Our guest, Kristin Faith Evans, shares with us about her struggles with faith, mental health, and how shame over difficult feelings about our situations, isolate us. She discusses how God taught her to reframe the message she was telling herself and step into the light of support, community, and love.
June 28, 2022; Ep. 92
Timestamps & Key Topics:
Episode Links & Resources:
If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
Our guest, Kristin Faith Evans, shares with us about her struggles with faith, mental health, and how shame over difficult feelings about our situations, isolate us. She discusses how God taught her to reframe the message she was telling herself and step into the light of support, community, and love.
June 28, 2022; Ep. 92
Timestamps & Key Topics:
Episode Links & Resources:
If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
Carrie M Holt 0:00
Welcome to Take Heart where our goal is to offer encouragement, give hope, and insight, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. As we explore monthly themes and share inspiring stories and practical tips, our desire is to continue to serve you and the listeners. Could you please share our podcast with a friend? You can learn more about Take Heart on our website at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com, and there are also links for everything that we will discuss today in the show notes at the bottom of this episode. Thank you for joining us today.
Welcome to episode 92 of Take Heart. This is Carrie M Holt. I'm so glad you're joining us today. We're continuing our summer interview series and we're going to hear from Kristin Faith Evans. Christian is an author, a speaker, and a social worker. She is also a mother of two children who have rare genetic disorders and complex needs. Her greatest passion is walking with others on their journeys to a deeper faith and mental health wholeness. She has her master's in Christian spiritual formation. Kristin and her son also coauthored a therapeutic book for younger siblings, entitled Beth's Umbrella: Loving My Sister With Special Needs. This is available on Amazon. She and her husband are also beginning to lead workshops to empower married couples who are parenting children with special needs and will be co-authoring a book together. You can find out more about Kristin, at her website, www.kristinfaithevans.com. We'll have these links in the show notes at the bottom of this episode. Well, hello, Kristin, and welcome to Take Heart. Thank you for being a guest for us today.
Kristin Faith Evans 2:46
Thank you, Carrie, I'm so excited to be here.
Carrie M Holt 2:49
Would you start by telling us just a little bit about yourself and your family?
Kristin Faith Evans 2:56
My husband and I have celebrated 20 years of marriage this year, which is great. Thank you. It's been a journey. We have two children both have very rare genetic disorders, completely unrelated. When our son was a small baby, he became very ill and started having seizures, needed a feeding tube, and the doctors just could not figure out what was wrong. Finally, they ran all the testing again and found that he had a metabolic disorder that only had 13 documented cases in the world at the time. Treatment was trial and error. He had already begun to have developmental red flags, for lots of different developmental complications. It's been a battle his whole life, both him battling and us battling for him developmentally and medically. He's actually doing very, very well at almost 16. When our son was about three years old, our daughter was born with Cri du Chat Syndrome, which is a really severe deletion, her actual deletion is very severe. She has intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, many medical complications, and medical fragility. That's my family, which is in just a little nutshell. My daily life is totally unpredictable. I can make plans, but then I've learned to be very flexible and just go with the flow. I'm a writer, a speaker, and a Licensed Master Social Worker.
Carrie M Holt 4:51
That's pretty incredible. I can just imagine how each day brings something new. What is something that you are passionate about that you would want special needs moms to know about this journey?
Kristin Faith Evans 5:11
My passion really stems from both my education and experience, which is a ministry and clinical mental health, as well as my story. The two collide where I think a lot of times moms are suffering in silence, and I did for years with guilt and shame, which can lead to isolation, and depression. Then you add in faith doubts, faith struggles, those types of things, and then the fear to seek mental health treatment, a lot of times in the Christian community. I just think a lot of moms are suffering in silence and in emotional and spiritual isolation. My passion is to share my story, which is a pretty, powerful story, to be vulnerable to let other moms know it's okay. There are a lot of us who are going through this, and we need to speak up and support one another.
Carrie M Holt 6:22
Definitely. Would you be willing to share a little bit about your story with us today?
