September 10, 2019

My ADHD brain

Picture it. You have to clean the house, get the kids ready for school, plan a trip to the store, write a blog post, finish the paperwork piled on your desk, send a few emails, finish some things that will allow you to volunteer... This is the list you are working with today, but the list is just sort of all up in your brain somewhere, floating about. Imagine it like a slideshow, pictures fade in (oh, you think, yes. I need to do that!) You immediately head upstairs to grab the swimsuit from your kids room (he has swimming today and you need his suit in his backpack — that was the first picture in the slideshow).  With the swimsuit in your hands you look around you, the room is a mess, the next slide fades in and it's a shot of the laundry room. Swimsuit in hand you grab the hamper and fill it with the dirty clothes scattered at your feet. You take the basket and suit downstairs and start a load of laundry, the dog starts barking and the slideshow continues and you know the dog needs to go out. As you stand in the kitchen you stare out at the garden and realize you need to water it so while the dog is out doing his thing you go out and start to water the plants you have managed (miraculously) to keep alive all summer. The kids come out, they have their bags and scooters and with a quick (bye Mum) they are off and the day is spread before you. Something is niggling at you, the jumble of stuff in your brain is yelling at you but you can't understand what it's saying, you keep watering the space and then your phone rings. It's your friend and you start to chat for a few minutes making coffee plans for later in the week. (you realize that at some point you put your coffee down and yet you can't remember where so you go inside and pour another one) as you talk you move into the house and find yourself staring at the kitchen, it looks like a bomb has gone off and there were no survivors. As you chat you start to tidy up; the slideshow starts up again and you see the image of the dinner you have to make, and the items that you need to pop over the store for. You hang up with your friend and grab your keys and purse. You get to the store and you buy a few items (plus a couple of things you didn't plan on) and then head back home feeling very accomplished. You arrive home and put the food away when the phone pings an email alert and you remember the emails you needed to respond too. You deal with it, you get a text in the process and read it, you think of the response but you don't actually respond yet, that's for later. Next slide on the list in the paperwork, you look at the pile but it's tall, you decide that should be saved for later and instead you head back out to get the volunteer stuff sorted instead. You actually do it this time (it's amazing how long it has taken you to complete this stupid easy task but it was so overwhelming - or it seemed to be... embarrassing really). You come back home and walk into the living room, gathering toys swords and cars and dirty underwear as you walk which makes you remember that the laundry needs to be switched; you decide that if you are switching the load you should make sure all the laundry gets done; so you go room by room gathering dirty clothes and putting them in the basket, but then you get to your room and you see the bed isn't made, and the bathroom is messy so you put the basket down  and start to tidy the bathroom. There are two dirty glasses in the bathroom so you pick them up and go downstairs to put them in the sink. The phone rings, it's your kid, he doesn't have his swimsuit (he blames you even though it's clearly HIS freaking responsibility) and still another picture forms in your brain of the swimsuit being placed on top of the washing machine this morning while you were loading it with dirty clothes, *the kids dirty clothes. You go downstairs, grab the suit and make sure to make a mental note to switch loads when you get home from the bathing suit drop off (after getting the laundry from upstairs). It goes on like this, room to room, place to place, email to email... then it is bedtime and you are so totally worn out. You walk into your room ready to flop on the bed and pass-out, the bed, it is still a mess and the dirty laundry is all piled in a basket beside your bed, you sit down and know that it means you didn't actually ever switch that load and the clothes are sitting wet in the machine, growing mold and stink with every breath you take but being simply too tired to walk down the four flights of stairs to it, so you take a mental picture of the laundry for your slideshow tomorrow. Then you get a text, it's a question, from the person that texted earlier, the same question, the one that you responded too (or, responded in your brain at least). You put your head on the pillow and go through the slideshow from the day and realize that the only things that actually got accomplished was the dinner, and the bathing suit getting to its location in kids bag. You want to laugh but you know that if you do it will turn into that hysterical laughter that makes people wonder if you are losing your mind, and the truth is you wonder this yourself.  (Also, I still didn't respond to that text) 

