Process this....

I'm sitting here staring at the screen tonight in an interesting quandary. I have set aside Sunday night for blogging for myself. I spend many other days and nights blogging for others, but that is not the case on Sunday nights. It is not often I am without an anecdote or thoughtful insight, but tonight I seem to be without either. It could be exhaustion, or it could be the pressure that my own commitment to blogging on an enforced schedule that has me looking at the keyboard like a deer in the headlights.

Don't get me wrong, I love to write. It's a passion as yet uncompromised by any other potential competitor. I love to read,too, but mostly because it fuels the visual imagery that feeds my writing mind. I love to learn about new philosophies and reading opens up the dimensions beyond what I know as it expands my ability to comprehend new evolving thought. This gives me more to write about because it adds a whole new level of information to my limited understanding of the world as I have experienced it.

Writing about process throws a wind in my sails I never really knew before as a writer who just told stories. Years of blogging has helped me to see that the process is really much more important than the outcome. So, this little post has become about the process of setting an expectation for myself to blog on Sunday nights, and finding I am too tired to do much else other than discuss the process of figuring out that for this night, just this night, I have nothing to say...but much to process.

It's like riding a bike.....

This weekend the boys went on a camping trip and the girls were left to fen for themselves. We baked and we shopped, we raked and we cooked. We read and we watched movies. And when all that was said and done and the temperature finally went above 47 degrees, we donned our coats and went outside and we played.

Earlier this summer Ellie expressed interest in wanting us to take her training wheels off her bike, so we obliged. Then, after a month of ignoring it because of the fear of trying it, we also took her pedals off at the suggestion of an internet post. She tried it a couple of times though just for minutes and pretty unsuccessfully for the rest of the summer.

She was pretty envious of a friend down the street who learned this summer though and so when Fall arrived she attempted to try again. This time she begged us to put the pedals back on, so again we obliged. I had watched her struggle as Craig ran up and down the driveway with her but to no avail. It was too much overstimulation for success.

This weekend, however, at a loss for much else to do once we had cooked everything uncooked in the house, read every book in sight, and basically played most board games we owned, I attempted to teach her.

With Ellie, one has to be firm, otherwise her fear of the unknown will overwhelm her senses and she will start shaking and sputtering like an old Ford. So, as firmly as I could, I fed her instructions that were so matter of fact that she couldn't NOT follow them. This same instruction on Tali would have probably left her in tears, but Ellie loves the structure and the innate understanding that because the instructions are firm, they must be logical.

The pedal on the right had to be even with Ariel's face. Her left foot had to be steady on the ground behind the other pedal. She had to be level on the handlebars and she had to look up. In creating all the criteria for merely standing there I was almost overwhelmed by the number of proprioceptive and neurological connections it took to ride a bike. I mean, have you ever thought about it? I hadn't....I mean, you just get on it and pedal...you know...it's like, ridin' a bike!

So, one hour in and she was feeling so much more confident. Mostly because as I was holding her shirt and as she was pedaling I was feeding her brain with, Ellie, say this to me,"Look Mama, I'm doin' it! I'm doin' it! I'm doin' it! I can do it! I can do it!" So...yesterday she was merely repeating after me as I fed her brain with the positive feedback she needed to grow enough confidence to try again today.

She couldn't wait to try again as soon as coming home from Sunday school today. At first the same struggles reappeared from yesterday...that reminded me, that perhaps her brain wasn't going to be able to process all this stuff. That the legs couldn't pedal hard while the arms were trying to keep the handlebars level, and the eyes needed to keep watch on where to go. Today, though, after 10 minutes and the presence of a wide audience of her brother, sister and father, she did it! She rode around the cul de sac 3 times with no help and the whole time, she beamed while yelling at the top of her lungs, "LOOK MAMA, I'M DOIN' IT! I CAN DO IT! I'M DOIN' IT!" It was a glorious, unparalleled success!

