contiuum
S had a great day yesterday and a good morning this morning. That kid is so wonderful when she is on top of things. She knows it. She likes the feeling it brings her and the positive interaction with us, but she doesn't have the control to keep it up all the time. She is better - we used to deal with her angry victim most of the time, now she is fun more often than not.
I cringe as I think of some of the tactics we used to get where we are. She used every interaction to maintain her control, so we had to limit everything. I was brought up in a house full of hugs, and it hurt to push her away and insist that we couldn't hug until I wanted to. How much energy did we all spend as Holly and I sat, trying to maintain our own calm, watching her scream and flail and tantrum, hours at a time, until she would calm herself enough to at least verbally admit to responsibility for something.
Now she rarely tantrums - even the most recent visit with her brother didn't set her off, even though it was upsetting for her.
M needs to go through some of the same stuff. It will look different with her, because, as S was stuck as a six year old, M was thrust into adulthood. She has taken care of herself for most of her life and doesn't see why she should give that up. She does love us, and she plays the game to fit in and stay with us, but I don't know if she has hit the wall yet.
It has to work, though, right? We can't afford the price of failure. Or maybe, we just have to accept the final results for what they are.
disease
I haven't posted in a long time. Don't know why, tons of stuff has happened.
I talked to one of my cousins last night for a long time. I have lots of cousins on my moms side of the family, and Shirley is on the older end and I'm on the younger end, so we never really knew each other. But, since she is the most prolific emailer of the Colorado branch of our family, she ended up sort of being the Colorado contact and we've emailed quite a bit.
I started the conversation the led to the call by an email asking if she (a registered nurse) understood why there is so much blood-born disease, including leukemia, in multiple generations of our family, yet doctors insist that it is environmental. We talked about that, which of our many uncles and aunts had what, etc, trying to narrow things down. There are two diseases which ARE hereditary and per the doctors, in my family: hemachromatosis and Hemoglobin LaPore. One tends to make one have too much iron in their blood and the other causes iron to build up in organs, primarily the liver, I think. So, as you can imagine, together they can be deadly. Shirley's mom died of the combo and began all the research into our family. Now, if one has both, they treat it with diet and phlebotamy (sp?)and no one else has died of them. But, several of our aunts and uncles and cousins, including my sister and her brother, have gotten leukemia, and my mom had a disorder that often leads to leukemia, but never did in her case. My mom and sister both carried the LaPore condition, and Shirley said her mom and brother did, too. We are going to try to check and see who else does or did.
In my immediate family, we are trying to teach the teens to love themselves. The younger two, especially, have been exhibiting damaging behavior, though they don't see it that way. It is so hard. They are all so wonderful, but they just don't have the breadth of experience to see beyond the immediate present.
The babies are great. They don't look like babies anymore, more like toddlers. I'll have to start calling them the twins.
I'm a Mazda RX-8!
You're sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you're willing to do your part.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.