Kristin Faith Evans 6:30
Yes, I love sharing my story. It's really hard to share it. But I believe, that if I can help one other mom, rise up out of hopelessness, then it's been worth it. When I was pregnant with my daughter, Bethany grace, I begin to experience post-traumatic stress disorder. The entire pregnancy was an absolute nightmare. I went into pre-term labor, at least 20 times, and ended up having ultrasounds every single day for the last two months that I was pregnant. We were told she wouldn't survive. If by a miracle she did, she would have a very severe heart defect (tetralogy of fallot) and wouldn't survive the surgery. I mean, it just went on and on and on. She did survive. It was a miracle after she was in fetal distress for six minutes. They called it and said she didn't make it. I basically looked at the doctors and told them to get her out. She came out pink. The doctors were baffled, just baffled, and then lo and behold, the heart defect had vanished. Doctors stood at the foot of my bed, just saying they couldn't explain it. I had this incredible joy of these miracles and the miracle of our daughter, but also this traumatic stress that had been building and if I'm honest, probably depression already at that point, which just compounded with the stress in the NICU for three months. Then she came home after three months, and we were not able to secure nursing at that point in the home. I was battling insurance. We had a little makeshift NICU in our bedroom with four machines and 24-hour care. That stress began to just wear me down to the point, I couldn't function. With the trauma, just flashbacks, nonstop, the depression, the stress, I spiraled, and then the spiritual darkness began. I was very bitter, very angry. How could God be good, and allow us to suffer, allow my daughter to suffer? Long story short, I spiraled into a severe mental health crisis. I did not seek help. By the time I did, 16 months later, it was too late. I made a very serious suicide attempt. Doctors could not explain how I had survived. I shouldn't have survived after four days in the ICU on a ventilator. I had been given a second chance at life. I still didn't know how to live in this pressure cooker, in this depression, and then this agonizing separation from God. I'd have lifelong faith, and I had to begin to learn how to truly live. That came when I finally released the need to know. I don't know how God could be good. I don't understand it, but I can either continue to live miserably and have no hope, or I can just trust God and dive into my life. That's where my story really begins living in the midst of all this pain and stress, but living in more joy than I've ever experienced in my life.
Carrie M Holt 10:12
One of the things I was reading on your website was the Six Ways For Special Needs Parents To Thrive Stronger, looking at mental health. I know one of the things that I read that you said was you wished when your daughter was in the NICU that you could just cry and that someone had told you that. I know, for me personally, the journey has really been wrapped around that grief, and the grieving cycle and helping special needs parents to understand that it's always a part of our journey, that we're always somewhere in the cycle. There are moments when different emotions rise up and just not to fight them. What would you say to a mom who is in that situation right now, and doesn't feel like she can cry? She's believing the lie that we have to hold our emotions in the whole time when we're going through something like that.
Kristin Faith Evans 11:17
Yeah, and I think there are a lot of reasons we feel that way. One, I think we have the thoughts and feelings that I shouldn't be thinking that. I shouldn't be thinking I'm disappointed my child isn't healthy or typical, so then that prevents us from crying. As well as I felt like if I allow myself to feel the dam would break open. If you really don't have the coping skills to be able to manage and reregulate from letting those emotions flow, then that can actually make things worse. I actually wrote a blog post on this recently. I call them the "R" steps. Just allowing ourselves to validate that it makes sense, I feel this way, and objectively looking at all that is going on, and saying, okay, it makes sense. Validate who wouldn't be sad in this situation, and then just allow ourselves a couple of moments to feel those emotions, and then look at or pray through and process those emotions. Then looking at a future of, okay, I'm in this right now. What can this look like, though, two days a month, a year from now? Then reregulating: going back to okay, I've processed that right now I'm in this moment and going back to just throwing ourselves into what we're doing that day?
Carrie M Holt 13:14
Yeah. That's really good. I think oftentimes, I mean, you're right. In those crisis instances, I have even found, that I have a hard time praying because I feel like if do, I open that floodgate. It's the short, just one-word prayers to the Lord. I feel like if I'm really honest with him about how I'm feeling, it's going to open the floodgates, and then I'm not going to be able to function or make life-changing decisions for our son, which we've had many experiences like that. I think one of the things that we have to encourage our listeners and parents is that when the feelings come back again because they're gonna reoccur, you can't keep shutting them down. I know you said earlier before we got on about I think we're kind of hiding with shame over these feelings. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Kristin Faith Evans 14:18
That was a lot of where I began to isolate was beginning to feel shame for the thoughts I was having. The first time I went to the conference for my daughter's syndrome, a parent spoke and said, "I felt like maybe it would have been better if our son hadn't survived." I sat there thinking, I'm not the only person in the world who has had this horrific thought. Then he said, "I guarantee most of you in this room have had thoughts like that." It was those thoughts that were too horrible to even acknowledge I was having them, which the shame comes in when we start to say things about ourselves. I'm a bad person. I am a horrible Christian. I'm a bad mom for having these thoughts. That's where the shame starts to come in, whereas if we are willing to connect with other parents, other moms connect with our pastor, and pray through those and be vulnerable. That's where we can process and heal.