In so many ways, on so many days this child struggles with activities and expectations another child her age unaffected by FAS could do with so much more ease. Today, she beat those odds! I can't help but hope that the rest of her struggles could be overcome with the right, firm instruction and a little grace from God. Wouldn't it just be amazing? Almost like, ridin' a bike!

Half Way to the End Zone

I can honestly say I'm glad to have October half over. Ellie has had a notably tough time, yet again this year, having punctuated it tonight by a tumultuous tantrum where she screamed incessantly that she didn't love us and wriggled and writhed all over the floor like a snake shedding her skin. The trigger? Tali turned the TV set off while the credits were rolling on the last 2 minutes of My Little Pony.

Last week, two days after injuring two teachers and a day after getting lost at school for 10 minutes, she received her outplacement to a therapeutic school setting. The weeks in general have been marred with tantrumming and while in school she needed restraint and the team, though truly admirable, held in as long as they could. No lawyers,advocates, nuttin - just a clear cut case of needing to find a therapeutic setting for her.

The outplacement meeting was two hours, no adversaries, in fact, tears from many in the room upon the unanimous decision to transfer her. That evening, last Wednesday, we explained it to her - which was difficult because she hadn't been admitting any of it to us. She said,"mama, I just wanted you to be happy, so I didn't tell you how much I hated school."

It's hard not knowing if the therapeutic setting will be any better- I pray it will....she says school is just NO FUN. I told her it isn't always fun, but it is always GREAT because the world is filled with things to learn and learning is GREAT. sigh. I have another friend who lived this same story just 14 or so years ago. The therapeutic setting worked in some ways but in many ways, it was the same ol' same ol' til even now...

In some ways this outplacement is great, as it's really what we have known for years would be best for her. It's hard because we know that eventually only a residential setting will address her most difficult emotional and behavioral impulses and although it's very hard to function as a family the way things are, functioning as the family that is only together on "visiting day" is unnerving and I verge on heartbreak thinking about it.

For now, though, we're halfway through her hardest month of the year and while it's been a tough one, we haven't been tempted to consider hospitalization. I guess as the years pass, we get stronger and tougher skinned...which wasn't a goal, but is certainly welcomed if it helps us to manage her here at home.

Special School for our Special Ellie

Finding a place
To learn to put fear behind
To run and to play
A childhood to find

It’s October again
And Ellie’s head does spin
One moment a rugged tantrum
The next a childlike grin

The cycles are unnerving
To adults of all kinds
From teachers and parents
To children of sound minds

She is a spinning top
She is an engine with no fuel
She is a raging autumn sky
Bipolarity is cruel

For even a great school team
She was too much
Too much liability
Too hot to touch

Today they turned her over
To a different school and team
Her teachers shed tears
They, for her, had a dream

An education, least restricted
In a setting with fans and friends
And now they see only her sweet face
As her experience there ends

Life with our Ellie has pretty much been
A series of starts and stops with living in between
I pray this small girl, our Ellie of frail proportion and pale skin
Finds joy in the new school as yet unseen

She stares blankly at us as we explain
How all of us deeply want to see her soar
To enjoy the love of learning
To grow in school and want more

Drowning in oceans of blankets on her bed
I tucked her ever so tightly tonight
And as I blessed her complicated head
I realized, how she is tested with all of God's might.

She seems to pass His tests though
While she struggles with so many others
She runs always from the dark
Towards visions of distant colors.

There, she finds that place
Where she learns to put fear behind
There she runs and plays
It is there her childhood she will find.

Energetic Healing

It’s been about a year since I was introduced to the healing powers of magnets for their neurocalming effects on our now nearly 7 year old daughter with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder. After 3 years of medicating her with necessary sleeping pills nightly, she was weaned off the meds entirely in under 5 days when we began to use a magnetic mattress pad, blanket, and pillow. I became a mouthpiece for how amazing this technology was. I spoke with scientists and multiple experts, and got a certain feeling for how it really worked. At first it felt like voo doo, as anything does before it is fully understood… but as time passed I found my interest in it was fueling a whole new interest in energy healing on a grander scale. This opened up a whole new world to me that I am only just beginning to get my bearings in.

