Navigating Parenting with Chronic Illness and Lost Slippers

 

One of the scariest parts of parenthood is failure. Failing your children isn't on any parent's agenda, it's the very thing we strive to avoid. We're trying to not fail them today in the little things and in the long term with the big things that truly matter in the end. The thing about failure, is that you don't know if it's in the cards until it shows up and slaps you in the face. Trying to navigate parenthood and avoid failure in today's world is challenging in itself. Trying to navigate parenthood when you're dealing with a chronic illness and avoiding failure is a whole new level of challenging it feels.

The years of uncertainty before a diagnosis, when you know something is wrong, but you have no diagnosis, so you're just left to your own worst thoughts are some of the most exhausting. Because all you can think about is how you're failing everyone around you. You know you should be and could be doing better but you don't know why you're not. You think about all the worst-case scenarios of what could be wrong with your body. How surely a body that's betraying you like this could only mean it's not meant to last. You feel guilty for not giving your children the quality of a mother they deserve. You feel ashamed for your husband because he didn't sign up to carry this much uncertainty. You wonder if people are tired of you always being tired. You wonder if they can even understand the gravity of how sick you feel - but you also don't want to be the one that complains all the time. So, you do your best to make each day seem not so bad. All the while, you can't help but wonder - why am I trying so hard and still failing?

Life after a chronic illness diagnosis can be liberating though. To finally know the reason WHY. It helps to take some of the shame and guilt away. In fact, if anything, it's been cultivating an environment where my kids get to see something real and grow in, even if they can't grasp that's what's happening yet.

If you don't know anything about Pennsylvania weather - we just went from 80-degree weather to having snow on the ground in the matter of a couple of days. Dealing with drastic changes in barometric pressure on top of a respiratory virus is not a good combination for IIH. It's a recipe for disaster actually, but life still requires you to show up. 

All week I couldn't find my slippers. They weren't lost, just not in any of their normal places. Tuesday, after work I mentioned I couldn't find them. Wednesday evening, I ask if anyone has seen said slippers. No one cares about mom's slippers. I'm just talking out loud. A mom issue is a non-issue in any house. Let's be real. It's a simple thing. Slippers. But, when you only have so much energy to give and you've already given to everyone else by pushing through your day, making supper, and doing homework - crawling around on the floor to locate slippers doesn't make the energy cut.

My week of pushing through has finally taken a toll - and my perseverance has maxed out. IIH has a way of telling you when you're done. So come Thursday - when I announce from the couch that I don't care what anyone in the house eats for supper. That's my families' cue to know that mom is off duty, which is a rare occasion in this house.  When you're sick, you just want comfort. I echo into the house about my darn slippers being MIA still. It's a waste of breath; all they care about is they get Dad Dinner tonight. Dad Dinner, consisting of pizza rolls and strawberries, that's what's important right now. I overhear my 12-year-old son asking my husband for his cell so he can use the flashlight. He starts a crawling expedition around on the floor, shining it under the couch unearthing the dust bunnies. Then he disappears. He returns waving my slippers in the air. He told me they weren't really lost, they were right under my bed. I thanked him for searching. He said, "you wanted them mom, it's no big deal."

But it was a big deal. He was listening. He cared. He knew the slippers, as simple as they were, mattered to me. My 12-year-old son grew a little bit in that moment. He'll take this moment with him. He doesn't realize it, but I do. In a house full of people, he was the one who chose to hear my echo and not keep it empty. You keep doing acts of love like that and they're bound to shape you. Reassurance that even on a day when I don't have the energy to give - the love still resonates between my children and me. That's most certainly not failure. 

My alarm went off this morning. My body again betraying me. My brain in a vice, my body ran over in my sleep, my stomach tied in a knot. I said to myself "how are you going to do this again?" I sat up in bed and put my feet on the floor.  But right there, next to my bed, was my answer. The slippers.

Those slippers are the little things in yesterday, today and the long term.  The reassurance that there's no failure here. Not yet anyways. Keep showing up momma - even on the days you feel you can't. They see you, they hear you, they need you and you need them, especially on the impossible days. Love will always outlast the energy.