When my baby (now 2 1/2) was very young all kinds of parents, including my own, gave us lots of advice. Some of it was helpful, especially from child care experts. But a lot of it started getting old and annoying. Diaper this way, feed this way, and you are patting her too hard (she just needed to be patted a little harder than some babies to burp, and if it hurt her, she would have screamed rather than fallen peacefully asleep quite often). We eventually had to tell people, thanks for your advice, but this is the way we are doing things. Most people respected this, or at least stopped talking about in to us. I bring this up to mention parenting in general, but also my parenting more specifically. I also want to mention some of the personal issues people could have that make parenting difficult. Most of us are mostly decent parents, although I will mention some that are not.
This is an old pic of me at probably age 3 or 4. Doesn't relate directly to the topic per se, but its a me before my mental illness came about. Or at least I think so.
Some people have said I'm a "good parent," a "great mom," a "loving mother," an "affectionate mother," as well as I’m “very intuitive to my baby’s wants, needs, and emotions,” which I thought was basic, but apparently that isn’t always the case. Knowing my baby is adopted, several people have mentioned that my baby is "so bonded" with my partner and I. And these are people who know about my mental health issues, and how they get in the way of my parenting, but still say these things. Sometimes I don't have as much energy because of my depression and we will do less energetic things than we were going to, sometimes I have extra anxiety, so we are going to do more physical things like instead of reading we’ll dance, which my daughter loves. Other times when my partner is home, I must spend extra time journaling, creating art, meditating and doing other therapeutic self-care/help activities so that I am stronger and healthier for my family. My daughter goes to daycare most of the time because I started getting over-stressed having her at home her full-time, and I just wanted to talk to adults sometimes, even about the weather. I spend the majority of time doing the self-care activities I mentioned, plus participating in activities and groups in the community such as aqua aerobics, yoga, a sexual assault group, as well as other activities. And I spend a lot of time going to different regular and specialized counselors. Of course I felt guilty sending her to daycare at first (which we call school to make it sound more important), but she started learning things, she enjoys the other children and can now talk about them, and she has dedicated teachers who have helped out with her physical therapy exercises. She loves going to school and is excited to talk about it!
I have flashbacks and have dissociation. This may happen in front of my daughter in future but has not so far (dissociation would not be as scary to see most of the time because most of it is unnoticed. I don’t know I am even doing it sometimes. If you are a difficult person to deal with, my mind/body might just make me dissociate around you and you can’t tell. Part of my brain is turned off, but I do other activities well, and sometimes better). The situations those two symptoms of PTSD are more likely to happen, at least with me, have been when I am alone, or just with my partner. I think because of the care my child needs those things never come up. Now, she has heard me cry. I talk to her about this. I say Mama cried because she was sad and then ask her if that is okay. She says yes. I ask if she cries and she says yes, and I tell her that is okay to cry and I will hug her when she cries. I am aware my mental health will affect her, but as opposed to many people I have seen, even people very close to me, who hide or don't acknowledge their mental illness/es, and let it fester as it manifests into emotional abuse. Some mental illnesses, not taken care of, are more likely to lead to abuse than others. Combining drugs or alcohol makes that worse. My mental illness, if untreated, wouldn't make me emotionally abusive- it would make me withdrawn, which would still affect my child, but I acknowledge and treat it. I don't take drugs and don't drink often. I think its heathiest to talk openly about, mental health issues. It helps to take the stigma away. Previous generations come from a time you didn’t do this, and often discourage this, but I think it will only help us. And I think there is a way to talk about mental illness and feelings at the child’s age level so they can understand best. So I have written, although I need to take and gather all of the pictures, a children's book for my daughter that is at her level, and parts of it slightly above, so it will be relevant for a couple years, about my particular mental illness. It will be a Shutterfly type of book. PTSD or even depression aren't mentioned. It’s simply talking about feelings, saying they are all okay and everybody cries. Mommy just cries a little more than some people. Mommy gets help from nice people, and it’s not her job to take care of Mommy (I wanted to add this part early in her life because already she is very emotionally intuitive and caretaking. When I have cried, she has wanted to go in the room I was in and has given me hugs and kisses, her doll, and a piece of her pizza (something she doesn’t usually share) at different times. I can talk more about the book in another blog post.
