gugulethu, coming from Parklands where he was already waiting. He took the male passenger into the area. As he was arriving close to the stop, a request came. “Gugulethu to Parklands.” And he thought, “Ok! I don’t have to wait around, and can go back where I came from. Let me pick this one.”
Bad choice. Turned out the one who was making the request was colluding with the passenger he already had. They both showed their true colours as he parked the car to let the passenger out, and demanded his money. He handed everything over as fast as he could, knowing that money or cellphone are not worth fighting for and losing your life over.
Except these Xhosa guys didn’t care. They still attacked him even though he’d surrendered fully. “But I’m not fighting. Why are you trying to kill me? Take it! Take everything.” They beat him so badly they dented his skull and he thought he was going to die.🥹💔His wounds needed him to be hospitalised.
For months after that, he was too scared to even drive at all. The car itself felt unsafe and dangerous and he couldn’t get back in. And just hearing the name Gugulethu would have him shivering. He would be unable to continue recounting his attack and become overwhelmed by emotion-tears, fear and anguish pouring out of him again. With me was the first day he was able to hear the word Gugulethu and recount the awful attack without breaking down.
I was glad he could show me the scars without breaking down. It is risky not knowing if where someone is with their healing but also knowing you are called to try make everyone’s life a bit better. He feels like they made his forehead look ugly, and the marks he sees in the mirror every day are a permanent sign of his trauma and suffering.
But, we could end the trip with him being thankful he survived. And for that gratitude, we can be thankful. The devil did not win that day. Another day to do good with his life.
And that’s it. My blog post for today. The encounter that showed a traumatized man that he is slowly healing. Fear and trauma, pain and shock have no more power over him.
One of the DISCO questions asks if the child has a ‘normal’ smile when posing🤭These two don’t but Amarissa does!
I’ve always been clear that I didn’t think any of my four children would manage to get and keep a job. Our gifted one has sever PDA. They struggle to keep jobs because they don’t understand what it means to be the employee vs the employer. They want to make the rules and are very bossy. That’s her and Amarissa. What kind of job would allow you to treat your senior like a junior? And to argue with them as if they are arguing in a debate and not an employer telling the subordinate what to do. Also, they hate being told what to do. It raises their anxiety levels.
Then I heard of a real live case. The children’s father’s old boss’s son. The guy is level one autistic and is over 30 years old. The level one that makes many people assume the impact of autism is ‘easier’ to nonexistent on the autistic. He finished his university studies just fine. But he cannot keep a job. His mother bought him a flat because he’s too hard to live with. He’s level one, so he can complete all his self care needs on his own.
What he cannot do is make exceptions, and change who he is for the sake of fitting in. He told interviewers he is about to be honest because his mother told him to just tell the truth. That little disclaimer puts interviewers off already. Don’t ask me why. I think it’s cute!
But where problems really come in, they are not solvable. He joins the company and familiarizes himself with the HR policies and rules. He reads everything! As soon as someone, even if it’s the CEO, deviates from the ‘script,’ he gets very angry. We know autistics need order and predictability. His world made sense after getting to know how the company works, till it doesn’t work like it should. Besides arguing with everyone and firing off emails about their breaching of their code of conduct, he also decides he will not return to a dishonest company that doesn’t practice what it preaches.
How do you fix that!?
Can you fight against his strongly ingrained sense of principle and integrity? I wouldn’t want to unless it’s where he maybe misread or misunderstood. His rants that he verbalises to colleague or boss are what I’d expect from the three children one day. They desire predictability and I can imagine my Naynay taking ages to read the documents and then seeing the opposite and definitely reacting… She wouldn’t manage an anxiety provoking reality that is against stated guidelines. 🤔It sounded funny to hear, but not when imagining his frustration with all the ‘dishonest’ companies and the impact on parents who assumed they’d have an independent adult son one day. They have other children who are fine.