Yesterday I was formally attuned to be an energy practitioner. Ok, you ask, what the hell is that? Not that I was off-key to begin with, ok, a little metaphor there…but while I had done much reading about different kinds of energy healing, had actually “attuned” myself through a book (which is a controversial means of attunement to say the least), and was “running” energy nightly with my children as I put them to sleep (except for Ellie who is asleep on the Nikken pad in seconds), I hadn’t actually met with a Master of energy healing and also had yet to have a healing session performed on me. Instinctively, however, I knew learning how to do this would enable me to help my children in a way I could not yet quite imagine.

Reiki (pronounced Ray-Key)
The word Reiki is made of two Japanese words - Rei which means "God's Wisdom or the Higher Power" and Ki which is "life force energy". So Reiki is actually "spiritually guided life force energy."

Like magnetic healing, which is a bioelectromagnetic-based therapy involving the manipulation of electromagnetic fields, Reiki is another form of alternative energy medicine that uses energy fields to promote healing. Reiki is a biofield therapy that affects energy fields that are said to encircle the human body.

Its history is ancient and colorful and if you have any interest in it at all, I suggest reading about its origins and Dr. Mikao Usui before making any judgement as to its efficacy.

I decided since I wasn’t quite sure about the level of attunement I had received from the book I read, that I would have a formal attunement to see if the energy I had been channeling all year was in fact Reiki. Whatever it was, it was neurocalming and it repeatedly proved to help bodies both little and big to heal their woes, whether it be headaches, stomachaches, etc.

It took me 2 months to find a Reiki Master I resonated with to turn myself over to. I’m so glad I waited for the right person to come along, because Tricia Alexander was in my view, the ONLY person I would have wanted to be my Reiki guru.

My 5 hour attunement began with a formal class on Reiki as a healing modality. The attunement itself lasted about an hour and was performed in intense quietude interrupted only by the dogs incessant howling at a squirrel. The night of the attunement I slept like a rock nested in the sand. I have since had an opportunity to do Reiki on the kids and Craig a couple of times and it’s pretty amazing. In an easy to understand description, Reiki puts the body into a relaxed alpha state. In that alpha state, the body then receives the pure “chi” or “ki” that is channeled through the Reiki practitioner and the healing can begin.

The hardest part for me is making sure there is no intention. The energy “runs” and it does what the participant needs, there is no directive from the practitioner. This can be hard for a mother who is doing this for her children…the tendency is to always want to parent, to fix. There is no fixing in Reiki.

So…the big question is, did the attunement change what I was doing for the last 8+ months anyhow? The energy is definitely more intense, the pulsing and vibrations I feel are definitely more noticeable when I use the laying on of hands technique. Tonight, Talia calmed down from a typical 4 year old meltdown in record time as I did Reiki on her. It’s kind of magical…not voo doo anymore. Just sort of magical and I accept it for what it delivers. I expect nothing of it but know that by channeling it, I am doing the “loving” part of my parenting job. I am doing the “healing” part of my human job and I’m excited to see what Reiki teaches me about my own humanity.

AWESOME Gluten-Free, Egg-Free, and Nut-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

This recipe is idiot-proof and fun to make with the kids. Because there are no eggs, the kids can lick the bowl and all the utensils like when WE were kids (before the knowledge of licking raw eggs meant anything, LOL ) They love making them, and even better, they LOVE EATING THEM! I bring these cupcakes to all the birthday parties they go to so they have a special healthy treat without all the junk.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups gluten free flour blend
1 cup turbinado or unprocessed sugar
heaping 1/4 cup gluten free cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1 cup water

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a dozen cup muffin pan with paper liners.
Sift together the dry ingredients. Add the oil, vanilla, vinegar, and water. Mix together till smooth. Pour into lined muffin cups, filling almost all the way full. (gluten free cakes usually don't fluff like regular cakes)

Bake for 20-26 minutes, or until center is done.
Remove from oven and allow to cool before frosting.

