I’ve been recently diagnosed with BPD and I have a 16 month old boy. What has been most helpful for you? What has been the most challenging? If you have a partner, what do they do to best support you? #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Motherhood
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I understand it’s popular right now. That words like bandwagon are thrown at it. Overdiagnosis. Trend. We are sick of hearing about it. ADHD is old news. Boring, even. Whatever, next, move on. But I will not move on, because I cannot. My neurodiverse brain doesn’t have that privilege.
It might be hard to imagine, and for your sake I truly hope it is, but some of us grow up feeling wrong. We look at those around us, the lucky ones who received the manual on ‘how to human’, and we scratch our heads. We hide our wrongness, remarkably well sometimes, and often for years. But it comes out, as it needs to, and in ways that make life hard.
It comes out in being late, for everything. It comes out in endlessly analysing everything you said, and did, and are, and hating those things. It comes out in overwhelm, in paralysing indecision. It comes out in half-finished jobs, and degrees, and in procrastination so intense it needs a new word to describe how impotent it makes us feel. It comes out in trauma, in self harm, in substance abuse and suicidality. In eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. It comes out in hurt, in emptiness, in an inner critic that destroys your confidence far quicker than any high school bully could.
However it comes out, and whatever it looks like for you, ADHD is real, and it can be debilitating. It’s trending because finally we are realising that it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to feel wrong anymore. We can talk about our struggles, validate our experiences, learn from our hardships and celebrate our differences so that we don’t have to spend even one more day feeling wrong for who we are.
Receiving my ADHD diagnosis not only allowed me to access the support and medication I needed to address the decreased dopamine my brain produces, but it enabled me to look back at my life and understand it. To have compassion for my confusion, my struggles and my hurt. Most importantly for me, it has given me a new lens to view my children, and their friends, and all of us who walk through the world with special, beautiful brains that feel it all.
I am so fucking grateful for the ‘trend’ of ADHD diagnosis. I am one of the ‘over’ diagnosed, and I jumped on that bandwagon like a life raft. I’ll never grow tired of talking about neurodiversity. I’ll never ‘move on’. And after a lifetime spent wishing so desperately that I could, I now realise that I truly don’t want to. To me, at least, that makes all the difference in the world.
2 reactions I’ve recently come to the realization that we rarely hear women's personal experiences with miscarriage or abortion. As women, we are taught to keep these things a secret. I believe this is a major reason there is so much shame, stigma, misinformation, and lack of education when it comes to miscarriage and abortion. Because of this, I wanted to share these very individual and personal stories from women that have had an abortion. On today’s podcast episode, we hear from Mardalena Dawn Turpel who had an abortion 30 years ago. She explains the toll the abortion and having to keep it a secret had on her mental and physical health.
Listen to Mardalena’s story to learn about why she chose to have an abortion, the trauma she experienced, and how having to keep it a secret impacted her mental and physical health.
#Prochoice #MentalHealth #mentalandphysicalhealth #ReproductiveRights #reproductivehealth #Motherhood #physicalhealth #MentalHealthAwareness
It’s the one emotion that is best describing how I feel. I have grief over my lost relationship with my son. Sadness over the ugliness that we have become as a mother and son. Grief over the beautiful memories when he was young and I was still important as his mom, before he became a teenager and I became an irritant. I mean no disrespect to those who are truly grieving from a loss due to death, I don’t mean to trivialize that depth of grief. It’s just the only word that I can think of to describe the empty despair I am feeling right now. #Grief #Motherhood #Parenting #Depression #Anxiety
My son left today. He moved out. And he really needed to as his behavior has been so toxic and triggering for me. We needed a break from each other. I knew this day was coming so it’s no surprise. But it’s on the heels of another blowup filled with his manipulation, excuses, disrespect vs my indignation and cruel words.
I’ve written before about how he triggers me. How he causes my anxiety and flight vs fight responses to go into high alert. He’s 19 now. And he is learning EVERYTHING the hard way. It’s been painful to watch. Slowly he has become someone that I don’t understand. Someone that I don’t know anymore.
