Expectations-Kerri’s Take

It’s a flukey miracle that expectations haven’t been my downfall from humanity. I expect too much, too often, from too little, and it bites me in the ass every time.

I expected my father to love me unconditionally and always be there for me, I expected my mother to support us, spend every afternoon with us, and make me a star all on a single mom, teacher’s salary. (Which she pretty much did.) I expected my brother to always do what I told him, I expected my boyfriends to simultaneously father me, love me, and rock my sexual world, and I expected to be everyone’s saver girl while being adored and admired for my selfless efforts.

Obviously, I was young, scared, and naive. Obviously, I was left disappointed more often than not. And, obviously, I left many of the people I loved disappointed because I couldn’t accept them for who they were.

I understood, even at a young age, that expectations were a lose-lose proposition for me. I didn’t understand why people couldn’t just be kind, helpful, and loving…in exactly the way I want them to be, and I knew that attitude was keeping me from really growing up. It was keeping me from becoming less naive, less scared, and ultimately less hurt. It was certainly keeping me from healthy relationships. But I couldn’t figure out how to stop myself from falling prey to everyone else’s opinion, from expecting others to let me down.

You know what’s amazing for expedited personal growth? A very sick child. It is crazy how quickly you can get your shit together if, of course, you survive, which no one was sure I was going to do, when your child gets sick.

One day, I was absorbed in my own dreams, working too much, and planning on setting my kid up to become a pro hockey player. Then, the next day? I was just praying my son would live. It’s a steep learning curve, a sick child, but an effective one. When that happens, you “shit or get off the pot” as my granddad used to say. And I? Well, I…

I survived, and I learned. And I am grateful in a Thanksgiving times infinity kind of way. And although it’s still a work in progress, I am so much better at setting expectations. 

I’m much less judgmental of people but I also don’t take crap anymore. No one person can wound or leave me begging for mercy as much as watching my child slip away did. Helpless. Powerless. Those moments are not something you ever unsee and they change you. Permanently.

I won’t lie. The wounds are still there, ready to freshly pop. But damn if I don’t have a whole new outlook on expectations. I now have a realistic perspective of what I can expect from the world and other people, mostly, and the courage to ask for what I need. And because of that, I am stronger, happier, and feel love more deeply than ever before. Truth be told, I was never great at declaring my needs properly before operation epilepsy.  But, I get it now.  

The virtue of expectation done right is the time and effort I save dealing with crisis and disappointment. Once I had the courage to set appropriate expectations before the fact, I no longer had to clean up the mess of responsibility and hurt I used to when I was waiting for the world to abandon me or bend to my whims.

It’s a total win-win.

Well, setting and declaring more realistic expectations and living better because is a win-win, not epilepsy.

Epilepsy can bite me! And that is an expectation I am fully prepared to manage!

I had to let go of my ego, the part of me determined to outshine everyone else, to save everyone, and come to terms with the fact that more was not better, faster, not cooler, and that making things complicated did not make me smarter.

Understanding and knowing are two separate steps in the process of any growth. When I’m teaching I know exactly how to direct through those steps. I see the separation and have steps to help them build a muscle memory bridge that connects understanding to knowing. But damn, no matter what I did, I couldn’t build that bridge for myself. I needed something more dramatic than my own baggage to open my eyes. And, ironically, I needed to be the best person I could be if I was going to help save my son. Well, if I was going to not get in his way and help him live the life he was destined for. Obviously, I learned that lesson pretty quickly. His life is not mine to control.

I know I can’t control epilepsy and I’ve accepted that. So, I’ve grown up a lot in the last four years.

It’s not always easy, but I am so much better at setting expectations. Most of this change has come from experience. But I always love good direction. So even though I am in a better emotional place to set and manage my expectations, I still use these steps. I hope they might help you too!

  1. Read the Room.
  2. Decide how to state expectation in a way the person receiving it will hear.
  3. Think before the fact about how to respond if the expectation isn’t met.
  4. State expectation directly. Speak lovingly but firmly, looking the person in the eye. Be aware of your tone, it says more about your message than your words.
  5. Do not expect the expectation to be met.
  6. Do not take it personally if it isn’t met.
  7. If the expectation is met, cheer like crazy!
  8. If the expectation isn’t met, decide whether what you needed was too much or be ready to walk away.
  9. Go into your bathroom and cry and scream into a towel.
  10. Go back and try again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am a Lost and Found Mom….Again

I, obviously, have not been consistent with this blog, and for two years I have been trying to figure out why. I have been hiding, surviving, trying, albeit half-assing, my way through our life since Buddha’s diagnosis in a way I would hate myself for if I had the strength to crawl out from under my anxiety and fear. If I could let go of my grief.

