I have a feeling this is going to be short. I’ve wanted so badly to come on here and write the past few days, but things just seemed to keep it from happening. It’s been a strange week- tons of emotions, both positive and negative, over both my situation and my children’s. I’m really proud of both my kids. So much has changed in their lives and still is. And still will. They are handling it about as well as could be expected. Last week it was my son who needed to be held as he shared that he wasn’t thrilled with his new situation. This week it was my daughter who needed to come sit in my lap as she told me the friends she thought she was making at school weren’t really her friends anymore, and that she gets carsick on the hour’s drive to and from the new city and school to the old one. She was confused because she has taken hours longer trips without feeling sick. I imagine it has more to do with where she is going and why than about the car ride itself. It is just so hard to see the effects it is all having on them. As we said goodbye to Calvin’s wonderful Tae Kwon Do instructors and I thanked them for all they had done for him, I cried, his surrogate grandmother cried, and one of the owners had to wheel away (in a wheelchair) so she didn’t cry too. That place has been invaluable to me because of what it has done for him. Not only has he learned to stay committed to his chosen extra-curricular activity, but he has also come away with more confidence, more compassion, more understanding of how to be a good person in our difficult world, because of his most wonderful teachers. We have found a place for him that seems like it will be a second best. I just can’t imagine it will ever come close to what he’s known.

In my own news, Saturday night my house finally went on the market, multiple showings were scheduled for Sunday, and first thing an offer had already come in $10,000 over the list price. I initially felt overwhelming excitement. And then the other emotions hit. I’m not going to go in to them now. For tonight I need to just let this post be about facts and positives. I can give you the rest of it another time.

Remember the podcast called Mayim Biyalik’s Breakdown I mentioned probably a year ago? You probably don’t. Well, it’s fabulous. Back then I talked about the maybe more than 10 times I had listened to her interview with Glennon Doyle. I have continued to listen off and on but none of the episodes have really hit me like that one did. Until the last two. I have also listened to each of them I think 4 times already. One guy wrote the book The Buddha and the Badass, and the other The Weight of Air, both of which I now have on audiobook. I’ll go into both of them more in another post too. I guess this is a teaser post, haha.

Lastly, I had fabulous sessions with both my therapist and my psychiatrist today. My therapist is going to help me with understanding social norms and relationships and examine why I have the attachment issues that I seem to have. I’m also hopeful that I will begin an eating disorder program soon (I had an intake about a week ago). While I am proud of the success I’ve had at overcoming the disordered eating piece on my own, and with the self-reflection I’ve done on my relationships along with the effort I’ve put into making sure I don’t make mistakes in that area again, I have always felt that those were the two biggest pieces that were holding me back from really loving myself. I do love myself. I am still glad to be able to say that, even weeks later. This is by far the longest I have ever felt that for. But I also am not going to pretend that I think I’ve done enough to not need anymore help at all in those areas. But just the idea that I may be able to improve on those things, makes me feel so hopeful for my future. My therapy (for 15 years) has been focused on my everyday life/struggles. And that stuff is important, for sure, but it never got to the root of the problem. 5 years ago, maybe I was having a hard time with my relationship with my husband and my in-laws because we were all living together, so my therapy focused on how to get through that, but the connection was never made that I didn’t have any friends in high school, that I had to move out of my apartment with a roommate to be by myself in undergrad, that I threw temper tantrums even as a pre-teen because I didn’t know how to appropriately speak what I was feeling and needing, that I had, for years, felt my husband was going to leave me if I gained even an extra pound. All of those things, and many more, speak to needing major help in the relationship/attachment/social area, and yet they were only ever looked at in pieces, while each was actively happening. Why did no single therapist think to find a common theme in the struggles I had had for so many years? Why is it not standard practice to try to figure out what keeps recurring for a patient so that that can be addressed? I could give a similar example around eating (or not) and my body image and self-esteem. So now, finally, after 15 years of not addressing what feel to me to be the two things that have the biggest impact on my feelings of self-worth (usually self-hatred), the mere idea that I may get some answers and solutions and professional help and correct treatment make me so hopeful for the positive changes I will see. It isn’t just about changing those two things. Obviously I want to eat well and not obsess over my weight or how others will perceive how I look. Obviously I want to have healthy, normal relationships that I feel comfortable in and not worried that the other party will inevitably leave my life someday, pushing them so far and hard until that fear becomes reality. Those things are super important. But I’m also excited for the impacts to other areas of my life that working on those things will bring about. I don’t even know what parts of my life will change as a result. This feels like it’s what I didn’t know I had been waiting for since I first got that depression diagnosis 15 years ago. I sure do wish it had happened sooner, but better now than another 15 years from now.

So, more on the suicide or heroine as the only two options podcast, more on the only 5 steps you’ll ever need podcast, more on my feelings and my kids’ stuff and more details of my session coming your way in the next day or so. Now I’m headed to bed!