My childhood trauma/baggage was being ignored. There was always something more important going on. And in retrospect I know it wasn’t intentional or mean. My mom was widowed at 24 with 3 kids under 6, me being the youngest. She was busy. My job was (everyone say it with me now….) to be seen, not heard and not cause my mom any unnecessary stress. She worked nights so she wouldn’t have to miss work if my sisters and I were sick. As a mom now, I know she did an amazing job with what she had on her plate. But, as with most childhoods, there was some form of damage done.
I have done a lot of therapy to understand how my childhood has shaped who I am as a person and have been able to feel at peace with it all. But I never stopped to think how my childhood shaped who I am as a mother.
We are all doomed to repeat the patterns of our past, right? Or at least hold the responsibility to identify the bad patterns and fix them. I always worried about being emotionally unavailable to my kids since it was the only method of parenting I was exposed to. I wanted to BE THERE for them. And I did consciously make certain changes in my life to achieve that. I worked from home just about all their lives so they would know I am always here. I encouraged and supported any and all extracurricular interests, got the great house in the cul-de-sac with the pool in the backyard. Birthday parties, trips, they never “wanted”’for anything. I feel pretty good about the kind of mother I was up until the teenage years. When their emotional needs changed.
But I didn’t fight for the family dinner time every night as they got older and started sprouting their wings. I didn’t want to impose the guilt that was shamed into me by forcing them to choose between family time and what they wanted to do. Slowly we started to all drift into our own worlds and apart from each other. I saw it happening. I knew it was happening. But emotional intimacy was such an uncomfortable thing for me that I just let it happen. I never wanted my kids to feel forced to spend time with me. If they wanted to connect, they knew where I was. I did all the obligatory check-ins through high school to take a temp on their lives, friends, needs. But never pushed beyond that. I told myself because they were boys and I am mom, the connection was foreign to both of us and it was all normal.
Tonight I have realized so much more damage that I have caused. Growing up emotionally ignored transformed me to put my thoughts, opinions and emotions front and center as an adult. I am able to speak with conviction and have no problem asking for what I need. But I am realizing that I have been so focused on my position to defend and protect that ignored little girl, that I have irreparably ignored my childrens needs. Disagreements and arguments have been fueled with my desire to be heard and to be right, instead of listening, supporting, understanding. I have been so focused on standing up for myself that I forced my kids into having to stand up for themselves against their own mother. I am supposed to be there to support them, encourage them, to put their needs first. Instead I put my own emotional baggage in the way. I look back now and see so many missed opportunities where I should have paused, put my subconscious agenda away, and been there for them. I repeated my childhood by ignoring my own children emotional needs.
Tonight I am feeling like a complete failure as a mom. The strings that are supposed to connect a mothers heart to her sons feels severed. And I honestly don’t know if it will ever be recovered. I feel like I have caused permanent damage. I am so ashamed of myself.
Now it has to be said that my son that moved out hasbeen no peach. He proudly acknowledges he is on the train tracks and playing chicken with the train but that this is “how he learns”. That’s a hard process to watch. He has been disrespectful to me, my husband, our home. A lot of it the usual teenage crap, but heightened because he has ADD, depression and anxiety. He has not been an easy child. But my heart is breaking over realizing that I didn’t necessarily make it easier on him. Or maybe I am pointing out all of his shortcomings to ease my guilt. Or maybe I am the reason why he is this way.
What I do know is the guilt, regret, shame and heartache I feel tonight is very very heavy.