Why is this page still here? I don’t have the guts to shut it down. I also don’t have the guts, and maybe the words, to follow though and put myself untethered on the block, and I am ashamed of my constant inconsistencies. It’s funny because I am equally one hot-headed, determined show off who, despite any unintended intonation, has a lost to say about all the ways I desperately want to fix the world! I want to fix it all. I want everyone, myself included, maybe especially, to know they are worthy of a life of grace and gratitude. Joy and love. Safety and stability. Possibility. I’m guessing that over the last two years I didn’t actually think that was possible with a “sick” kid. My bad. Not sure what I can do about it, but, my bad. I may also want a world without pain, but I don’t really, it’s just that I need a little break from mine. I want the world to have what I didn’t have as a child, what I don’t have now, and what I am afraid I am not worthy of ever having. I want to heal the world. Yes, partly so I can be worthy of healing but don’t dismiss that need in place of the genuine impulse. I want to heal the world. The universal pain is many times too much for me to bear. I am an idealist in the wrong time and place.

I want to keep my ideals in a grown up world. I want my child’s fate, this pain, this battle with no end to have a meaning that makes me better, that makes him strong and keeps him alive. I want our shit to propel him to live a life he could have had before his diagnosis and, damn it, deserves still, not curse it for our remaining days. I want more than just, well, it was meant to be! I want to fix it all.

I am not found. I am not entirely aware of the ways in which I am lost. It’s ironic, if not ridiculous, that I am also an extreme over-achiever. I think I have been trapped between perfection and failure for most of my life. It’s just that life kicked my ass one too many times in the past three years and I am now paralyzed between who I wanted to be, who I could be, and who I am. My expectations are something, and usually not anything helpful!

I have thought that I don’t keep it going because I want the blog to be Dave’s thing. My husband is the true writer and it opens his heart in a way I can’t reach. He deserves that connection to himself and our community.  Our son deserves his reflections, his words of unhindered love. I worry I’m preachy or whiny, or that my shit isn’t worthy of words. I’m worried I don’t have the resilience or stamina to keep it going. But honestly, it just scares me. It wasn’t just the epilepsy diagnosis, it wasn’t watching my son almost die, his body shut down and his brain fire into a damaged zone. It isn’t just the inertia of working day and night to rebuild our life and our expectations while simultaneously waiting to wake up one day and our child be gone. It isn’t just that I live in a state of constant crisis, sometimes of my own making. These were patterns a lifetime in the making. I have been lost for a long time. Abandoned, manipulated, and shamed as child by one parent, loved and enmeshed with the other. Addiction, fear, anxiety, constant illness and uncertainty have have laid a crisscross of opposing beliefs in my heart to make me the wanderer I am. Not unique to the world but damaging to me.

 

I want to be found, but I need to know what that means to me. I also want it to be OK that I am lost. I want to earn and feel worthy of sharing those thoughts, that process, and, hopefully some progress. Maybe a little grace. I will continue to work the definition of lost and found for me as an essence, a presence within my circumstances. I will try to be brave and share them.

I’m happy to say that in searching for why I haven’t been writing I have found something. I have landed on a meaning of lost and found for me and Buddha. It’s rough waters we surf between disease and health, disabled and normal, but it’s in that place I think a part of me might be found. It’s not the place I want to be found, but I guess that’s not up to me and it’s a good place to begin again. This is where I will stop pussing footing around and give this journey meaning. He is sick, he might die, he is sometimes not the same kid from one day to the next. He’s only 8. But he is also alive and wonderful and kind and capable. We have a whole two years of Instagram goodness to show for our efforts and we are not done yet. The world may not know what to do with us, it may not have a place predesigned for our belonging, and it may be scared of what we’re bringing. That in-between place makes us feel lost, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find ourselves again, and again, and again. We can be found, even if I never stop being pissed and hurt that we don’t fit in.

I promise to define, search and wander that place in my mind, in my heart, in my life, and in this blog! We may live with one foot in and one foot out of the door, but that doesn’t mean I have to be lost.

So, here I go. Lost and Found…between sick and well, disabled and typical, expected and created!