Simsek Strikes

I Still Feel Happy

This week, Ellie soldiered through a typical springtime cold.  Her nose ran, then clogged, and at night she snored like a bulldog as she tried to draw breath through the wet paper straws that were her swollen sinuses.   Surprisingly, she maintained her usual, sunny disposition, rarely mentioning that she was sick, instead singing throughout the day as though nothing in the world was wrong.  

Tuesday evening I was lying in bed beside her, listening to her snort and gurgle as she tried to go to sleep.

    "How do you feel, Ellie?" I asked, feeling badly for all the effort it was taking her to breathe.  Her answer was not what I expected.

    "I still feel habby!" she said, snuggling into my shoulder.  She still felt happy.

Last year, I would have given almost anything to have been able to answer the way Ellie had.  Last year I felt like I was stuck at the bottom of a deep well looking up at the pinprick of bright sky where I once lived.  I could see it up there, that bright and happy land, but I couldn't reach it.  For the first time in my life, I felt utterly overwhelmed by everything; sad and exhausted and irritable.   It was effort to get out of bed, effort to deal with housework and kids, effort to teach and listen and mediate disputes, effort to find the smiles and laughs that should surround my family.  Effort.  But there, in the bottom of my well, the resevoir was dry. I had no energy left at all.

In bed at night I would be exhausted but I couldn't sleep. I was wracked with anxiety - something I'd never really experienced before.  I found myself worrying about everything: childhood disease, global climate change, finances, letting down the kids, letting down Paulo, never being able to find my way back to the happy place I'd always lived, natural disasters, fire, accidents, wars in foreign countries. Really. You name it, I'd worry about it.  And all the while I was mentally kicking myself for worrying about things I had no control over - why couldn't I just shut it off?  But the anxiety was like a runaway freight train.  Every night I was tied to the engine and no amount of rational thought could untie the knots.

My back was in a constant state of spasm, too, and several times I found myself in the urgent care office, so stiff I could hardly move.  I reasoned that the back pain was increasing my stress, and the stress tightening my back, and it seemed to be a vicious cycle I couldn't break.  My usual back doctor was trying, but to no avail.  I started spending time each night gently stretching, stretching, stretching and then meditating, trying to reduce the cramping and the pain in my body and my mind.  Still, the pain persisted and I learned to live with it, modifying the way I did everything from cooking to managing the kids in order to work around the stiffness and immobility. 

I didn't talk about it much.  After all, what was there to say?  I had a great life, a family I adored, enough to eat, a safe place to live, and I was miserable?  So I had a bad back.  Big deal.  Half the people I know have had bad backs and they didn't spiral into utter misery.  I had nothing to complain about and yet I felt terrible.  So, instead of complaining I tried to find help.  I went to the doctor and asked to have my hormone levels checked - maybe it was my thyroid, adrenal fatigue, menopause, or something physical that could be addressed. 

When all my bloodwork came back normal, I sought out a therapist.  Maybe I was depressed and need to talk to a professional.  I certainly couldn't go on living like this - I was becoming someone I didn't even recognize.   The therapist was sweet and tried diligently to find a way to help me feel better.  Finally, after seeing me for several months, she shrugged her shoulders and admitted that we'd hit a dead end. I wasn't suffering from childhood trauma. I was aggressively looking for solutions instead of allowing myself to be defeated. I had good coping mechanisms and a good support structure.  I had done everything she'd suggested and I still felt underwater. In essence, she was suggesting that I should rethink medication, but I wasn't interested.  I went home and cried some more.  I began to wonder if I was ever going to feel normal again.

Finally, in the summer, two things happened that would turn everything around.  The first was that Paulo got his sleep apnea addressed and stopped snoring.  For the first time in years, we would be able to sleep in the same room again.  I moved off the extra bed in Ellie's room and back into the big bed.  It was bliss, and just that simple change began to impact my night time anxiety.  I began to relax in the evening and to worry a little less.  

The second happened after three disastrous trips to the back doctor in a row.  All three times I had come home feeling better, only to seize up completely within 48 hours.  When I the doctor this, he decided to re-evaluate my back to see if there were any new areas that needed to be adressed. Sure enough, he found a second place that everyone had missed and began to work on it along with the usual place.  Suddenly, the pain lifted.  Completely lifted.  By the time I was standing in the waiting room paying my copay I felt like I hadn't felt in a year - completely pain-free.  

Being pain-free made me realize just how much pain I had actually been in all along.  It's absence was shocking. Amazing.  I couldn't believe it was true.  For the next week, I woke each morning expecting the pain to be back, but it wasn't.  I started sleeping better.  As the days ticked by and the seizing didn't happen, I found myself laughing again.  I stopped worrying and crying. I started dancing in the kitchen again, and singing in the car, and coming up with silly games to play with the kids.  For the first time in a year I was finally out of that deep hole and the sun on my face each morning felt like a wonderful, thrilling miracle.

I called my therapist, thanked her, and told her I wouldn't be needing her help anymore.  I called my back doctor and thanked him profusely - had had literally saved me.

It was eye-opening to discover that my whole life could be so crippled by this one problem.  Chronic pain had imprisoned me for a year and I'd suddenly, unexpectedly, been granted parole.  

