New with questions

[MNP]

Dear cookiebaker,
You are so right!! Forgiving ourselves is soooooo hard! I didn’t realize that I needed to do that! I have been so focused on trying to be the best mom because I love our daughter so much that I have missed the forgiving myself part…it feels so foreign to me to even think about!

Your words on this forum and those of a few others here have been life changing for me. I hope somehow I can help and support you through your days as well.

I pray for you and others on this forum every day and I am thankful for you!

 

[sweetkamie20]

Dear sweetkamie20,
I cannot tell you how powerful and meaningful your last post is to me! Gracious! What are the odds that I would meet someone who suffers from fibro AND who understands the challenges of adopted children! Thanks to dear sweet God and to you!

You have shown me a whole new way to look at her life…embracing her different story!!!!

She is from Nepal. Very few adoptions occur there! It was truly a miracle. At the same time…she will prob never know her biological family.

And yes yes yes to your thoughts on the idea that she is probably sensing things and creating her own understanding! Also, I totally agree that dealing with “adversity” can help us all learn to face challenges in more positive ways and help us to be more compassionate!

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and helping me take an important step. I really don’t like to cry..but tears of relief and thankfulness are flowing this morning!

I praise the Lord for this!

Theres this one woman that I think is a powerful example (especially to kids) of how something different can be uniquely beautiful. Model Winnie Harlow.

And Holt International has an article called All It Would Have Taken about George Dennehy. Adopted abroad, missing limbs, but has played guitar with his feet with bands like the Goo goo dolls.

One thing I loved growing up is how my mom had me read inspiring stories about people like these. I could then see my circumstances as the backdrop of an amazing story rather than my story itself.

Maybe there's an amazing story that shows how special it is to be adopted. I you guys PICKED her! My parents didn't travel to another country to get me

 

[cookiebaker]

You are so right!! Forgiving ourselves is soooooo hard! I didn’t realize that I needed to do that! I have been so focused on trying to be the best mom because I love our daughter so much that I have missed the forgiving myself part…it feels so foreign to me to even think about!

Oh yeah, it is most definitely a foreign concept to us in the beginning, but it is also a necessity, and I hope that you will see it that way soon.
I am still struggling with it myself - some small things, some rather large... but I can not change the past - I did what I thought was the right thing at the time. All I can do now is try to forgive myself and move forward.

It is very obvious to me that you love your daughter very, very much, and want to give her the best life you can. Telling her about your condition, and showing her that life does not end because of it will help her be an even better person in the long run. Life might need to be modified a bit - reducing stress, asking for help more often, etc - but you can get through this and still be a good mom.

You dont have to be a "super" mom to be a good mom.
Telling her you love her, and that you are proud of her when she achieves a goal she has worked hard for will do far more for her self esteem than running yourself ragged trying to be "super" mom.

 

[MNP]

Hi JayCS!
Wow! That is so amazing to me that you started doing body work at such a young age! I see now why it seems like you are so skilled with this kind of work(even though you don’t think you are).

So you have given me some good stuff to look up -autogenics and yoga nidra. I have seen you reference YN in other posts too!

Thanks for the technical training! Now I have to try it!

Btw: I am so thankful for your optimism!
Rest well!

 

[JayCS]

you started doing body work at such a young age

Actually came thru interest in meditation. "Funnily" that sitting posture turned out torture for my lower back though. So meditating was either my first contact with radical acceptance, or as we've said trying to learn to relax despite pain, or ... masochism? At that age I already had severe "inexplicable" back and gut problems, then or soon after same for skin, and inner organs worse, then social phobia. All brilliant fibro training to learn to get these under control slowly with only small hints of help from others and to try to get a life anyway. Maybe irony that fibro hit after I'd got them and my social anxiety etc. completely under control. But whilst I started off with my glass often half empty, it's now always half full, or rather I just take a glass half as big, so it's almost full - so I'm actually very Thank-ful for that enormous toolbox in all areas, incl. resources how to find further tools....