And I am so very sorry. #Anxiety #Depression #Motherhood
Nobody warns you the fear and worry that motherhood brings. My child is delayed physically which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and well I’m still figuring out what that means for me. I’m still processing, worrying, and trying to not think of the worst possible outcome, but it’s hard to not go there. I’m emotionally and physically exhausted. Having someone ask me after telling me she is developing months behind, what goals do you have for your child? Ah to walk/develop on time, to thrive, to not struggle, to live a happy independent life. Or what do you hope for your child, are you kidding me? What kind of questions are these? And then when I respond with walking in the next 6 months, they look surprised and like that was a stupid answer. What did they expect me to say? Does this mean they don’t think that’s possible? What does being delayed this much really mean? The whys and the what’s, the not knowing. That’s one of the hardest parts Is not having the answers. Not knowing. Being clueless and hell I have a masters degree, little good that helps me with this. They don’t prepare you for the sadness that comes from not knowing, from worrying. They don’t prepare you for how you have to traumatize your child by physically holding them down on a table to get one blood test only to have it fail (aka they couldn’t find her vein but kept poking anyways) and have to go to another doctor to get another blood test done with an ultrasound (which is what they should’ve suggested in the first place). For then it to come back abnormal and make you wait 72 hours to find out why or what that means because they haven’t had time to look at it, well then why give me the notification of an abnormal test, is it just to make me sit here and worry? Ugh mothers worry enough as it is and then to have more thrown at you. Do medical processes for children even involve a parents perspective who’s been there before? The social worker in me is furious how not trauma informed medical care is especially for children. For gods sake when we had to go to the ER for a scary allergic reaction we got put in the isolation room for those at risk for harming themselves, no wonder my daughter associates negative emotions when seeing medical providers, we were in a cold room with nothing around while they poked her with needles, didn’t even try to make it silly or less scary, just poked her. Direct (don’t totally hate that with myself, but with a baby, come on). She literally cried every single time a person in scrubs came into the room. She’s only a baby, but she knows. Gosh it even triggered me. The social worker in me is pissed, the mom in me is scared, worried, and sad. #MomGuilt #delayed #Trauma #Anxiety #sad #Motherhood #MedicalTrauma
Is this an egotistical choice or just a part of being human?
I keep debating with myself about #Adoption , #insemination , making a deal with a friend... So that I can also have my kids and the opportunity to teach them the way I feel it's better for them and the world where they live. I had my fair share of raising children (my own brothers and at work) and I know I'm very maternal...
But... I suffer from #RheumatoidArthritis #Fibromyalgia (and others)...
And...I mean, I've been asked by doctors if I'd just want to remove my uterus (when I got a tiny cervix surgery) and speak about my decisions as if they ever asked what they were.
But having an illness that isn't going to get any better, not wanting a father figure, all the days that I have to spend in bed... Would it be me raising a happy child or would the child be my carer?
I'd love to be the one to make a child happy. But not having to go through adversities as soon as I had to. That broke me.
My heart it beats outside
My body it weighs 7 lbs. 4 oz.
21 in. long it’s smooth
Like butter and more
Innocent than a kitten
The sticky swirl of raven hair so intoxicating
And the euphoria after the pain so primal
To split open and stitch back together
And say it’s the best thing that’s ever
Happened is almost illogical but Jesus
The tickle of tiny breath
On my neck is better than
An orgasm it makes my eyes
Roll the little weight lying here
On my chest makes me feel
Like I’m floating as if hollow bones
Fill these aching arms holding
My own soul outside my body
It can’t ever be put back which
Is terrifying
I was eleven, unbroken, whole,
I did my best to learn and impress,
I bled for the first time and life changed,
I was pushed legs first into a quagmire.
I am thirty now, broken ,unsure,
often diving back into the memories of those murky waters,
no paternal hand pushed me this time over,
but my own maternal hand needs to fish my soul out ,
there's just enough time to stick back the pieces.
So drown in peace my 11 year old self!
You did your best to live , but now I must let you go.
It's insidious, unfair and undeserving but time is not our favourite friend, freezing forever in pain and fleeting in euphoria.
Stop starring in my nightmares my inner child,
I have work to do, a role to fulfill!
Watch over me and find your light as I keep my own child unbroken and whole. #SexualAbuseSurvivors
Some days are good then there are days like today. I am very pregnant and baby should be here in a few weeks, but I feel so bad for my low moods.
Not getting out of bed, doing my chores, taking care of myself, and just being depressed. Not even these little things but big things too that I've been procrastinating for some time, I feel like I could go on and on about things I need to do. I can't really put it into words... I really just want to be better for my husband and soon to be son 😪. My husband is doing sooo much for me and i just want to be helpful as well, be a team. It hurts so much that my depression is still here and strong.
I feel guilty for feeling this way. And no this is not just hormones... though they probably make things worse.
I made a choice that I want to live a few weeks ago, I am not going to give up. But dang this is hard.
#mamas #Motherhood #ChronicDepression #Suicide #PostpartumDisorders #Pregnancy
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