Welcome to Take Heart, where our goal is to give you hope, offer insight and encouragement, so you can flourish in your journey as a Special Needs Mom. Each week Sara, Amy, and Carrie will explore a theme, share inspiring stories, practical tips, and encouragement you can use in your journey. Using our combined experience of over 30 years of parenting children with special needs. Our prayer is that you Take Heart, have the courage you need to embrace each day. Be sure to check out our free download on our website entitled “Tips For Finding Peace, Hope, and Gratefulness in the Hard Places of Being a Special Needs Mom.” You can find it at our website at takeheartspecialmoms.com. Thank you for being here today.
Welcome, I’m so glad you are here. I am Amy Brown and this month we are talking about connection. Often at the beginning of a new year we try to make changes that help us feel healthier. We get rid of bad habits and add new practices. Personally there are a few things that are essential for me to feel my best. Number one, I’m a girl that needs my sleep. I was always the first kid asleep at a slumber party, if I even went to them because I hated to stay up late. Even today if I stay up too late, I have a sore throat the next morning. Also as sad I am about this, I need to limit sugar; it gives me a headache. Morning quiet is essential for me. I am an introvert and without quiet, I am exhausted. I know these things about myself and when I ignore what my body clearly needs, I regret it. How about you? Did you make goals to have healthier habits this year? Maybe you're drinking more water or sleeping more or starting to exercise. What about connection? Did you even think to consider connection as a healthy habit? Did you know that connection strengthens our immune system, lengthens our lives, and lowers our risk of anxiety and depression? Our lives are so busy and even though we long for connection, we don't even make time for it. We don't even consider connection when making changes. It seems too much in a busy life juggling the needs of our special needs children, the rest of her children, and our family. Here's what I know to be true. We need connection. We are made for it. We long to be seen and heard, understood. In an article in Psychology Today, which I will link in the show notes, Brene Brown says this, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irresistible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, spiritually wired to love, to be loved and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as we are meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others, and we get sick. We are not meant to go it alone. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 4:9-11 (NIV).
“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor; If either one of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls down and has no one to help them up. Also if two lay down together, they will keep warm. How can one keep warm alone? One may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”
I know this to be true. I know that I need connection just like I know I need sleep and quiet and to lay off the brownies.
Often I have this idea: I think I can go it alone. I allow my limiting beliefs to stop me from reaching out for the connection I so desperately need. Let me give you an example. Several years ago, I walked into a pregnancy aerobics class. I was pregnant with my first baby, and I met my friend Jen. She was also pregnant with her first baby, and we started talking. That conversation has been going on for the last twenty-nine years. Jen is one of my dearest friends. We’ve raised kids together. We laughed so hard until we cried. We vacation together. We have ten kids between us. We've discussed potty training, school choices, dating, every parent decision under the sun, we've talked about. She wiped tears of my face in a yucky gas station bathroom when I thought I was having a miscarriage. She drove from Ohio to Michigan to clean my house and cook for me when my dad died suddenly. I drove those same miles the other way to help her recover from surgery and to clean out her pantry, which is always a disaster. I helped her get through her daughter's wedding, and a year later she helped me get through my son's wedding. We have done life together. There was a time in my life when I shut her out. Why would I shut out such a great friend? Honestly, I was overwhelmed with the needs of our family. I was trying to help our daughter in dealing with the daily struggles that come when you have a child with reactive attachment disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome. I was trying to keep the rest of the family afloat and just survive. I believed a story about myself that was untrue. I thought I was failing as a mom and that no one could possibly understand my life. I assumed everybody was judging me. These limiting beliefs caused me to push away from someone who loves me dearly. It didn't happen all at once. At first when I would tell Jen my struggles, she was always quick to give me advice and a solution. As special needs moms, we've all been there. Have you tried fish oil? How about this? Have you tried this? This well intentioned advice was not what I needed. I needed someone to support me, but instead of telling her that, being clear, and saying, “Look, I don't want solutions,” I made the assumption that she did not understand, and I just told her less. I was not clear with what I needed. As we struggled to parent a child with reactive attachment disorder and as the behavior continued to escalate, we made the difficult decision to place her in a residential treatment center. This was one of the hardest decisions of my life. I will never forget the day we made this decision. The day before we had been at yet another psychiatrist who could not give us the help we needed. Let me say here, moms of kids with mental health issues and invisible disabilities, I understand the frustration of looking desperately for help and not being able to find help and feeling so overwhelmed and isolated. I get that. The morning we made the decision, I was sitting on the back porch and my husband came out to join me. I said these words, “either she has to leave, or I need to take the other kids to leave. Home is not safe anymore, and we are not helping her.” After many tears, we started the process of finding a place for her to go.
