The day the page went blank.
I can’t remember a time since I learned to write that I stopped writing. I was the girl with diaries, journals, writing pads, and notebooks filled with writing. Obviously now, I continue to write. There was a time though my writing was noticeably absent. I recently scoured my notebooks and old blogs searching for what I wrote around the time of Ashlynn’s diagnosis and came up empty. I had many poems celebrating her birth and first year. One of my last poems was this:
Angel
They told me me you were my baby girl
as you cried hello to us.
I believed them at the time
admist the chaos and the fuss.
They told me you were my baby girl
and when I took you home,
I would gaze upon the sweetest face
I had every yet to know.
They told me you were my baby girl
and I would gaze at you at night.
I would watch your lips
flash smiles radiant and bright.
They told me you were my baby girl
and I have so many flaws;
and you are perfect in every way,
they must have got it wrong.
They told me your were my baby girl
and my baby girl you will always be,
but I know the truth and the truth is,
God sent an Angel to me.
I stopped writing shortly after this. This was the time during her diagnosis. I didn’t start again until a year later when I started this blog.
I guess I could brush it off and say I was simply too busy. After all, I WAS working full time and then coming home each night to continue speech therapy with her.
That’s a lie though. As I’m three years out now and I’m meeting parents who are new to the dx, I realize the devastation and the heaviness was to much for me to even write. To WRITE. My outlet, my creative platform, my emotional release. I wanted to hide it all and be strong. I had to push forward, but as my friend Kim has said, there is always an underlying sadness threatening to break way at unexpected times. A mix of guilt, pain, and desperation to help your child that can only be released through tears. Tears I fought back.
As I met a mom last Saturday, she broke down three different times. She seemed embarrassed to say she hand’t told anyone her son has apraxia because she doesn’t want him labeled. I totally understood what she was saying. If you read my poem, I would suspect it’s pretty universal. We see perfection in our child and our children, and a label means other people see something less than perfect. It is very painful, because despite any imperfections, in a mother’s eyes, our children were “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:14
I’m glad I started writing again in 2012.
My story, OUR story, has been one of success and triumphs. Yes it is still of struggle, but through the struggles emerge victories, however small. Yes there is still pain. Gut punches from reading reports in black and white, but there is also progress and celebrations I might have taken for granted. There are now friends I never would have met, people I never would have known, and admiration for a little five year old girl that might have never been as great. If you talk to any mother who has a child with apraxia, they will no doubt agree that child is their
Hero.