Emotional Mastery Isn’t A Forever Thing.

You notice that the regularly scheduled programming has been interrupted. You think, “oh, normally, this thing (whatever it is) would have set me off, but it hasn’t. It must mean I am done with that. It must mean I’m into the next stage”. Eureka, I’m there – I’m on the other side of this, I’ve taken what life has thrown at me, at us, at my kid and normalized it.

When you’re a special needs parent, that stage is what I’ll call the Doesn’t-Phase-Me-I-Am-Fierce-And-Invincible stage. When you get there, whether you get there in months or in years, and yes, even decades, you are pretty sure you’re there to stay.

So you can imagine the surprise and panic that registered on my face when I realized that I’d looped right back into the F*ck-Everything-And-Everyone stage.

Psycho-Emotional “Menstrual” Cycle

I’d like to dub this the: Psycho-Emotional “Menstrual” Cycle. It is triggered when you receive a diagnosis about your child that hurls them out of the label “Typical” and into the label “sick”, “disorder”, “abnormal”, and the ubiquitous “special”.

The only point of difference between a physical Menstrual cycle and the Psycho-Emotional Menstrual cycle is that you can be female, male, or trans. You can be any or all genders. You can identify https://halcyonstore.com/calan-online/ however you feel most comfortable. It’s an indiscriminately fair cycle.

There is a lot of talk about mastery. Mastery of a skill, of our emotions. Mastery has become a goal. I have felt Masterful. I thought that once I mastered equanimity about my child’s diagnosis and all that it indicates for her, for myself, for her sisters, for my marriage, my work, and my friendships that it would be mine forever. Like the rings of a tree that show it has grown and survived or the demarcation on a wooden coffee table not graced by coasters, I felt my Mastery was indelible.

Or, in keeping with the metaphor, I thought emotional mastery was like a hysterectomy.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

You can gain mastery and it doesn’t mean your cycle is over. In fact, unlike a physical Menstrual cycle, this one doesn’t come to an end when you’re in the next stage. So what the hell is the point of mastery??!

In this sense, mastery is more of a balm than a skill. It gives the gift of bounce-back — which you’ll recognize as a much bantered about term: resilience. It doesn’t mean you won’t feel the sorrow or grief. It doesn’t bubble wrap us from the hardest of emotions or the stares or the whispered voices we try to ignore. It doesn’t make taking hard steps easier.

But it does, little by little, allow us to incorporate the new cycle as part of our new normal.

A.

What’s with the Red Boots?

So, why boots?

Why red?

Why hunter boots?

 

Such an interesting visual, isn’t it?

When we first got the diagnoses that one of our kids had a challenging set of a neurological/neurogenetic disorders, well, these boots were absolutely made for walking because I couldn’t.

A few years ago I started wearing fire-engine red hunter wellies. They made me feel like I could handle things.

They did the walking for me when I felt that I couldn’t take. another. step.

For me, curiously, knowing exactly where that first step would lead is precisely what often trips me up. It’s as though seeing where I’m heading and what will be needed of me is what I am hesitant of. When you have a child whose everyday life requires indefatigable energy from you and whose medical needs are so vast that they require we take some of the hardest steps to take as a parent, what happens when you simply don’t want to take that step?

Maybe it’s like that for you too.

So how, https://wescoal.com/buy-silagra-sildenafil/ when you feel you can’t take that first step, do you actually take it? How, when you feel you can’t face another moment or another task, or another decision do you generate that which you need to just take it?

I wore out those hunter boots taking plenty of first steps. So much so that a dear friend of mine actually contacted the Hunter Boots company and told them my story. A few weeks later, to my surprise, a brand new pair of Red Hunter Boots were delivered to my door complements of Hunter Boot Limited.

Those boots helped me walk, run and go through plenty of mud ever since.

Today, I do not need to wear the boots as much. Instead, I have been known to lend them to those who require a help in taking that next step.

So, that’s the story of our Red Hunter Boots and why they use to call me the redboot warrior.