#fucking. my sibling having mental health issues and a therapy experience VERY different to mine doesn't help too

[elytrafemme]

there are some pros of having parents who are doctors but i have to say. the way that my parents particularly my mom do NOT understand how therapy works... 

[masterthespianduchovny]

I’m still processing and unpacking Ted and Rebecca’s relationships with their fathers and what I’ll say on it because it’s a lot. Not just literally, but contextually and emotionally.

And there was a brief conversation about how Rebecca’s issue isn’t as serious as Ted’s (I suppose), but as a person who has compartmentalize a lot of fucking trauma and is STILL working through it, this isn’t the trauma Olympics.

My own situations have taught me to be more emphatic, kinder, and open to people and their experiences whether or not the severity of our traumas are alike. Because you don’t make deep connections simply because you have similar traumas, you make deep connections by finding the ways you do relate, sympathizing, and being there for others even when you can’t relate.

Although Rebecca’s trauma doesn’t seem as severe as Ted’s, it’s more traumatic than some people realize. Uncovering one of their parents’ infidelity puts a child in a situation they should never be in. And I’ll unpack all of that in a later post. I cannot personally relate to that, but having read a few stories about this in the last year or so, yeah…it does a number on kids. So just because it isn’t that doesn’t mean it isn’t a major thing or less than.

Regardless, the crazy thing to me is that when Rebecca and Ted share their stories with one another, because we manifest in this household (seriously, my sister and her husband treat manifestation like a religion), does anyone think Ted will be like, “Well, your situation isn’t as fucked up as mine…”

No.

Ted’s heart will break for Rebecca not just because that’s who he is, but because he’ll get it. Her father betrayed her in a different way, but it’s still betrayal. Some will understand what I mean by betrayal and those who don’t, certain actions from a parent can result in a lot of complicated feelings in a child. Whether or not it’s logical, it feels like a betrayal to the kid and it’s valid when unpacking and examining the situation. Because it’s not always about fault, but relationships, expectations, what a parent owes a child, etc.

Using myself as an example because I often get personal when talking about very specific things, idea, relationships, etc.

Both of my parents are deceased, but I’ll focus on my mom.

She died of complications from diabetes. This wasn’t unexpected or sudden, it was accurately predicted by my older sister. I vividly remember every significant moment and conversations regardless of how they may have appeared in the moment. I remember being parked in my car at the mall and my sister flat out saying, “She has one to five years of she keeps up like this.”

She literally died over a year later.

I remember begging her the previous year to do better because she was our only living parent, and then breaking down and crying because I knew she wasn’t going to listen.

Months before she died, my other two siblings literally told me that they’d prepared themselves for her death and I should too. Although she was “fine”, we all knew better. She looked fine, but internally she wasn’t.

I remember her joking with a friend the week before she died that she’d rather die than eat beans. She was in a rehab center at the time re-learning how to walk as a result from complications of her diabetes.

At any moment she could’ve changed her situation, but she didn’t.

I was so fucking angry at her because she was supposed to be here and she could’ve been. She controlled her circumstances up until the bitter end. And I couldn’t deal with that because my dad didn’t have any control over his circumstances.

I felt angry, betrayed, helpless and on and on and on.

To make matters worse she almost died 10 years to the day of my dad who both passed away less than a month before my birthday (I also happened to be 16 when he died). :/

Of course I wish I had more time with him and when I watch Rebecca grieve and process her complicated emotions and how she internalizes that, I relate to that. Not literally, but I get what it’s like to have these complicated emotions you don’t know how to deal with. I know what it’s like to have an unresolved relationship with a parent even though it was unintentional on both our ends. Because it’s not about focusing on the differences, it’s about focusing on the similarities and finding compassion for other people. It’s realizing that her father didn’t just betray her mom, he betrayed her as well and in turn he tainted her relationship with her mom.

It’s about how his decisions impacted her and forever changed her in ways she still doesn’t realize.