Rest well!

Yeah, I did do better tonight, and seem to be getting a better handle on my self-care again..... After some big things (job, place) got in the way that unquestionably needed prioritizing, tho maybe not quite in the (over-)spirited way I usually approach things, especially as the last jab is now belatedly decreasing my energy.
As well as hopefully trialling several new supp & diet recommendations of my new practitioner at the same time, once again a setback. Ended up nauseous and lost appetite and zest too, for the last few weeks.
I sometimes find the beginning of my first entry in my daily blog since Oct20 strange, but it's so "me", proven by a quick search for that exact phrase - apparently something no one else would ever say... :
"Ideas for this got me out of bed, but priorities interrupted them". How .... embarrassing?

 

[sweetkamie20]

@JayCS i love the half as big a glass approach I mean on one hand it might sound sort of sad because it suggests limited expectations but I rather think like Plato - people measure their happiness based on their perspective of whether their circumstances are improving, not based on objective measures. So, as long as our perspective suggests the glass is full then we find gratefulness and contentment. Anyways, total side note.

I respect the discipline with which you have pursued self-care and other-care. You’re an inspiration.

 

[MNP]

Dear sweetkamie20,
I love your reply to JayCS and completely agree with you….he IS an inspiration!

 

[JayCS]

Whoooaaa, can I take that with any grace at all? No, but with bashful shyness I'll accept the challenge...

Such a contrast to my wife nagging that I'm 'always' overdoing it - actually like you well-knowing that self-care doesn't come in any way naturally to me, and the reasons for that - same as for her, actually.
But her glass is always enormous, to her, any liquid, even gold, dwindles to invisible droplets.
One of my "arrow deflections" yesterday was to reply to one of her negative worry nags by replacing it aloud with positive self-encouragement plus irony:
"Wow, glad to see you're managing to do your back exercises this early on in the day, like you used to."
But of course having someone next to me so keen on me getting my self-care act together is nice:

My most powerful relaxation tool is being able to produce an intense positive tingling in my toes whenever I want to, inside of about one second, and whatever I am doing, which can even make them visibly twitch.
Wim Hof's mention of that in his breathing exercise prepared me for this being possible, but it was Ally's 1 hour insomnia Yoga Nidra that got me on to it, where she dwells upon the boundary between the fingers and "the space around the fingers/toes" and dissolving that boundary, during the guided quick detailed body scan.

By the way I was very surprised the first time at the speed and detail of her body scan, very different to the slow ones I'd learnt in autogenics and progressive muscle relaxation. After first feeling rushed, I realized that focusing on even tiny bits of my body (e.g. teeth, gums, root of the tongue, roof of the mouth) is perfect to retain my attention on my body - and a bit further away from all the 1000s of thoughts I still have. As a contrast the slow ones often just lumped the whole face together, not even detailing the jaw. That leaves the details up to me, but only if I remember and am concentrated, sometimes easier in a group atmosphere, but that has other disadvantages. Ally manages the speedier body scan un-rushed and half-whispering, returning, repeating, ending on the right whole body half, and when she switches to the other body half with slightly different focusing it's possible to switch back, also possible to try to do both body halves at the same time, and after ending on the left whole body half she diagonally joins left body right brain same as right body left brain.... And that is only one of about 6 parts to this session, where I actually often jump in to the images (starting with "a green moth") at about minute 35 when I feel I only need about 10 minutes.

After a neighbour's door bell and feet trampling over woke me up and kept me "awake" despite ear plugs, and self-reflection keeping my heart thumping all the time "early" (8-10) this morning, I was able to go into an NSDR "deep doze" using just the toe tingling "stim" plus not quite as developed finger tingling and back of head/brain/mind tingling for an hour and a half. Counting that as restorative sleep got me up to the full 8 hours that I only seem to need since the 3rd jab & the antihistamine (before that since fibro 9h-11h). Despite "thinking" "awake" all the time... Much better & more restorative for me than any shallow or artificial pill sleep.