Carrie M Holt 14:18
Yeah, I think it's so important to identify and be willing to share about that. I know, for me personally, when I feel like I've needed to reach out for help, it's that belief that it's all on me. Somehow I have failed as a mom because I need help. Do you have any advice for moms like me who are struggling even with that? I need to go see a therapist. Well, that means that I didn't have what it takes to be the wife and mom that I need to be.
Kristin Faith Evans 15:47
I told myself that message, especially when my daughter was very little. I needed private duty nursing. I needed my family to help me, I needed all these therapists to help me (OT, PT, etc. with my daughter). Then I couldn't even function I needed a personal therapist to even help me be a mom. I told myself that message. There is something wrong with me. I'm a bad mom, and then through my healing and therapy. I realized, no, I'm a good mom because I'm getting my child the care that they need. Regardless of what I have to do, you know, if I was just trying to do it on my own, which I did for a while, that didn't turn out very well. Yeah. So that's, I think, reframing the messages that we tell ourselves, and stepping back and objectively looking at other moms. Other moms might be able to do it, why do I need all this? Other moms don't have a child who is on four machines. It's those messages that we tell ourselves?
Carrie M Holt 17:33
Yeah. So would you say just, if someone if there's a mom listening today, and she has been living in shame, what's that first step that you would tell her that she needs to do to walk into the light?
Kristin Faith Evans 17:50
I would say there are two steps. It's hard to know which one for the person. The two steps are being able to collapse in Jesus's arms and accept that embrace, and reach out to other people. Now, you may not have the strength to reach out to other people, and the courage without God giving you that, but then you may not have the courage and the strength to go to God with your bitterness and anger, without someone being there with you, to support you in that. Those are the two key things that bring us out of the darkness because shame thrives in isolation and disconnection.
Carrie M Holt 18:41
Yeah, it does. I know, on your website, you talk about your desire to help special needs moms live Strong, and I loved that acronym. Could you share just a little bit about where that came from and maybe what a few of those letters mean, for encouraging special needs moms?
Kristin Faith Evans 19:07
Yeah, so what I imagine is living strong, despite all the challenges and all the storms and all the waves that hit us, rising up and being able to thrive in our circumstances. The S is for self-care, and people say that word and then a lot of people are reacting to the term self-care because they think it means oh, I'm gonna go get a pedicure. That's not what I mean as a therapist. I mean, I quit taking showers. I was getting no sleep. I was doing nothing for myself. I'm talking about basics, eating healthy, and taking time for yourself. The "T" is for triumph is living in joy, out of and in the midst of our painful and challenging circumstances, and finding a way to do that. Our relationships, as spoke about before are critical. Support groups are critical relationships, even if you have to mend and work really hard with family, a significant other, or a spouse. "O" is others, and I believe that reaching out to help others and support others brings us joy, and really helps us heal. "N" is for nurture. Throughout all this, it can be really hard to nurture every aspect of our child's life when we're just trying to keep them alive. I have struggled with sitting and reading books to my daughter but nurturing spiritual, physical, and emotional health in every way."G" is God. I know that a lot of special needs moms who do not have faith or are not Christian, and may be angry at God. They've been hurt in the church, and I embrace that. For us who have faith, we find our strength in depending on God, and that's where I hope is, for other moms, I love to come to my site who don't have spiritual beliefs, and I just encourage them to just be open, just be open to the idea of I could find strength in faith.