And you know what, Ted will get that too. They will bond over their anger, resentment, and betrayal that they felt. They will give each other perspective and comfort each other and support each other. They will also remind each other of the good times they shared with their dads (ted already had with Rebecca) because grief, anger, loss, and all those complicated emotions are fluid things. They don’t have to be one to one to be valid or matter.

I watched this last episode and was just fine after it was over, but you know what was triggering as hell for me?

People diminishing one loss/one trauma in comparison to the other because it wasn’t that.

“It’s just not the same!”

And it doesn’t have to be.

It doesn’t.

But their pain is still valid.

You guys need to be careful how you speak about things because y’all don’t know who’s reading it, what they’ve been through, and how they internalize this shit.

People could be going through some real fucking trauma and need help, but “it’s not as serious as that so I shouldn’t reach out. There are people out there with ‘real’ problems.” Because this happens all the fucking time. Certain people do not take their issues seriously because they’re constantly told that if it isn’t perceived as some big thing, it’s not valid. Meanwhile they’re hurting on the inside and don’t realize how much and have poor mental health.

Last point, I don’t think some people realize that writers are pulling from what they know and are having long discussions about these things. It’s been noted that this writers room either has significant (personal) experience with therapy and mental health and/or they’re handling it well. It’s entirely likely that they’re also pulling from their own situations and are having honest, realistic conversations about how two people connect over different traumas.

Remember that line from wandavision “what is grief if not love preserving?” I can’t remember who the writer said that was about or if she specified at all, but she pulled that from her own experience, her own grief.

So before we try to get into trauma Olympics, we need to take a step back and get some perspective on why we don’t take “x” as seriously as “y.”

[amandadeibert]

A Love Letter to Parents At the End of The Most Difficult School Year EVER

WOW, that was really something, huh?

It’s the end of the most difficult year school for all of us: teachers, parents, students… Hell, probably even the neighbors of parents and students. I would say “at least we survived!” but this has been more than a year of illness and mental health crises… not all of us did. Some of you are mourning those loses. I am so sorry.

As my daughter celebrates her final day of Kindergarten, and I celebrate my final day of supervising hours of zooms and packets full of work, of being her mother, teacher, confidant, chef, maid, PE teacher, and playmate… I have a lot of emotions. I’m sure you do too.

It was hard for those of us who, like my family, spent the entire year in virtual school: never meeting teachers or classmates in person. Those of us who spent so much of the year trying not to worry about excessive screen time while going against our intuition to coax children to sit up and pay attention to their computers.

It was difficult for families who did hybrid and had their bits of in-person “normalcy” sporadicly and suddenly turned to quarantines every time there was an exposure so that there could never be a true routine.

It was complicated for parents navigating this with multiple children who all needed different things at the same time. I know in my daughter’s own little kindergarten class we over-heard older siblings’ music lessons, younger siblings’ infant-wails, and parents trying to deal with their work zooms while 6 year olds struggled to concentrate on learning to read.

My heart especially goes out to the parents of children who need extra attention or services, some of whom lost out on months or a year of in-person therapies. This is unfair and horrible. This has been infuriating, unfair, and horrible. You have been dealing with far more worries than you should have had to and I am so sorry.

And then there’s work… whew. As a working mother who went to work in person in full PPE, then worked from home with endless Zoom meetings while my daughter put Elsa stick-on earrings all over my face, and then who lost my job due to pandemic related situations. I know it was difficult to work and teach and parent and be a child’s only friend and entertainment.

For those of you who are essential, for those of you who work in healthcare and mental healthcare… I just, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I admire you and also know my admiration doesn’t do a fucking ounce of good to help alleviate all you’ve had to juggle and endure.

So much has fallen disproportionality on mothers. We can see it in hard data. This will have ramifications for years to come. Just as it will on our kids… in ways we don’t even fully understand yet. Just while trying to write this essay…. my daughter and our kitten have crawled into my lap. They are both here right now.