I also started a journal for my daughter a little before she was born. I brought it to the hospital with me so I could tell her the details of what was happening. I am on the 2nd journal and when she is 18 or 21, I will gift her a giant pile of journals all about her life and our family's life. I have also written honestly about my mental illness in the journals. My partner and I am warm and affectionate people. My daughter has turned out to be that way as well. The reason I mention all that info above, and the reason for this blog post is to show I am doing some good things as a parent, even though I would be the first to admit my downfalls. But there are not just those saying those good things about me I mentioned above, even though there are much more of the positive comments. There are people, or possibly a smaller number, who are questioning my parenting, using my mental illness against me. I've had struggles and will continue to. My baby is safe, taken care of physically, mentally and emotionally, and when she is not crying and throwing a huge tantrum, which is what two-year-olds do, she is a very happy funny affectionate child who loves her Mommy and Daddy very much. The thing is, the "people" who might be talking about me just fucked and had a bunch of children, while I was vetted by an agency, and then chosen by a birth-mother (who gave us the greatest gift & we will never forget her!) to be the mother of her child. (That was simply a comment about a certain situation, and not at all a comment about people who don’t adopt). Would he or she, the person I've mentioned, have passed what my partner and I did? Yes, I have a documented history of mental health care. In the past that looked really bad, but now, some mental health professionals say that looks like someone is actively trying to take care of themselves.
In my personal experience as well as working in social work, and especially in Child Welfare I have seen "good" and "bad" parents. But in or out of the system I find most parents to be okay, and sometimes that's the best people can be because parenting is a really hard job. Even though people have said I was a good or great parent, most of the time I'm just okay, like most people, and I'm okay with that. Especially for single parents, parents with children with disabilities, parents who have mental and physical disabilities like me, parents struggling with poverty, and many other categories of parents with challenges, parenting can be very difficult. I would like to talk more about this in general in future.
Even though I can go on about many stories I know, I will not deny that this is personal. My partner and I decided we would not have more than two children. He had two children in his family growing up and I had four. I love my siblings, have had lots of fun with them, have had support from them, and its sometimes priceless to have someone to talk about mom and dad with because no one on earth can understand the way they can. So, when I mention that they stressed out my life, it is not them personally. I'm glad they were born! It’s about the number of children and not them personally. I was the oldest of four and each child after me made me suffer from poverty more and took away attention from me; there were other issues as well that I won't mention cuz I'm nice and there are too many levels nuance and chaos. I won't go into too much detail here about my parents. They say raising 4 kids was hard. I give that to them. I know they had to go through things I didn't have to go through with one kid. But I will not give them the amount of kids they decided to have. That was their CHOICE, and thus, their fault. And the second thing I won't give to them is that they can't go around and say they raised 4 children. This implies that they, even though they divorced when I was a teen, together, as two parents, were the only ones involved in raising the children. My sister slightly younger than I, and I helped to raise my younger siblings, although she got out of the responsibility quite often when she was 15 and she knows why. Even my younger siblings remember us watching them a lot. I appreciate them remembering and acknowledging this- it means a lot to me to get that credit!