On one of the hardest days of my life, at a time when I needed friends, I had no one to talk to. Not because they had shut me out, I had shut my friends out, especially my friend, Jen. My dear friend who had never shown me anything but love and kindness. But lies were running in my head and combined with my “mom guilt”, I just assumed she would judge me. I let lies and limiting beliefs keep me from what I needed most, which was connection. I allowed these limiting beliefs to blind me to this truth: Jen was for the well-being of my entire family. Most of all, she was in my corner. How have I allowed myself to doubt this? Parenting a special needs child can be very isolating. I don't personally know anyone who understood this unique road we were walking, and honestly I didn't understand it half the time. So I don't know why I expected other people to. I didn’t talk about it. Few people walk the same path which makes it hard for us to share our worries and our feelings. We’re afraid of being misunderstood, so we isolate ourselves even more. You know what? When I finally told Jen, she showed me love. Of course she did. Duh! She loves me. Whenever I think back to that time, I'm just mad at myself that I didn't understand this sooner.
After that day, though, I started to breathe, and I allowed myself to open up to people in my life. Here's the thing, when we are full of our own preconceived ideas, limiting beliefs, and fears, they become like a kind of a shield, an armor, and connection has a hard time getting through. Have you made limited beliefs an armor? Let me ask you a question. What limiting beliefs do you have about connection?
How about this?
- They won't get it. Well, how do you know if you don't tell them.
- They don't have the same kind of special needs kid I have. Okay, what I would say to that is Sara, Carrie, and I are dear friends, and our kids have vastly different special needs, but as special needs moms, we share a connection.
- They’re too busy. How do you know? Have you asked?
- No one reaches out to me. Don't wait for an invitation. I will tell you that almost every connection I've made in my life for the most part, besides Jen, who's really extroverted, I've been the one that's reached out. So don't wait for an invitation.
- How about I don't have time? Okay, well you eat and sleep don't you? You can make the time for connection.
It’s not really about the logistics, it’s about the relationships, so let's get practical. Start with this question.
- Where do I need connection in my life? Is it friends? God? Maybe you need to connect with your non special needs child, or your spouse? Maybe you need to connect with yourself?
- Make a list. Once you identify where you need connection, ask yourself: who do I need to reach out to? Maybe there's a mom in a Facebook group, maybe you need to speak to a pastor or spiritual director, maybe a college friend or a neighbor or your spouse.
- Take it to God. He cares so much about you. He made you to need connection, ask him to help you with this.
- Reach out. Don't let the armor of limiting beliefs stop you from this. Stop, think outside the box on ways you can reach out to people.
- Be clear. This is really important. Clear is kind. What do you want this connection to look like? For me, for years I was tired of being the train wreck at the table. Other people would talk about what was going on in their lives, and they would all turn to me, it would be this big long dramatic recounting of all the things that had happened. I got tired of that. I didn't always want to talk about my special needs child. So, what do you need? Do you need to talk about your child, and if so, tell your friends you need that support. Do you just need someone to listen? Do you need to just laugh and not even think about what's going on in your life? Be really clear about what you need.
- Keep trying. It may not work out, but don't give up. Don't give up on the connection you need.
One last thing, maybe right now you're feeling isolated and overwhelmed by your life. Maybe you think no one else will understand, but please know this: you are not alone. Find the connection you need, talk to a friend, and tell her about what you need, and be clear. Reaching out to a trusted friend will help you breathe, and give you the strength to go on. We are not meant to go meant to walk this road alone. We need each other.
I would like to end today with a blessing from the book Bless The Space Between Us by John O’Donohue, and this is my prayer for you. It's a prayer for friendship.
“May you be blessed with good friends,
And learn to be a good friend to yourself,
Journeying to that place in your soul where
There is love, warmth, and feeling.
May this change you.
May it transfigure what is negative, distant,
Or cold within your heart.
May you be brought into real passion, kindness,
And belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them, be there for them
And receive all the challenges, truth, and light you need.
Thank you for joining us this week on Take Heart. If you are loving our podcast, could you give us a favor and leave a review on whatever platform you're using to listen. You can follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. If you have any questions or comments or would like to share your story with us, follow the links in our show notes. We would love to hear from you. Listen in next Tuesday as Carrie shares on the theme for this month, which is connection.