A Turn

I’m finding that living in the moment is pretty damn hard. I have never paid so much attention to how my mind wanders as I do now. What I have to do, what I want to do, what I have not done. Questions and concerns whirling around in my head but so little energy devoted to what I’m doing at that moment. Having that week at Son Rise allowed me to live in the moment without distractions. I was amazed how present I was there…I quite easily left my life behind and became fully involved, emotionally and intellectually with what was going on. Why? I was motivated to be sure…for my boy but I have been motivated to heal him for years. It was an oasis of judgment. As soon as I got there late Saturday afternoon I felt welcome…like I belonged there. I greeted people with ease…fell into conversations without thinking why or why not I simply did. As the week began I met the staff, the volunteers…the parents I released so much tension and apprehension and I just opened up…I absorbed and was able to share at a level I had not experienced before. I did not want to leave at the end of the week…I say that playfully but I knew as soon as I stepped of the plane my life would hit me full force and I wondered how that would feel. I knew a shift had taken place….I had climbed to a new plateau but I did not want that feeling of ease to end. What I’m discovering as the weeks pass is that I can live that way everyday if I choose. It was my perspective…my beliefs that allowed me to experience that “ease” at Son Rise so if I can do it there….I can do it wherever I am. I have that choice and in creating that environment for myself I in turn create it for my son and that’s what it is all about. As I was able to open up, learn, and share so will he.
I have discovered that one of the main obstacles for me is the judgments I make about myself…especially when it comes to my efforts to heal my son. “I am not dedicated enough, not motivated enough, not bright enough” I focus on what I have not done or think that I have not acted with enough speed. I look to the future and I compare myself to families I have created in my mind that heal there kids with amazing speed and beat myself up for not doing it myself. I panic that the time is passing too quickly and I will miss some magical window and he will be doomed somehow…living cut off from the world…isolated with his label of Autism. I can get so caught up with this rush of thoughts and emotions I feel paralyzed when I’m with my son. All I have to do is sit there and be with him but I can work myself up so much that I have to get up and “accomplish something” just to justify my existence. But what I’m doing is avoiding working with him because I doubt my ability to heal him. My fear is that I can’t, that I don’t have what it takes, and then it will be my fault he doesn’t live to his fullest potential. I’m running from myself and in doing that I’m abandoning my son.
This cycle repeated so many times it became a wall between me and healing my son and I had started to retreat into myself…knowing full well I wanted to break free of the weight I was carrying around. However I was aware and open and that saved me. I’m still struggling with it all but day by day I can see more and more light through the cracks. I am starting to question myself more in a constructive way. I am looking at life’s obstacles, large and small, as opportunities to choose happiness; looking at each interaction with my son, and the world, as an opportunity to build on something…everything. I realize now that what happens outside of me does not need to govern my ability to be happy and with these new thoughts I have begun to appreciate what and who I am. With this new understanding I turn to my son and offer him more of myself. I’m laughing more…he’s laughing more. I have more fun…he has more fun. I am learning more…he is learning more. We are interacting more often and more intensely day by day…it’s so encouraging. I am letting go of the need to project what I “need” to be or what the future will hold. I am trying every day to focus on my son and the growth we are both experiencing. Not only am I starting to see how beginning from a place of love and acceptance allows you naturally and effortlessly to build on each action but I am starting to feel it and that it is becoming part of who I’m an that is exciting…to greet life at every moment from a place of love and acceptance…truly living in the moment without fear or judgment. I would have thought that impossible before…I no longer feel that way.