Son and Star

Source Once upon a time there was a young woman who stood on the deck under the cold blue-white light of the full moon, shivering in the cold and shuddering with sobs in her quilt. There was no peace that night and for many nights, many moons after. Once upon a time there was a little boy. He was only three and his heart had been broken so many times in half of that year. His little mind could not cope with the loss, and his behaviors grew steadily worse over the years until he had to go far, far away. He traveled through great stone walls, over rivers, into a forest, and over mountains. He learned to become stronger than the monsters. Nine months later he traveled back over the mountains, out the forest, over rivers, and through the great stone walls, and into the arms of his family. He had left them as a feral beast. He had returned a young knight- ready but still learning his skills. Source Unknown Once upon a time there was woman, decades older, who stood barefo...

Following up on the first part of this post, I'd mentioned we'd had a breakthrough. Man, I have been trying to write the most beautifully elegant description but these days I'm just so, so tired. So what happened after the breakthrough? Metanoia is what happened. Change, growth: less opposition. More communication. More calm than agitation. He'd been asking to go play with friends but he'd not been ready. For the first time in years I was willing to try. We'd tried before in the past. But the underlying tension verging on terror was always there. This time, I was at peace with the decision. We attended two birthday parties that following Saturday. The first was for a girl my youngest daughter's age. If you've spent any time around girls you know exactly how loud they can be when they are excited. Fortunately he had his brothers and a Star Wars video game to keep him distracted. Not at all bothered. In fact it was the middle brother who lost his...

I've been ruminating most of today (it started around two in the morning, yuk) about the events that took place on this date last year. I wanted to write this big emotional kinda pretty thing but you guys I'm exhausted. I'm also so grateful. Rather than be sad, it affords me the opportunity to see exactly how far we've come. From out of the darkness and into the light. I wanted to upload a video but I'm posting from my phone. The Blogger app is pretty "meh". I'll stick it on here later from the computer. Good night!

You came back? You came back! You can see I've been futzing with the layout a touch. Don't worry, it will get there. Where was I? Oh, yes. The Boy, my son. Most of you who are reading this (who am I kidding, the three of you reading this- hi there Heather, Yvonne, and Char!) already know the situation. He's been home for three months now, and I have to tell you, I wasn't sure we were going to make it through that first month and a half. It took a while for us to all get used to having each other again and to build our routine back up. He was still in his long term care (ltc) mentality. At any given moment he would explode, obscenities flew with scorching accuracy, and no thing or human was safe from his tiny and fierce temper tantrums. And so it went until suddenly- Last Friday we had a breakthrough moment. It was our pizza and movie night, and the dinner was set up buffet style. Now, in our family we serve food from youngest to oldest. The rose got her plat...

Welcome! I could have continued in the "A Giraffe is the Largest Cat" blog, but to be honest I was never really happy with using Wordpress. This is by no means a reflection on them. I'm just more comfortable here in Bloggerland. So here I am, and there you are, and I suppose this will be a Mommy Blog after all. A Mommy Blog about homeschooling. A Mommy Blog about special needs. About surviving being a single mom and dealing with all of the above. In other words, a cliche. I mean, do people actually read these things anymore? In a world where one moment we're fighting over the handling of the children of detained families only to jump through five other major issues (read: what social media has decided the masses need to focus on) and suddenly we're fighting over Colin Kaepernick et al. We live in a world of blurbs and scrolling marquis and social media that updates faster than real time. Does anyone have the attention span for blogs anymore? Maybe that...