For now, I try manage the expectations my children have of their futures. When one says he will become a doctor when older, I warn them about other autistic adults who can’t be doctors, can’t drive and hate that they rely on their mothers (I love the internet!).. and that either way, no matter what they can it cannot do, we will make a plan for them somehow. (Even if it’s just the social meetings that I’ve seen advertised for youths and adults with autism.)
For now, I deal with my poor girl finding joy in Maths and unable to understand why her siblings cannot do Maths at all. She tells them she’s going to play with them, and pulls her Maths flashcards out🤭! “Ok, Micaiah, what’s 6+4?”
“Eight?” He asks.
Of course not. She doesn’t even need to read the back of the cards to know the answers. Some are 9+6, 8+4.So she got their toy cash register and told him it would help him do Maths.🥰She just cannot understand or internalise it when I tell her they can’t do Maths and will never be able to do it the way she already can. I ended up telling her that they haven’t done 15+16 yet when she asked my poor boy and she was shocked, “They haven’t!?” Except, neither have we in our Maths lessons together😅. It’s all in her own head. Amarissa asks me how she knows all these difficult sums. And she truly wants to know the ‘how.’ I can’t explain properly. I just tell her it’s her strength. By the way, Ammy’s now able to remember that 2+3 is five! We have forward movement.
(I have information in here for women dealing with Sjögren’s disease. It’s information about body parts your gynae or your loving spouse looks at. We are adults and we need to know how this stuff impacts us.)
My Island friend asked how we are doing, lamenting that Sabbath isn’t Sabbath for me. She’s managed to create a hidey hole so she doesn’t have to constantly be looking at the author of her suffering every moment he’s in the house. She even has cooking implements in her little corner of their home, though she still has to hide her journal and keep it locked up.
But it’s that sense of peace, that I envy, you know? Her children are neurotypical and older, when they’re all at church, she gets full time to be with God, no interruptions. She can watch whatever sermon she wants and be fully immersed in the message. It’s what many parent assume will happen when their babies and toddlers, preschoolers and primary aged children grow up. A sense of rest after years of being watchful and not rested.
Except it never comes for parents whose children will never be independent. And who can’t afford full time aides to be their eyes while they rest. And it doesn’t come for wives whose treacherous husbands don’t give them space.
It is very galling living with someone who hates you but uses you. Someone who isn’t a husband but also not a father. Someone who comes in and out of your bedroom, sits in your space and acts like they’ve done nothing to cause your nervous system to be shattered along with your heart when your ultimate goal is to be a single UNmarried mother, not a single married mother like you legally are. Though not in any other sense. It is horrible sharing a bathroom with someone paying for his and his floozies bathroom. And bedroom. And furniture. And on and on.
And so, with the cold and rain here, and the mental strain building, it’s no wonder the mother of all flares has decided to remind me that I am dying. And I was totally fine trying to die! Not a literal death! But I was fine not existing for anyone! I was fine just lying here. But I couldn’t.
Not when the children have no parent and they all need medicating, but I tried! I didn’t get up till after the twins came in. One pulling me with her very cold hands after waking and going to the kitchen and doing who knows what, and the other bouncing in wanting me to be excited about something I still don’t know it was while my head was pounding and my bones were screaming.
Head.
Sinusitis.
Sjögren’s disease is a formidable foe! Your skin is sensitive. Turns out that’s why I can’t handle clothing and underwear! It’s the skin! It’s cold but wool is horrible, I can imagine how people with SPD feel. It’s like the jerseys and polonecks are scratching me. So those flew off. Leggings hurt parts we ladies can’t mention but have to mention so any other new to Sjögren’s disease reader will know they aren’t crazy so …
Sjögren’s dries you up. You have no lubrication. No protective moisture. Your external but still private parts rub painfully on your underwear. Leggings and tights with their seam in the middle that go up to that area, are like steel wool on sensitive skin. So what then?Stay in pyjamas all day? How does one keep their legs warm when stockings, leggings and tights are painfully uncomfortable? Loose joggers or track pants. But then if you’re a skirt and dress lady, you look very WEIRD with big thick bottoms under your not huge loose dress.🤦🏾♀️ Also, I don’t have thick loose, not touching the crotch, bottoms yet so I am under the blankets as much as I can be.