I just happened to meet a partner who was pro-choice, very pro-birth control, and like me, possibly for different reasons, didn't believe in having a lot of children. We ended up adopting and it’s much easier to control the number of children when you adopt. Most people adopt because they can't have children, even though everyone has their own special story. We had a unique story. We hardly tried. Because of my age at that time 39-40, and my weight (which is down a little now) which were factors that made it harder to conceive, and there could have been complications for me or the child, we decided to stop trying. So, we thought of adopting and he was on board before I was. Yes, there was that curiosity I had always had of how a person who had half of my genes would look. But in the long run that wasn't important. And after that didn't matter the race didn't matter. So now we are a little multicultural family, similar to the family I grew up in. Because I have lost some weight, I'm still young enough to get pregnant, which will probably not happen. But we have already decided if this slim chance would happen, we would abort. I know that sounds scary to some but let me explain two things about that. The first thing is I'd take the Morning-After pill (which is so great btw), or get an abortion as soon as I found out. I would get rid of some cells to make the life of my child I have now better, and to prevent a future child, that did not exist yet, from having less attention and care. (Just a bonus extra point added in between is for some people: how dare you judge women exercising their choice of freewill who happen to get rid of cells and NOT A BABY, sit around and eat meat. Those were actual real lives there (even if you are a speciesist you can’t deny that). If you don't like baby-killing don't eat veal and lamb)! The second thing is at about age 6-7 months we found out that our daughter had considerable developmental delays. Thanks to the Goddess/Universe, she has improved a lot from help of a wonderful organization that works with children with developmental delays, as well as some help from her daycare workers! She has her challenges, I have my challenges with my PTSD, and my partner has his as well, so I had to (after some crying because I have always wanted 2 children) accept we are a 1-child, 3-person family. At first, I blamed myself. If I didn't have this mental illness, I could have 2 children. But quite often I say if I didn't have this mental illness, I could do this and that and this other thing, and it only leads into a negative thinking-loop which makes me more depressed, so I am learning to do this less.
It doesn't help me to blame myself about this mental illness, or "mental differentness/mental uniqueness". I started off this post by talking about a person thinking I am not a good parent and that there should be great concern for my daughter, mainly because of my mental illness and some of its symptoms that come about. I am trying my best! And I feel like this is a person, there are many others, and I'm sure I'll meet more in the future, think people with mental illnesses, or other challenges, shouldn't be parents, or are bad parents. I feel like he/or she is blaming me, almost punishing me for something I can't help. I went through unspeakable (I use "unspeakable" simply as a word to say. This blog is about me learning to use my voice. I’m sure using it in this post!) violence, pain, fear and much more to develop my mental illness. None of this is my fault! But I am using a bunch of resources to help myself and am learning to get up quicker when I fall through the help of a special intense therapy.
I know this, like other blog posts, at least at first, towards the beginning of this blog, is not all outlined and organized. Some of them are more organized. Some of them are less so. This one is less so. This is simply meant to be a casual blog. This was about parenting, but it was more about standing up for myself. I admit my imperfections (believe me- I'm actually trying to work on saying better things about myself), but I will not stand for people questioning my parenting because of my mental health, especially when I know the intricacies of their parenting as well as their mental health. At first when I figured someone might be questioning my mental fit-ness I got scared and paranoid. And believe it or not, I didn't eat much for a day and a half- amazing. But then I talked to a few people who have said I was a good parent, for support, and I know they were not just placating me by reiterating I was a good parent. I realize I have support- I am building my village for my child and family. And this person, who I have unfortunately let be one of the beta readers of my blog has access to what I write here. At first, I felt like oh no, I'm going to have to stop writing or don't write anything about my mental health because he/she could use it as ammunition. But I write about my rapes/rape culture, and my mental health, not only to help me (which it does), but to help others. I can't stop writing here. I'm not saying it’s great, or even good writing. It helps me in my mental health journey and makes me feel like I have purpose.
So, I am not going to let this person, who is narcissistic and manipulative; a power freak who has taken my voice before, take it again! I am going to keep writing! I am going to keep using my voice! My voice was silenced by rapists and then I was taught by others close to me to keep it silenced or I would be punished, and things would be taken away from me. Like Pavlov's dogs, I just learned how to silence myself on my own when no was in my face making me do it. They’ve attacked my parenting, my mental illness I can't help; they’ve attack the very heart of me! But do I attack you back? No. I’ll be the better person. I will just not let them control me and not let them silence me and make me weak. Rape survivors need to feel strong! I am strong, or I will keep on saying it until I believe it! I was going to stop this blog because I feared they would try to use things against me, but fuck them, and fuck that! (I'm sorry if the swearing offends you. I swear often when injustices have been done and do not apologize for that! It often offends people who have not experienced injustice. We also live in a culture in which people will expose their children to countless amounts of violent images, but they won't let them see a boob, two men kiss lightly, or hear swear words. If you do not like it this may not be the blog for you). They’ve used fear amongst other things to control me before. I really do wish them well. They need healing and to take care of themselves, but when that sickness attacks my family we will have great distance until the person is actively working on their mental health and has apologized for the abuse and suggesting I'm a bad mother because I have a mental illness. I will stand now with my writing, my voice, and like when we put, on my daughter's pajamas on after a bath, and sing "It's jammies time its jammies time, ROAR ROAR", because she likes any excuse to roar, I will roar! I will roar righteous fury! And I will roar love!
