Broken Open

 So much of life is something you were not prepared for or something you were not expecting. Parenthood is just that. i always said you spell parenting HUMBLE. i do feel with every stage/phase there is a new way to spell it. this stage is broken open. these teenage years, they hit when we are middle aged. A mid life crisis, or an unraveling, finding your purpose, recognizing true joy and also that life is precious and short because our time is 1/2 done. the teenage years reveals a lot about yourself, learning to trust, being open and honest having hard conversations, setting boundaries and discipline and even if you do everything right there will still be some areas where the path is not at all what you would have foreseen despite all of your effort. that is where I am learning to give myself grace and say "I did the best i could with what i knew at the time". the challenging moments i find myself reflecting back on my childhood and think about all the maladaptive coping I had or attempts to control aspects of life because all of a sudden you are faced with something you had never anticipated. i feel like all along i have known she was different, she was very enthusiastic child full of zest and fire and energy and love. she was your typical child but magnified. which could also be compared to her emotions, just more. you want all the joy you cant have it without all the pain. broken open applies to both the parent and the child. as my child is learning to navigate the young adult world she is learning who she is and where she fits in simultaneously while as the parent i am learning to pause and question myself, check my intentions, be conscious of what i say and how i say it and be thoughtful of my place in the world. never did i expect to be having conversations about her suicide attempts. i knew there would be conversations about suicide but not her actual attempts.  sometimes no matter how hard you try to control something, you can't. the universe has the control, we do not.  after an almost successful suicide attempt i now know we are broken open. there is no going back to the life we had been living, we can only move forward and through to a new normal. that night 3/18 will forever be seared in my mind in the trauma bay of the ER with my daughter who had overdosed laying on the stretcher. i know my face was still, no emotion, i was in shock. what will this mean, where do we go from here. all those conversations we had, they did nothing i am still here facing her near death. i had several days in the ER on a stretcher or in a recliner to think about all of this. feeling all the feels, crying because i was sad, angry because this was my reality, the emotional pain i felt as a mother made me wonder how people do not die in moments of deep emotional pain and grief. she was transferred to an inpatient psychiatric hospital full of adolescents with severe and varying degrees of mental illness. none of which she had ever seen. children who were psychotic, children who hard murdered people, children who were being restrained to a chair. i can only imagine the fear she must have felt. we went every day for our 1 hour visit, driving over an hour each way. again watching, looking, thinking, crying, wondering, hoping, where now, where do we go from here. after calls and conversations and research and incessant internet searching i began to make calls. the place that sounded the most healing was Turnbridge in Connecticut. it was going to be the place, i could feel it, horse therapy, 23 girls, art therapy, academic support, individual therapy, group therapy in the most beautiful, peaceful, warm setting you could imagine. and then finding out my childhood neighbor worked there, and a friend of a friend knew the CEO and founder, it was the universe leading me in the right direction. 

she was discharged 3 days before her bed was ready in CT. we debated should we follow instructions and go direct from miravista to CT? dave and i decided we wanted to give her the opportunity to have some closure, some peace and some sense of control before she was headed to long term residential treatment. her arrival home was rough, we had a contract that if any resistance was met, police would be called and she would be directly back to ER and inpatient. she obliged, we controlled the phone, we controlled the car, we controlled where she slept. we helped her pack, we brought her to see her brother who was away at school. she got to hug her brothers, her dog, and contact her friends, pack her own bag and sleep in her own home. Easter sunday we were headed to the first day of her re-birth, how symbolic. again on this journey, not knowing where this is going, how it will unfold and what it will entail no but with hope and bravery we took the path. turnbridge was peaceful, beautiful, serene and calm. all the things we have not felt in over a year. it was so hard to leave her, to drive away not knowing what the path before would become. one thing i did know was i felt more than confident that the team helping her were far more equipped than i was to guide her at this point. one of things that is probably the hardest to face, despite your greatest efforts, there are just some things that are not yours to control, to try to fix or improve. that journey was going to be hers and i was now to be the onlooker, the supporter the encourager but not the decider. i cried the entire 2 hour ride home. my eyes overflowing with tears were as blurry as my head and my thoughts.  someone could say it a million times but until you felt it you could not truly understand that one step at a time, one foot in front of the other and if you cant do that one breath at a time, one inhale one exhale. after our welcome call from the clinical team coordinator i felt as though i had passed the baton. i was now a spoke on the wheel but not the center of it and i am grateful to surrender to that because i could no longer steer this bus. our one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, one breath at a time means we join the support groups, we talk to friends and family, we talk to each other we read articles, listen to podcasts, cry, think and wonder what will be next. when the bumps come, we brace for them and then realize that someone else is giving her the tools to manage these bumps. i would want nothing more than for my child to heal her wounds, get to know her inner self and let that person be known because before the world told her what she shouldn't be, shouldn't do, shouldn't think she had a very bight light. i know that version of her is in there she just has to uncover all the layers of that scab that have been created over the years. now that we are broken open we can begin to put the pieces back together with a new found appreciation for every single piece and loving every part of it and not allowing anyone to tell her that anyone of her pieces dont belong or that her cracks are not beautiful. we are broken open, we will find our new normal but you will always see the cracks. the cracks are the pain, the pain that has healed but will forever live in our existence because it gave us the scars and lessons to show us that we lived.