a long distance sprint

Notice that I haven't been around much?

Yeah. Well.

It's because I've been going non-stop, literally, in circles (around our apartment doing the NR therapy).

I believe in NR (Neurological Reorganization). I do. I believe it can work miracles, and I believe that at the minimum, components of it have worked wonders in our family.

However.

At this point, any benefits of the therapy are being negated by my sheer exhaustion.

What our days were looking like was .....

"Patterns" before school. School. After school was more patterns (I believe I explained these in an earlier post somewhere), and a program that took, at the very least, 35 to 40 minutes to complete, per child. Lots of regular parenting mingles in with the therapy.... for instance a great big bear hug "counts" as a "firm compression" which is in the sensory activity column of the program..... lightly touching your child's face when you're telling them how cute they are "counts" as "light touch" in the sensory activity column....... twirling and spinning and jumping all around? Well, those are checked off as "vestibulars"........

So..... what ONCE was a bear hug in our family, became a firm compression..... and so on and so forth....... parenting became checking off the blocks of therapy requirements.

It became a job.

I became a therapist.

I was tired.

Frustrated.

Resentful.

I am just now entering the feelings of motherhood.... love, joy, thinking my kids are cute....wondering how their day is going while they are in school....staring at them while they sleep ..... but, am hardly "there"..... because parenting without reciprocal love is a bit..... different.

It's hard. (Yes. I know. PARENTING is hard.) This? Is harder. If you don't believe me I will happily let you take care of and live with my children for a week.

I'm not complaining.

Quite the opposite.

I'm relieved. I'm encouraged. I'm moving forward.

I continue to be rewarded for my openness about our family...... just recently two dear friends here (A and A) helped me to come up with a great plan. This new plan is a perfect transition through our move and into our new therapy support (whatever that will look like) in NC.

God continues to carry me through this journey, not making it easy, but, making it possible. He puts people in my life who are not only smart and funny, but, who are honest and nonjudgmental.

Lest you think I'm all "let go and let God" my crazy seeps out in all kinds of ways...... for example? As we prep for our international move I am boxing, binning, purging, organizing, stacking and Ziplock bagging everything we own.

Even though the packers will do all of that.

Hey. A girl's gotta control what a girl's gotta control.

xo
K.