This is an old pic of me at probably age 3 or 4. Doesn't relate directly to the topic per se, but its a me before my mental illness came about. Or at least I think so.
Some people have said I'm a "good parent," a "great mom," a "loving mother," an "affectionate mother," as well as I’m “very intuitive to my baby’s wants, needs, and emotions,” which I thought was basic, but apparently that isn’t always the case. Knowing my baby is adopted, several people have mentioned that my baby is "so bonded" with my partner and I. And these are people who know about my mental health issues, and how they get in the way of my parenting, but still say these things. Sometimes I don't have as much energy because of my depression and we will do less energetic things than we were going to, sometimes I have extra anxiety, so we are going to do more physical things like instead of reading we’ll dance, which my daughter loves. Other times when my partner is home, I must spend extra time journaling, creating art, meditating and doing other therapeutic self-care/help activities so that I am stronger and healthier for my family. My daughter goes to daycare most of the time because I started getting over-stressed having her at home her full-time, and I just wanted to talk to adults sometimes, even about the weather. I spend the majority of time doing the self-care activities I mentioned, plus participating in activities and groups in the community such as aqua aerobics, yoga, a sexual assault group, as well as other activities. And I spend a lot of time going to different regular and specialized counselors. Of course I felt guilty sending her to daycare at first (which we call school to make it sound more important), but she started learning things, she enjoys the other children and can now talk about them, and she has dedicated teachers who have helped out with her physical therapy exercises. She loves going to school and is excited to talk about it!
I have flashbacks and have dissociation. This may happen in front of my daughter in future but has not so far (dissociation would not be as scary to see most of the time because most of it is unnoticed. I don’t know I am even doing it sometimes. If you are a difficult person to deal with, my mind/body might just make me dissociate around you and you can’t tell. Part of my brain is turned off, but I do other activities well, and sometimes better). The situations those two symptoms of PTSD are more likely to happen, at least with me, have been when I am alone, or just with my partner. I think because of the care my child needs those things never come up. Now, she has heard me cry. I talk to her about this. I say Mama cried because she was sad and then ask her if that is okay. She says yes. I ask if she cries and she says yes, and I tell her that is okay to cry and I will hug her when she cries. I am aware my mental health will affect her, but as opposed to many people I have seen, even people very close to me, who hide or don't acknowledge their mental illness/es, and let it fester as it manifests into emotional abuse. Some mental illnesses, not taken care of, are more likely to lead to abuse than others. Combining drugs or alcohol makes that worse. My mental illness, if untreated, wouldn't make me emotionally abusive- it would make me withdrawn, which would still affect my child, but I acknowledge and treat it. I don't take drugs and don't drink often. I think its heathiest to talk openly about, mental health issues. It helps to take the stigma away. Previous generations come from a time you didn’t do this, and often discourage this, but I think it will only help us. And I think there is a way to talk about mental illness and feelings at the child’s age level so they can understand best. So I have written, although I need to take and gather all of the pictures, a children's book for my daughter that is at her level, and parts of it slightly above, so it will be relevant for a couple years, about my particular mental illness. It will be a Shutterfly type of book. PTSD or even depression aren't mentioned. It’s simply talking about feelings, saying they are all okay and everybody cries. Mommy just cries a little more than some people. Mommy gets help from nice people, and it’s not her job to take care of Mommy (I wanted to add this part early in her life because already she is very emotionally intuitive and caretaking. When I have cried, she has wanted to go in the room I was in and has given me hugs and kisses, her doll, and a piece of her pizza (something she doesn’t usually share) at different times. I can talk more about the book in another blog post.