I have ADHD and this is my brain. I do a lot of things, they just don't get finished and if they are large, or time-consuming, or even mildly overwhelming and unknown they go on the 'later' list. I have to admit that the later list is sometimes the never list. ( I once found my taxes — which were admittedly a little difficult one year had become so overwhelming that it went on the later list.) When I married Tim I had to make the embarrassing admission that I hadn't done taxes in about 6 years because what started as 'a little difficult' quickly became so HUGE and overwhelming that it somehow landed on the never list. - I should say here that this 'never list' is never far from the reaches of our brains, the large black cloud of anxiety and stress knowing that it only ever grows more and more complicated with each day that it remains on that list). I didn't know I had ADHD, I thought it was normal and that everyone had the slideshow that was bent on distracting them and keeping them from accomplishing anything... but yeah, Tim proved to me that not everyone is like that. I then put it down to my artistic side, my creative brain ( I wish I could add the laughing emoticon here). 

One day I was talking to a few Moms about their kids and we ended up on the topic of ADHD and we started to discuss some of the symptoms and as I listened I found myself saying 'that is so me, I totally do that'... on and on through the entire list. I talked to the doctor, she ran tests and bam! I have ADHD! I am over 40 and just in the last year finding out that I have this. I mourned at first (not joking, I actually found myself in mourning because I realized that, had I known sooner things may have been very different for me). After I grieved for an inappropriate amount of time I quit the pity party and started to source out ways to help myself. When that happened, (lists on paper rather than images in my brain for example). I started to get things finished. I started to chunk up overwhelming things, anything unknown I would set aside 10 minutes to do, and I found that after 10 minutes it was either done or very close. Texts and emails remain 'unread' until have time to sit and actually physically respond... (Im still not fantastic at this but Im trying).  I started taking meds to help and I have finished a book, it's being published. I have a new direction for the photography business which is working and producing, and more, I have time at the end of the day to sit and feel better about how the day went. Instead of just always feeling like I never accomplish anything I am able to scratch things off my list and know that things got finished today. That is big, feeling like you have finished something. I didn't realize how important accomplishment was, how vital to emotional health it is to feel like you did something today, even if it was only a small thing. 

This is a work in progress, I am learning new tricks and I have many unsuccessful days but in the name of being naked and unashamed, in an aim to feel known I share this with you because it's not something I need to hide anymore. I have ADHD and I am totally okay with it. There are a LOT of us out there, you know us, you live with us, you get annoyed by us and yet you love us and our quirky (if not seriously annoying) ways. We are here, in your life and we are not weird, we just can't order our thoughts as well as you, we need different strategies. We are smart, we are creative, we are fun and spontaneous and sometimes it might mean you need to remind us a thousand times that we need to go get our license renewed or switch the loads. You might need to move the lost coffee in the morning back to the kitchen (I will probably never find it in the closet where I was trying to find the kids bathing-suit for school), while you are at it, maybe pop it in the microwave for me, but make sure to tell me or I won't find it there either). If you see us struggling with something that seems too big, or if we look overwhelmed by something, come sit beside us and encourage us, don't do it for us but maybe point out a good starting point and let us take it from there.  

If you are like me, enjoy it. We are gifted in other ways and we can help each other find strategies that work for us, if you are not like me but love someone like me, then maybe this will help you understand things a little differently.  Either way, have a happy day. (I am running out to finish a few things but first I really do need to find that coffee and switch that load of laundry)

L


September 5, 2019

Dawn



I was walking through the Riverdale farm yesterday after the kids went to school, I love going there. It is so close and I have some great memories of taking the boys when they are little. I was even there with Joshua while pregnant with Kaleb. Yesterday, as I walked those memories washed over me like a nice spring breeze. I now officially have far more good memories of their little years than I do bad memories and as I watched the animals yesterday that truth seemed new to me. I am so used to holding onto the bad things and fighting any other feelings because if I allow feeling; even happiness then it might invoke the other feelings. The feelings that l have hidden for good reason for a long time.  If I let myself remember the good times it seems that inevitably the ugly memories surface; so this process of going for a simple walk and allowing the memories to come is new for me, or at least it has been so long that it seems new.