And the head. I have chronic sinusitis already. Dryness from Sjögren’s disease means your mucus becomes THICK and clogged up. A haven for demons that cause sinusitis. I woke up from a weird nightmare because of it! I had surgery to remove my (already removed as a child) adenoids and tonsils. I had complications so I had to return to the surgeon where they plugged my one nostril with cotton wool.
After the post op visit, I went to worship with some young university girls. They discussed how apartheid doesn’t matter and nobody suffered. It’s a dream, of course the topic won’t make sense! I tried to speak up but they were singing too loudly. I walked to the front and was weeping as I thought of the (real) things I’d lived, my relatives had lived, society. I had to tell them apartheid was pain that continues to live on. I reached the podium, stood in front of the lectern and told those poor girls -all African-to sit down and listen to me because I had lived what they were dismissing!
Except, I couldn’t talk! Every time I said a word, my plugged up nose would produce a grunt of a snort. My throat would close up and my mouth would open but my throat could only grunt or snort or snore… I was so frustrated! I needed to make them understand!
Then, some kind of awful snoring sound that came out my throat woke me. And even when I woke up with a start, I still couldn’t breathe. Really? Why couldn’t I breathe? Why was my face sore? Why were my glasses hurting my bones when I went to put them on? Sinusitis.
Dry, dry nasal passages.
I got my spray out, used it, realised my entire body was in excruciating pain, the kind of inflammatory pain that has you reaching out for prednisone and morphine, and got back into bed. I don’t have prednisone. Nor morphine. Not even fentanyl. 😅
Then I got out of bed. I couldn’t die yet. There was medication to dole out. Then I tried again.
But I was in too much pain so I got out again and took pain meds.
Then I lay down.
And got up.
And lay down.
And got up when I recalled that I owed Karen a reply to her question so I sent her a voice note in the closet for privacy.
I told her I get no rest and I’m in terrible pain but nobody will let me rest.
And boom, the evidence walked in.
See, I can’t leave their craft accessories with them because their impulsivity and poor focus make them lose them, take them to the garage, leave them out in the rain, use too many pages just doodling and not the actual craft…So even when I find activities, I’m still needed so we don’t keep spending money replacing things that shouldn’t need replacing. But that means, no rest. No change to decompress and chat. No opportunity to lie down, turn the humidifier on and be forgotten and not asked to DO.
Hey y’all! I went to the feedback session for my 11 year old daughter. And as psychologist said, “…Just like you knew, she is autistic. She’s at level 2-3.” (Level 1 needs less external support. The people who used to be referred to as high functioning. The ‘lowest level is 3.)
I recorded something on gaslighting so I won’t type much about it suffice to say, the psychiatrist who never observed her, spoke to her for even 1 minute, told me she’s not. And I didn’t believe her.
The rest of the meeting was about the traits she noticed when she observed her for an hour, the DISCO questions and then recommendations. She is if the “less is more”’school of thought, which works well with my nonexisting budget for all the extras. She said at some point we will probably add in psychologist for emotional support. Suggested children’s supervised OT social groups-I’ve looked for that for two years and found none. She only knows of one in a suburb way too far away.
The other formal recognition was the usual. “If mom isn’t well, the children can’t be well” line. I need therapy myself, I need someone to help watch the children while being therapeutic-she suggested training which she said is very expensive, for people to become trained facilitators for children IN the home. Now, each session cost R1752.00 and I had three and a half session billed at full price. And that’s not expensive to her. I shudder to think whatthose costs are.
“You’ve taken too much on yourself.”