Autumnal Un-Equal-Nox

Ah, it’s fall. The temps are cooler, the air is crisp like a bright red macintosh apple and the winds are a blowin’, which means Ellie is struggling to find her inner AND outer balance. Each Fall, my antenna rises as I watch the last days of summer fly off the calendar. Being a New Englander by birthright, I have always loved the Fall. No really, I LOVE Fall! Everything about it is a part of my cellular understanding of cycles.

By definition, an Autumnal Equinox is a day when of there’s equal day and night and is the first day of Fall. This year’s Autumnal Equinox 2009 falls on September 22, which is in 2 days and don’t you just know that my special kid knows its coming intuitively.

The first day of Fall is also called Mabon, Harvest Home, Winter Finding, or Second Harvest. And, for those humans who are Pagans, it is a day of thanksgiving to the Goddess for her bounty harvest and reap the fruits of our labor.

For me, the Autumnal Equinox is also a time of celebration, reflection, grace and balance. It is also historically a time when I gather up all my energy from misplaced and non-sequitor activities and turn my attention inward to self discovery and attunement.

As such, this was the week I found myself starting my private Deep Breathing Meditation Classes with my author friend James Rybak. It was also the week I determined the day I would be getting my next Reiki Master attunement so that I can better provide the so needed hands on healing that my kids love and depend on me for. On a separate note, I’m running, praying, writing daily, and working on my posture both literally and figuratively. I just love this time of year. The smell, the color, the reinvention of myself. But the sad part is that for the last few years, I have noted that the time that is naturally the most beneficial to me, is the most difficult time of the year for my daughter.

For Ellie, the Autumnal Un-Equal-Nox is a time of confusion, rebellion, frustration and deep sadness. It was on September 28, 2006 that I was notified that Ellie’s birthmother had commit suicide by drug overdose. This was not something we shared with her until quite a while afterwards (and in terms that she understood), but the more I understand of the conscious spirit, the more I realize that Ellie somehow connects this time of year to her birthmother’s death…and perhaps to more endings than beginnings for her. I think intuitively she is quite aware of her birthmother’s sadness and regret. Many of her therapists suggest perhaps it is just that she doesn’t deal well with change, and Fall is like change on steroids, and maybe some of that is true. But there is more to it with my little girl…

The last two October’s have seen Ellie thrown into a tumult of despair so deep that hospitalization was the only respite for her. The first hospitalization was an out-patient program in which she was still able to see nights become longer than the days, the trees lit afire with color, and she was able to smell the fresh crisp fall air. That autumn seemed to go on forever, leaving in its wake a waiflike little 5 year old struggling to see why life was worth living, why her family loved her, and why she suffers from such uncontrollable rage.

The second hospitalization, which was last October, was different as her world was quite controlled as an inpatient in a children’s psych ward. No air, no daylight, just consistent lighting all day and all night. No change. Everything was the same. She seemed to fare better there in some ways, not so much better in others.

My love for Fall has me wanting to take her to Fall festivals, harvest, corn mazes, apple picking, pumpkin farms, and on long wonderful walks in the woods with the other children.

My love for Ellie has me praying that this year she will not need hospitalization to create a faux structure of a world she needs during this time of year to feel comfort in her life.

Already her distaste of the Un-Equal-Nox has her itching with anxiety, crying for peace of mind, whining for the wind to stop. Today, I glanced back at her in the car – windows wide after apple picking as she was hitting herself in the head, writhing in her skin, wishing she were anywhere but where she was. It was a glorious warm soon-to-be Fall day. For a few moments, I couldn’t even conceive of any reason why she would be struggling so. But, then, as those moments turned into an afternoon of her temper flaring, her inability to find comfort in her body and in her world, I realized, aha- the Autumnal Equinox. Of course!