It's been less than a year now since the pain lifted, and every day since has felt like a gift.  I haven't forgotten that miserable, lost, overwhelmed woman, nor how easy it was for me to tumble down that hole. And I'd be lying if I said I don't fear a return of that kind of pain.  I have a whole new appreciation for how debilitating it can be, and I think about the people I know with other chronic pain issues - fibromyalgia, sciatica, arthritis, and I marvel that they continue to smile and function when I could not. But with this perspective comes a gratitude for each day of freedom, no matter how hard life might be otherwise.  Every time I can play on the floor with my kids or let them climb into my lap and hang a hug around my neck without pain, every time I can lift that crockpot into the overhead cupboard by myself, or take out the trash, or climb out of bed without pain, or shampoo my hair without pain, or pick up Ellie and squeeze her tight without crying, I am grateful.  I know that the every day things in this life are full of gifts, and that I cannot afford to take them for granted.

I'm still tired, and busy, and sometimes sick or overwhelmed, but now it all rides on a sea of gratitude and relief.  It might have taken a lot of pain to get here, but now I can move through life's bumps with a smile again.  And if you were to ask, like Ellie, I could tell you without hesitation or reservation, I still feel happy.  

 

 

Teaching the Kids to Manage Their Time

As I was drinking my coffee this morning, bleary-eyed and half-awake, I had a little epiphany.  I hate nagging the kids.  I hate it almost as much as they hate being nagged.  And yet almost every day starts with nagging.  Get dressed.  Are you dressed yet?  Why aren't you dressed?  What have you been doing all this time?  Get dressed, get dressed get DRESSED!  And so on.  Does this really have to be the way it works? I wondered as I scooped grounds into a filter.  Isn't it possible that I could stop nagging and they could still do what they need to do? I pondered this as the coffee brewed, and as the first cup started to make its way to my tired brain, I realized the obvious:  they rely on my nagging to get things done the way I rely on my alarm clock to wake up.  There is no reason for them to take ownership of their time because they know that I will remind them, with increasing frequency and urgency, when something needs to be done.  If the cycle was to break, I would have to break it.

So, before the day got started, I sat the older two down and explained how the morning would go.  They had until 7:30 to get dressed and make their beds.  I would not be reminding them, but the two things would need to be done before breakfast at 7:30.  At 7:30, breakfast would be on the table.  If they were ready, they should come at eat.  If they were not, or they didn't come, I would not be calling them but they would not be eating until snack.  At 8:20 we would be leaving to the Ellie to school.  If they did not have teeth brushed, shoes on, jackets etc they would be leaving the house as-is, even if that meant going shoeless.  I would not be reminding them.  Natural consequences would rule the day.

In return, they would have a nag-free morning.  Everyone loved that idea, and amazingly, everything got done before leaving the house. Perhaps most shocking of all, no one went hungry, either.  We were off to a good start.

When we got home, I sat them down, each with a piece of paper and a pencil.  I explained that they were now old enough to learn how to manage their own time, and today we were going to start.  I asked them to write a list of things that they had to do today.  Since we homeschool, their lists needed to include the subjects that they had to work on today and at least one chore.  Next to each item, they should write how long they thought that job or chore would take them. 

When they were done, we added up all the time they'd estimated and wrote it down.  Together we added together all the available hours between that moment and 5pm, the time that I typically start dinner and they like to have screen time.  We subtracted time for lunch and picking up Ellie from school.  They were surprised to see that they should have several hours of available time left over after their schoolwork and chore, as that is rarely (if ever) the case in real life.  I explained that they could choose the order and time they'd start each item, but that all of them needed to be done by 5 if they were to have any screen time that day.

Next, I directed them to begin their lists.  Some of the subjects would require my help, so they needed to think about that and work together since I couldn't help them both at the same time.  Every time they started an item on their list, they were to start a stopwatch.  When they finished, they would stop the watch and write down how long the activity *actually* took.  Was it longer or shorter than they guessed? What did that mean for the rest of their day?  How would that change their estimate tomorrow? And then we started.

I couldn't believe how happy they were to take charge of their own days.  They began to realize that every time they completed a task on-time or early, they added to the amount of free time they would have later, and that sometimes that extra time would have to go to a job that took longer than expected instead.  But best of all, I haven't nagged or reminded them of anything all day.  As I write this, it's 12:30 and Spencer has completed all of his tasks except for helping with the laundry, as that job is on-going today.  Lexi has several more jobs to finish, but she is making good progress and is feeling positive.  She's already finished her most challenging subjects and both of the chores she chose. 

So far the overall response has been fantastic.  Lexi asked me why I hadn't explained all this to them before (I thought I had, but clearly not in concrete detail as I did today) because now she understood how to get everything done. They've both decided that this is "the best day ever" and they want to do it every day.   I doubt the enthusiasm will persist, but I am certain now that they can learn the value of their time, and how to manage it.    And when they fail to manage it, the results will be as simple and straight-forward as they are in life - they have to leave the house in PJs, or work through play time, or tell a friend they can't come over because they're not done school.  In other words, reasonably natural consequences. I predict days of frustration ahead, too, but honestly, learning to to this is probably as valuable as any skill I can teach them in life, as it will carry them through everything else they do from here out.   And with any luck, I'll be all done nagging, too!  Win-win.