And yes, I know plenty of amazing Dads who have been struggling right there with us. My dad-friends and I have leaned on each other TREMENDOUSLY this year, so please don’t think I don’t see you out there struggling through this too.

As I look back over this past school year (and the end of the academic year before) I am feeling sad for the milestones my child didn’t get to have. The things we didn’t experience as planned. The fond farewell to her preschool of 3 years we never had. The kindergarten teacher she never met in person. The first year at an elementary school where we haven’t yet been inside the building. I have so much dread for the coming separation anxiety after more than a year of never being apart. Hers and mine. This was not how things were supposed to be. No matter how you’ve experienced the pandemic, because we’re all doing it differently… this was not what we “planned.” It’s also not something anyone else alive has ever had to deal with before.

I want to stress that again:

No parent alive has ever dealt with anything like this. No one alive has experienced anything like this as a child. Bad things? Yes. Worse thing? Yes, even. But not THIS.

So if your parents/elders are giving unhelpful “advice” about how you should/should have handled things please remember THEY HAVE NO IDEA. None. At all.

This is one area where you can laugh and laugh and be like… “YOU HAD OPEN PARKS AND SCHOOLS AND KIDS COULD GO RIDE THEIR BIKES UNRESTRICTED. YOU COULD GO SIT IN CHURCH AND THE KIDS WOULD BE IN SUNDAY SCHOOL. YOU CAN NOPE RIGHT OFF.” Love them. Love their advice, but they don’t actually know what it is like.

I hope they are offering love and support. I don’t have living parents, but my grandmother is the first to say that even as a stay at home mom whose husband was away fighting a war, she can’t imagine being unable to simply take her kids to school or to run errands, or to let them play with other children. Her situation was very difficult and complicated. I don’t have it worse. Not at all. It’s just that this school year has been one hell of a weird one.

There have been bright spots. I loved getting to watch and experience my daughter learning in real time. Seeing the day-to-day progress and truly knowing what is going on in her classes. Again, that isn’t the experience for parents who have children unable to access their child’s IEP help in the way they should.

I love the extra time we’ve gotten together as a family. The movie nights outside and snuggles and lack of rushing around from place to place. I enjoy as an Angeleno not being stuck in traffic for hours. Not everyone has been able to work from home like my wife and I have mostly been able to do for much of this and I am grateful for that too.

My hope is that when this is truly over, when we get back to whatever new life looks like in the next school year, that some of the good will stay. That I will be more involved in our child’s education than maybe I would have been before because I know what it looks like. That we will spend more time as a family together just us. That I won’t say “yes” to things out of obligation that don’t add value to our lives. That we won’t be too busy.That’s probably naive, but we can sure try.

I hope that you have some bright spots to look back on from this past school year. I hope you can share them with your children and they can share theirs with you. Whatever you had to do to get through this, I am so outrageously proud of you. I am proud of me too. And wow, our kids. They’ve been through some shit. I’m super proud of them.

Please, please take some time to celebrate what you have managed to get through. I got cupcakes for the kiddo and some cocktails for grownups. Please do whatever version of that sparks some happiness.

PUNT THAT SCHOOL-ISSUED LAPTOP INTO THE SUN.

I mean, yeah okay, we’ll all responsibly return it fully charged and be so grateful to the school system that we didn’t have to use Mommy’s work laptop for it but you know… metaphorically it’s that scene from Office Space. (Your kids wouldn’t get this joke but this isn’t for them. JUST LIKE THE COCKTAIL/CHOCOLATE/BUBBLEBATH/WHATEVER YOU ARE GONNA DO TO CELEBRATE YOU )

Anyway, you are amazing. Maybe you don’t feel like many people noticed. I see you. I’m toasting you from this weird half-teacher’s lounge we share.

If you’d like to share some of your brightest spots, or most amazing, brilliant parent hacks from all this madness, I would love to read about it in the comments. We’ve got to hold onto the good.