I remember the time that we were there with Joshua when Kaleb was still kicking away inside my belly; it had been shortly after a 'bad ECHO day' and we were facing some scary unknowns. I walked around the farm trying to show Josh a good time, pointing to the sheep and ducks and cows but my heart hadn't been in it.  Yesterday I passed the exact spot where I had a picture of Joshua and I sitting looking at the sheep and I remembered how he had placed a hand on my knee and stared at the sheep with deep concentration and giggled when his nose came close to the fence and he sniffed at us. I remembered how hard he tried to say baa (despite being well past the age that it should have been hard) and I remember how he smiled at me when he finally managed it. Then I walked over the where the ducks were and I remember how Tim had lifted him up on his shoulders so that he could see past the "big fence" to the pond beyond and watch the ducks and geese swimming around in circles. I remember how big his smile was, how wonderful it looked to see him enjoying being so high off the ground and I remember the wonder I felt knowing that this little person was my son.

Walking around the farm was different yesterday, I didn't feel the normal fog surrounding me,  it no longer felt like I was walking through the sludge that had only ever served to slow me down, my shoulders have lost some of the tightness that only stress can bring.

I walked, I took pictures and I took the time to enjoy the little things like the little pigs having their morning scratch and breakfast, but, more than that,  I allowed myself the freedom of remembering the enjoyable moments without fear of the wounds being re-opened. I left the farm and walked home feeling at peace for the first time in a very long time.

I know that I will have ugly days as I continue this journey to wholeness that I am on but I am starting to understand that I am not in a dark tunnel as I had thought; it's just been nighttime and it may possibly be that it's now dawn and the sunrise is just on the horizon.

September 3, 2019

Naked and unashamed

On a journey and totally okay with it

Time moves at a faster pace the older you get, I am convinced of that more and more each day. I walked the boys to school this morning and one is creeping precariously close to being as tall as me, the other isn't far behind. The annual group photo had more kids in it this year and each one looks so much older to me today for some reason. They greet me with a maturity that was missing when I said goodbye to them in the spring, or at least that is how it feels. Walking home, alone, with one kid in grade 5 and the other in grade 6 and I have to admit I feel like all of a sudden I am running in a race and everyone is getting ahead of me and I'm waving my arms saying 'wait!! Slow down!'.  They don't of course, they are all laughing and enjoying the feeling of being young and carefree, and if they are anything like me they are taking it all for granted, wishing it away every time they wish they were older.

The last time I wrote I wrote about how I devastated my lilac tree with a severe (and needed pruning) and how I God was about to prune my own life just as harshly. It has not been a fun few years, sorting through painful memories and forcing myself to feel things that I had managed to avoid was a process that sometimes felt worse than the initial trauma itself. I committed to myself that I would see it through, and sometimes that is the only reason that I stayed the course.

Healing sucks! It's up and down and tears and laughter and resentment and pain and every other messy human emotion, and it doesn't happen quickly. God cut that first branch and it was a deep guttural pain, where I had been expecting a short-lived sting. Every branch felt that way, and when the pruning ended (if it has fully ended) I felt raw and bare and exposed; but a funny thing happened in that exposure, in that nakedness and rawness. I met other raw and naked people, I saw their pain and they saw mine and it was beautiful and real and intimate. I was not alone. They were not alone. Tears were no longer something I was afraid, or ashamed of, they were cleansing water that soothed and purified that washed the path ways that allowed to pain to be released, the fears, the anxiety. I became aware of the joy in the nakedness and I started to take steps to put myself out there, to be seen, all of me, not a mask. Me. Laurie. The wife, the Mum, the woman. I started to look in the mirror and seek out who I was for real, behind the pain, behind the smile, behind the masks and she's still there, I see her, I hear her, she gets louder every day and as the seasons change the branches are now growing up and out, fuller and more beautiful every day. That girl that I used to be; before I let the weight of life drag me under, before I told her to shut up and hide, she's there, showly and steadily she's forgiving, she's healing and we are becoming one again. Learning to love ourself again.

I have not written here for many reasons. The main reason is that this past few years I have spent most of my time writing a book (gasp!! This was BIG).... and this summer that book was placed as the first short-listed (essentially making it second place overall). It came with a publishing agreement and sometime this spring you will be able to buy it and (this is the really scary part)... you will see me, the whole of me, the naked me who went on a journey through parenting a very sick kid and found myself sitting in the shadow of the cross.  So, that's it, that is where I was and what I was doing and now that I am finished (sort of) I am back and in much need of some good old blogging!

Please do feel free to come back... I commit to being more on top of things now that the book is finished. Also, check back here for more details as they emerge about the book and the publishing date and launch party details (must have a party!).

Thank you for your faithfulness, Im always surprised to see my stats and know that people are still reading and interested despite my silence.