Only because if I don’t do it. Nobody else will. Even when I cry out for help and support, nobody in the family steps in like I ask. Simple things like giving our non speaker syringes of her post hospital her meds till they’re all done so I can focus on the other children. Not forgetting there’s the other medication for all of them that I’m also working with. But I’ll get a “No..I forgot” when I ask if it’s been administered.
School work. Therapeutic work. Extra resources. Parenting. Cooking. Sorting laundry. Folding. Putting away. Teaching. Making. Medication…I have “taken on” so much that I forget my own medication, sometimes for days.
But, there is no other choice.
So, we keep pressing on.
I now have five officially diagnosed autistic children. This must be some kind of a record in Cape Town.
Long, long ago, when my 19 and 20 year old children were aged between six and 18 years old, I had no school holidays except for when I was recovering from surgery, or when I was sick, or when the children were sick. It was lovely, because it was the children’s choice.
I should have known they were autistic!
My oldest two told me as teenagers that they couldn’t not do school. The concept of a ‘holiday’ was good, but living it was hell. They needed to do school. They didn’t know what to do. They had the library, they had outings, as they grew older they could go on trips out alone, but nope, school had to happen. Only this morning as I type do I realize that what they were saying was that they missed the routine and needed it.
I changed things around for us to do school through the year, by reducing the daily work load and powering through daily. It wasn’t that bad physically because they were self teaching anyway. My body could handle our school field trips if I rested as soon as we returned, and all was good.
Enter my middle two. Their disorders and challenges make school very difficult for them anyway and so school work isn’t pleasant no matter how easy you make it. They were happy when I told them it was holiday time again. With biggest sister here, I figured they might as well have an official school break for two weeks. The only formal thing they’ve been doing is vision work at home, and attending their occupational and vision therapy sessions. I’ve also focused on fine motor skills and eye hand coordination with the crafts and cutting, gluing and colouring in, hand puppet making tasks I’ve given them daily.
Yeah, it’s not much of a holiday for me. Moderate to severe ADHD children need supervised work to keep them safe. Low registration children like the one above, can’t enjoy living normal life.
But I knew…Our talkative twin isn’t like the middle two.
Today is day four of their holiday and she broke. Meanwhile, when the older one would do vision, I’d bring her in for abbreviated school time. But nope, today she had enough. “When are we doing school? After we go for a drive or now?”
My options. Now or later? There’s no ‘no’ option.
And it had to be when I’ve woken in hell. Sleep was awful. Everything was in pain, eyes and nose and throat drier than ever. Bones sore in places you never think of. I wanted to stay warm in bed. It’s the warmest place for me and Sjögren’s people need warmth else the skin is even more easily damaged, infection can creep into the cracks of the skin, and fingers react badly to cold with swelling and pain. Sounds like AS too, that last part! Also, it’s not like I can humidify the entire house. I need to create moisture as the norm is not enough.
But, I had to get up and get dressed because I’m off to attend my girl’s feedback session after her DISCO questionnaire. I really hope the psychologist doesn’t talk for ages, folk. I really prefer just reading a report than the way they talk down to you. It’s ok for the parents who are new to the journey. But man, I’ve had four diagnosed children. I know what a low percentile means… And I need to come back and teach.😉
We have these little moments that make us smile. Moments that charm and are the polar opposite of the constantly present sorrow and anxiety. Moments that remind me to remind another autism parent that the newly diagnosed autistic child they have, might not be the autistic angel of tomorrow or of two years’ time. The things that caused pain today, will be replaced by better, or lighter. Not all, but definitely some. There’s always a chance. So keep looking forward.
Our girl has not been a fan of exhibits, animals etc. She just speed walks past like there’s nothing to see and races to the car. Today, I sent them to the museum.
Engaged. She was fully locked in and engaged. She pretended! She got in after seeing her brother in there and not only after seeing him, but after watching him attentively!😊
It’s like on Friday when for the first time ever, she actually played with her siblings and did something on command.