I also started a journal for my daughter a little before she was born. I brought it to the hospital with me so I could tell her the details of what was happening. I am on the 2nd journal and when she is 18 or 21, I will gift her a giant pile of journals all about her life and our family's life. I have also written honestly about my mental illness in the journals. My partner and I am warm and affectionate people. My daughter has turned out to be that way as well. The reason I mention all that info above, and the reason for this blog post is to show I am doing some good things as a parent, even though I would be the first to admit my downfalls. But there are not just those saying those good things about me I mentioned above, even though there are much more of the positive comments. There are people, or possibly a smaller number, who are questioning my parenting, using my mental illness against me. I've had struggles and will continue to. My baby is safe, taken care of physically, mentally and emotionally, and when she is not crying and throwing a huge tantrum, which is what two-year-olds do, she is a very happy funny affectionate child who loves her Mommy and Daddy very much. The thing is, the "people" who might be talking about me just fucked and had a bunch of children, while I was vetted by an agency, and then chosen by a birth-mother (who gave us the greatest gift & we will never forget her!) to be the mother of her child. (That was simply a comment about a certain situation, and not at all a comment about people who don’t adopt). Would he or she, the person I've mentioned, have passed what my partner and I did? Yes, I have a documented history of mental health care. In the past that looked really bad, but now, some mental health professionals say that looks like someone is actively trying to take care of themselves.
In my personal experience as well as working in social work, and especially in Child Welfare I have seen "good" and "bad" parents. But in or out of the system I find most parents to be okay, and sometimes that's the best people can be because parenting is a really hard job. Even though people have said I was a good or great parent, most of the time I'm just okay, like most people, and I'm okay with that. Especially for single parents, parents with children with disabilities, parents who have mental and physical disabilities like me, parents struggling with poverty, and many other categories of parents with challenges, parenting can be very difficult. I would like to talk more about this in general in future.
Even though I can go on about many stories I know, I will not deny that this is personal. My partner and I decided we would not have more than two children. He had two children in his family growing up and I had four. I love my siblings, have had lots of fun with them, have had support from them, and its sometimes priceless to have someone to talk about mom and dad with because no one on earth can understand the way they can. So, when I mention that they stressed out my life, it is not them personally. I'm glad they were born! It’s about the number of children and not them personally. I was the oldest of four and each child after me made me suffer from poverty more and took away attention from me; there were other issues as well that I won't mention cuz I'm nice and there are too many levels nuance and chaos. I won't go into too much detail here about my parents. They say raising 4 kids was hard. I give that to them. I know they had to go through things I didn't have to go through with one kid. But I will not give them the amount of kids they decided to have. That was their CHOICE, and thus, their fault. And the second thing I won't give to them is that they can't go around and say they raised 4 children. This implies that they, even though they divorced when I was a teen, together, as two parents, were the only ones involved in raising the children. My sister slightly younger than I, and I helped to raise my younger siblings, although she got out of the responsibility quite often when she was 15 and she knows why. Even my younger siblings remember us watching them a lot. I appreciate them remembering and acknowledging this- it means a lot to me to get that credit!
I just happened to meet a partner who was pro-choice, very pro-birth control, and like me, possibly for different reasons, didn't believe in having a lot of children. We ended up adopting and it’s much easier to control the number of children when you adopt. Most people adopt because they can't have children, even though everyone has their own special story. We had a unique story. We hardly tried. Because of my age at that time 39-40, and my weight (which is down a little now) which were factors that made it harder to conceive, and there could have been complications for me or the child, we decided to stop trying. So, we thought of adopting and he was on board before I was. Yes, there was that curiosity I had always had of how a person who had half of my genes would look. But in the long run that wasn't important. And after that didn't matter the race didn't matter. So now we are a little multicultural family, similar to the family I grew up in. Because I have lost some weight, I'm still young enough to get pregnant, which will probably not happen. But we have already decided if this slim chance would happen, we would abort. I know that sounds scary to some but let me explain two things about that. The first thing is I'd take the Morning-After pill (which is so great btw), or get an abortion as soon as I found out. I would get rid of some cells to make the life of my child I have now better, and to prevent a future child, that did not exist yet, from having less attention and care. (Just a bonus extra point added in between is for some people: how dare you judge women exercising their choice of freewill who happen to get rid of cells and NOT A BABY, sit around and eat meat. Those were actual real lives there (even if you are a speciesist you can’t deny that). If you don't like baby-killing don't eat veal and lamb)! The second thing is at about age 6-7 months we found out that our daughter had considerable developmental delays. Thanks to the Goddess/Universe, she has improved a lot from help of a wonderful organization that works with children with developmental delays, as well as some help from her daycare workers! She has her challenges, I have my challenges with my PTSD, and my partner has his as well, so I had to (after some crying because I have always wanted 2 children) accept we are a 1-child, 3-person family. At first, I blamed myself. If I didn't have this mental illness, I could have 2 children. But quite often I say if I didn't have this mental illness, I could do this and that and this other thing, and it only leads into a negative thinking-loop which makes me more depressed, so I am learning to do this less.