Carrie M Holt 21:46
Yeah. So I know you talked a little bit earlier about your own crisis of faith. How has your faith deepened as a result of your journey? One thing you mentioned was just being willing to collapse in the arms of God, that takes so much courage, right to trust him. If you think about real life, if you're going to collapse in the arms of someone, your husband, a spouse, a friend, or a family member, usually there's a level of trust that's there. Could you speak to that a little bit?
Kristin Faith Evans 22:21
Yeah, so my journey...I was a Christian, I was a pastor's kid my whole life. I thought, I had a really deep faith, which I did. When I began to distance myself from God, the bitterness and the anger and the doubts, and it just it was agonizing, not being able to find that answer or understand. Believing that God had not been with me, that he had abandoned me, was a big barrier. When I was willing to say, "Okay, I don't understand," and realize that God was with me. When there's not that trust, when there's that hurt, it's extremely difficult. I just realized it's either do this or just go on living in darkness and die. It was at that moment, that I felt comfort and healing, and a deeper connection with God than I have ever felt in my life. I thought, is this what faith is, not understanding, but being willing to trust, and it was just the most powerful moment in my life. My faith is deeper, and my connection with God in ways I could never have imagined has fueled this joy for life.
Carrie M Holt 23:48
I love what you said, that faith is not about understanding, but being willing to trust. I can certainly relate to that. I think one of the things for me was when I was willing to just be honest with God, about how I felt, all the grief and the sadness and the anger and like you said, the thoughts of like, wouldn't my life be easier without this burden that I'm carrying. Then you say, "Oh, wait, Lord, please (you have this whole debate in your mind with God), I don't really mean that. I'm really thinking about this. Just reading about Job, I grew up in the church too. You have this sort of Sunday School version of Job. When you actually read it, you think, wow, this is raw. This is emotional. It's angry. Yet at the end, God tells Job's friend, Eliphaz that only Job was the one who spoke rightly about him. I think that just gives us so much freedom to go to him with everything that we're feeling? What is something that you would tell yourself at the beginning of your journey? If you could go back and tell yourself one thing or two, what would you tell yourself?
Kristin Faith Evans 25:18
I would definitely tell myself. I don't know how God is with me. God is with you. You can't see it, but he's not left your side. That is the first thing. The second thing would be there's nothing wrong with you as a mom. You are doing the best that you can consider all that you're going through. I think those two things would have given me the strength and hope to push through.
Carrie M Holt 25:54
Yeah, definitely. Those are really good. As we wrap up, is there anything else that's on your heart today that you would like to share about special needs motherhood, your faith journey, or anything like that?
Kristin Faith Evans 26:14
I just want to I just want to say to the moms listening, you don't have to suffer in silence. I just encourage you to reach out, reach out to someone. If you feel so isolated and depressed, reach out to someone, even a person you don't know, well, who's another mom, a pastor, someone. If you are thinking that maybe this is more than just caregiver stress or grief, seek help. The sooner you seek mental health treatment, the better your outcome will be. I just want to encourage people who are really fighting their thoughts and their emotions to have the courage to seek help and reach out.
Carrie M Holt 27:07
Lastly, where can we find you on social media? Will you tell us a little bit about your website, I believe you have a community that moms can join, is that correct?
Kristin Faith Evans 27:16
I do. I have a Facebook community, it's pretty new. It's called Special Needs Moms Living Strong. That's the name of the group on Facebook. If you go to my website, there's a direct link to the group. My website is www.specialneedsmomsblog.com. I have a lot of free resources that you can download. I have a whole tab on mental health. I have lots of blog posts about various tips and a lot of anxiety posts, grief, and shame like I've talked about today. On Instagram, I'm @specialneedsmomsblog, and I just encourage you to go check out those free resources. I would just love to hear from you.
Carrie M Holt 28:04
I'm gonna leave the links to Kristin's website and her Instagram and all that in our show notes. She does have some amazing resources. I personally have been taking advantage of them lately, and they're incredible. You have so many on there and so many practical things. I just think that that is amazing. Thank you so much for being a guest on Take Heart today. I appreciate you being here.
Kristin Faith Evans 28:33
Thank you for having me. It's been great.
Carrie M Holt 28:52
Thank you for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful you are walking on the journey with us. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms.com. If you have any questions or comments, please follow the links, we love hearing from our listeners. Tune in next week as we hear from another special guest in ourTakehara summer interview series.