Today is also the first time she’s drunk properly since she was hospitalised. The relief I feel is unimaginable. The only worry is that her treatment is not making a difference, she’s going (poopy) as much as she had been without the medication.
But let’s not focus on that. Tomorrow might improve.🥹🙏🏾
This was them holding hands to enter The Company’s Gardens. Talkative Twin has a new fear of cars but she didn’t feel it today. Is it not rare to see the twins holding hands? ☺️
She actually looked at the exhibits. She lingered! This is big! No rushing out in a hurry. She actually looked closely!
That’s the lower jaw of a very large fish. Or is it a whale? This is lovely. I wish I could make you feel the sense of disappointment that a trip you were taking all your children on, meant nothing to one of the children. And to make you feel the joy when she suddenly relaxes and pays attention!
What a wonderful moment! And today we’ve had no abdominal pain from her.
Given how busy she keeps us, seeing her engaged, taking the sights in…I am happy that she was happy with her siblings.
I love winter. I love feeling warm at night in bed.
I hate winter. Since I was a child, winter meant joint pain. Now it’s bone and muscle and joint and ligament pain. And I know it won’t get better.
I love winter. I love watching my children enjoy the puddles and feeling so cool in their raincoats and wellies.
I hate winter. Winter is when the poor suffer more. At least in summer, you remove layers to try cool down. In winter, the lack of a jersey, a jacket, a pair of socks, is felt. In winter, you realize your children have nothing warm to wear because they outgrew last year’s winter clothing but you have no money this year.
I loved winter. I would ask my father to make me hot cocoa and I’d have it with toast with margarine. I felt rich in winter. It was my version of the hot chocolate the white girls had in my class.
I hated winter. I couldn’t hold a pen, needed two hands to try hold the mug of cocoa because my fingers would not bend. I hated waiting out in the cold rain for a taxi to get to school.
I can’t wait for there to be one lovely, temperate season. A season in which everyone will be comfortable. A season of plenty for everyone, when the lack of money won’t matter because God is the provider and we live in paradise. And there will be no more pain. No need for a friend to ask if my body is holding up. And no need to reply that it’s not.
Our girl is back from her PICU stay at hospital but far from ok.
This mommy heart, and my friend’s aunty heart, is very sad for her. Nothing takes your concentration and ‘mojo’ like the suffering of an innocent child.
I can’t even describe how bad the admission was. So bad her OT phoned the Paed’s rooms the next day to ask if they think she can do some kind of training for nurses regarding how to empower autism parents who know their children much better than they ever will. Simple things like when we tell them she will not just sit in a glass cage but will scream and cry and try run away while they make us try hold her back for six hours.🥹
To how they don’t ask how she prefers things done, how to reduce her suffering. So instead, add to it.
Some nurse spoke snootily to me that no, she didn’t try rip her bandages off her hand, she just wanted her thumb. A thumb which they’d already left sticking out and which she wasn’t there to see her NOT trying to get to. The nurse spoke snootily to me when I told her if she doesn’t sleep, she will remove her nasogatsric tube (Goes through the nose down the throat and into the stomach to flush her awful fecal impacting down and out) and told me she can’t sleep all day and she will not do anything as she’s peaceful.
I
Peaceful and peaceful after the ripped the tube out too.
It was days and nights of trauma.
And now she’s home and sad and lying down a lot. She’s not the running around noisy girl. Unless it’s raining like yesterday.
And so, our loving hearts grieve her sadness and suffering and we hope she feels fully better soon.
I can’t even get all six 250ml servings of treatment into her. I couldn’t even get one dose in. She’s miserable and sad and spits it out and it wasn’t even one of the horrible tasting ones. Praying today I can get it in. I use a syringe so it’s slow going. And I have to wait for her to kind of forget so that she doesn’t immediately spit out the next dose which I syringe into her mouth. But I have five other children and myself to care for so the day runs away from me and her medication too.