It doesn't help me to blame myself about this mental illness, or "mental differentness/mental uniqueness". I started off this post by talking about a person thinking I am not a good parent and that there should be great concern for my daughter, mainly because of my mental illness and some of its symptoms that come about. I am trying my best! And I feel like this is a person, there are many others, and I'm sure I'll meet more in the future, think people with mental illnesses, or other challenges, shouldn't be parents, or are bad parents. I feel like he/or she is blaming me, almost punishing me for something I can't help. I went through unspeakable (I use "unspeakable" simply as a word to say. This blog is about me learning to use my voice. I’m sure using it in this post!) violence, pain, fear and much more to develop my mental illness. None of this is my fault! But I am using a bunch of resources to help myself and am learning to get up quicker when I fall through the help of a special intense therapy.
I know this, like other blog posts, at least at first, towards the beginning of this blog, is not all outlined and organized. Some of them are more organized. Some of them are less so. This one is less so. This is simply meant to be a casual blog. This was about parenting, but it was more about standing up for myself. I admit my imperfections (believe me- I'm actually trying to work on saying better things about myself), but I will not stand for people questioning my parenting because of my mental health, especially when I know the intricacies of their parenting as well as their mental health. At first when I figured someone might be questioning my mental fit-ness I got scared and paranoid. And believe it or not, I didn't eat much for a day and a half- amazing. But then I talked to a few people who have said I was a good parent, for support, and I know they were not just placating me by reiterating I was a good parent. I realize I have support- I am building my village for my child and family. And this person, who I have unfortunately let be one of the beta readers of my blog has access to what I write here. At first, I felt like oh no, I'm going to have to stop writing or don't write anything about my mental health because he/she could use it as ammunition. But I write about my rapes/rape culture, and my mental health, not only to help me (which it does), but to help others. I can't stop writing here. I'm not saying it’s great, or even good writing. It helps me in my mental health journey and makes me feel like I have purpose.
So, I am not going to let this person, who is narcissistic and manipulative; a power freak who has taken my voice before, take it again! I am going to keep writing! I am going to keep using my voice! My voice was silenced by rapists and then I was taught by others close to me to keep it silenced or I would be punished, and things would be taken away from me. Like Pavlov's dogs, I just learned how to silence myself on my own when no was in my face making me do it. They’ve attacked my parenting, my mental illness I can't help; they’ve attack the very heart of me! But do I attack you back? No. I’ll be the better person. I will just not let them control me and not let them silence me and make me weak. Rape survivors need to feel strong! I am strong, or I will keep on saying it until I believe it! I was going to stop this blog because I feared they would try to use things against me, but fuck them, and fuck that! (I'm sorry if the swearing offends you. I swear often when injustices have been done and do not apologize for that! It often offends people who have not experienced injustice. We also live in a culture in which people will expose their children to countless amounts of violent images, but they won't let them see a boob, two men kiss lightly, or hear swear words. If you do not like it this may not be the blog for you). They’ve used fear amongst other things to control me before. I really do wish them well. They need healing and to take care of themselves, but when that sickness attacks my family we will have great distance until the person is actively working on their mental health and has apologized for the abuse and suggesting I'm a bad mother because I have a mental illness. I will stand now with my writing, my voice, and like when we put, on my daughter's pajamas on after a bath, and sing "It's jammies time its jammies time, ROAR ROAR", because she likes any excuse to roar, I will roar! I will roar righteous fury! And I will roar love!
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