My heart is sore.
So thankful for my friend whose heart is also so sore for her and wishes she could rescue us. A burden shared is a burden halved. ❤️🙏🏾
My new gynae said she believes all parents of autistic children deserve to get into heaven. No judgment day needed, an automatic in. I want that ticket into heaven. And I want to enter soon.
Guess who came to my room at 1:30 wanting grapes. These girls are definitely aging me even faster than my diseases are! I took multiple pain pills after a horrible hospital visit. I slept at 1:17am. Then she came in.😆
I think her mind is also racing fast. She was so worried about her baby, her twin, going into hospital yesterday that she asked them to pray for her when they all went to the playground yesterday.
It’s been a bad few months for the children in terms of their emotional state, and yesterday brought them to a new low. I recorded a video I didn’t get to edit nor post, about how we definitely need to look beyond the behaviour and ask for the underlying reason.
Our Hapoy Family/Adoption Day celebration fell flat. It started in the morning with Amarissa who suddenly became obstinate, oppositional, defiant and grouchy while I was tightening her locs. I ended up telling her to get up from the breakfast table and go to her room. For the first time ever, she said no. Of course I didn’t listen to that no and still got her to get up. She started wanting to go back to the table when she saw her Adoption Day cake being carried to the table by her big sister but I told her the cake would be there when she’s done thinking about her behaviour.
She was grouchy and angry but I told her to just sit in her room and think. I prayed for patience and the right way to approach her.
I gave her a few minutes then went to talk to her. I asked her why she was being so mean to the others and spoiling their day. She claimed she wasn’t spoiling anyone’s day. I told her her mood was spilling over onto her little siblings, including the Talkative Twin who’d greeted her with a bright, “Good morning! It’s your special day!” I asked what was wrong.
Then she burst into tears. She was sad about her little sister and her upcoming admission. Hospital made the suffering more real and she couldn’t handle the emotions. I told her that being sad is perfectly ok. It’s just that her anger and snide comments were rude and angry and so it messed the meal up but if she were to show real sadness in a normal way, it would be better- She is allowed to cry.
She said she would be sad appropriately , and received a big hug from me.
After that, she went off to enjoy her cake.
Hospital admission was hell. But hey, at least I heard my daughter yell, “Mommy!” There was no parking so I had to drop her off with her big sister at admission and go down to the shopping centre nearby for parking. I got back to the hospital and though I couldn’t see her, I could hear her. Everyone could. It was so sad. She was crying and yelling and shouted “Mommy” a few times from the floor above admissions.
Eventually, we got into her room in PICU. But the torture didn’t end there. For hours of suffering, she wouldn’t go to sleep. The sedative she was given had no impact on her at all. She was given a top up. Still no impact. She was drowsy but very alert and wanting to escape the room. After more hours of trying to keep her under control, the doctor suggested her usual sleep pills. What!? How would that help if actual sedation wasn’t? Nevertheless, I ran down to the store taking our big girl with me- I’d recruited her to control her sister while I do the Admissions process. Went to find yoghurt and gave her the sleep aids the way we give her at home.
As expected, that did not result in any giving up. She was still getting off the bed and wanting to get out the room. The nurses could see her (PICU) through the glass door in her little room.
It was hard, wrestling with her. Watching her roll around the bed and throwing herself this way and that way. Trying to stop her from falling…
Even a drive didn’t help. As soon as she got out the car, she was wide awake.
Finally, they injected her with ketamine.
She fought the IV so they had to fashion bandage mittens for her. By this time, I was back home hoping to rest my painful body but that was not to be. As soon as I entered, her twin wanted me to teach her. Have you ever had a worry and been unable to think? I have. And I had that yesterday too. I couldn’t focus. My mind was on her confused sister and I didn’t even eat a meal till supper and couldn’t even finish the supper I had. Teaching when my body is crying to lie down was not part of my plan. But I needed to keep them as regulated as I could, so I taught.
Meanwhile, Amarissa was having a breakdown over her little sister. They were meant to eat pizza yesterday as part of the celebration but she cried and cried in my arms because her little sister wasn’t home and she loves pizza.🥹
They prayed twice for her.
I told them they could have a Nandos veggie wrap instead because their sister doesn’t eat Nandos stuff and we’d have the pizza when her sister is back home.
That change of plan dysregulated her sister. Oh my! Handling multiple big emotions on one day is hard.
But eventually they slept after Amarissa kept saying she missed her little sister.
Sleep was needed. I was painfree and able to sleep.
Until now…
Talkative Twin is walking around going to the toilet multiple times out of boredom. I gave her more sleep pills and I’m hoping she won’t be able to fight them like her twin can. I mean, even at home, after five of those, our non speaker doesn’t sleep through the night. What did he think six of them would help!?
Now he knows what I mean when I ask for extra medication for my children. The nurses were extremely shocked she didn’t sleep. They said she’s like a bull. As I walked up and down the hospital corridors fetching her soothing blanket, her Paed receptionist walked down the corridor and told me the doctor had told her our girl just isn’t sleeping. She’s a very unique.🫣
She had an x-ray. She has a very bad case of fecal loading. I was vindicated. I had been saying that even the con cleanse prescription med didn’t empty her and her father was arguing with me that she did ‘go’ enough. I told him I’ve done these meds for colonoscopies. I know what eventually comes out when it has worked. On adult dose twice a day for six days, I knew it still wasn’t enough. After all, she had been passing stool before the fecal loading began. But it was not enough.
They did a nasogastric tube down her nose and then throat into her belly and also a more specialized enema after seeing how bad the impaction is.
Now we wait and see. Wish us well. I’m meant to be at the hospital at 6:30am. I hope I can get back to sleep. Pain is screaming in my hip and I’m wide awake mostly because I am wide awake, haha, but also because I’m listening out for her twin sister who can’t sleep.
Surgeon is on standby.
What a horrible celebration day for my poor angel. Too many tears were shed yesterday from both the little girls.
Flydah. A friend in Kenya. Excited about my DAUGHTER who was coming soon. The year was 2015. Our girl was to come home on April 14th. We’d only found out about her ten days before.
We were going to meet them. The two people who had made her. One of the people who cared for her after taking her from where she’d had her arm fractured. (A baby home.) And her. Our precious daughter. A girl I chose and hated choosing. They’d given us two to choose from. That was never part of the plan. We were to be told about one and then have 24 hours to decide. But, we were Black and so we didn’t have to be scrutinized as much nor matched as perfectly as others who were Black. We didn’t care what the baby’s skin tone would be like. We didn’t care about how kinky her hair would be. I didn’t even care if she was HIV positive or not, though her future father did care and did not want a positive child.
We waited. 24 years in the making. My daughter was coming at last. Born in my heart as a wish when I was ten years old. Waited for. Prayed for. She had been a plan in the marriage planning days but then her father to be had changed his mind.
I still don’t know what made him decide to adopt. It sure isn’t fatherly feelings. But here she is. And it was also because of her that I felt I couldn’t divorce in 2016. I thought I owed her mother to be the two parent family she’d wanted for her daughter. Little knowing that she would not care. And would want me to be free!
Flydah, Mama Abigail, waited with me. Asking when our daughter was coming. Unlike my mother in law and my mother, she had always viewed her as my daughter. Not some foundling. Not an act of charity. But a daughter.
Tuesday will be 11 years since we met her and welcomed her into our family. At her request, we will celebrate and be happier on this day than on her birthday, a day that reminds her that she wasn’t born to me, her mother. April 14, 2015 is the day for my daughter. The day she met her mother and became hers.
They said I should write a book 