the current state of things.

i started writing the following earlier this week:

i've been thinking of changing the name of this blog, 

probably since i started it. 

it was cute but it was never true.

i'm not an awesome mama.

i've told this story before but some of you don't know it and today i find that i want to tell it again.

maybe this time it will be different.

i'm flawed. i'm tired. i tried to be an "attachment parent" to my oldest son (now 17.5) before i knew there was such a term and a "right" way to do it. when he was in kindergarten i left my corporate american job. a lot of depression and seven months later i found another job and worked there for about nine months until, one day, i was on my way to work, 

hoping to get into a head-on collision.

i turned around and drove to my mom's, where i had just dropped off my son, when i couldn't decide if i was really hoping it would happen 

or about to make it happen.

the following semester, i returned to school to get another degree. this time, i thought, i was following my dream and doing what i'd always wanted to do. getting a degree in psychology. i was ready to be a therapist.

during this time i painted a lot. i smoked a lot of pot (because prozac made me even more suicidal). it was the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

in my childhood development class it was suddenly, ironically clear that my son had an attachment disorder (though it was several more years until it was diagnosed ) and it was clearly my fault since his father was as absent as an absent father could be.

since he moved back in with my mom last year, i've begun to dismantle all the guilt, blame, and shame.

i've been a slightly better, more attached parent to my younger two.



that's where i stopped because i was having to face the reality that my son had nowhere to go, having finally burned the bridge between him and my mother's home after bouncing around for the past month. i really didn't know how to open my heart and my home up to him again and i must say here...he's not a bad kid. he's never been in trouble with the law and he's got a pretty good head on his shoulders, if not for some misplaced priorities. some would say he's just a typical teenager but if you were to read up on oppositional defiance disorder it would sound familiar to me on some levels. i don't think he meets all the criteria for a diagnosis but there was a time when it described him to a T and i lacked the coping skills to give it my all, day in and day out. i'd stopped writing because i didn't know what i was really trying to say and he'd arranged to move in with his father (again) who had made an effort to have a relationship with my son over the last year.

now none of that even matters.
now we're here and the story is different.

what transpired in my oldest son's life the other night has me shaken to the core. sad in the heart on a level i've never previously known. some irrevocable damage has been done because of poor choices that were made by my son, his bestfriend, and my son's biological father and many lives are now forever changed and the end result is that living with his father, or even having a relationship with him, is no longer an option.

i had to pull myself together yesterday and found that it was easier to operate from a place of compassion than ever before. as the day went on and the truth sank in and i processed the events as they were told to me, it became clear that my son would be returning to my home.

last night my son told me that even though some really bad stuff happened, coming home was the good that came out of it. it broke my heart to pieces that bad stuff even had to happen or that it ever happens. it made me look back on all the stupid decisions i made as a teenager and i see how my son has made it this far, largely unscathed and without the same types of trouble i found myself in.

it wasn't really the lesson i felt i needed at the moment, since i'd already been feeling gratitude for all thing and i was sort of pissed that the universe had to make its move in such a profound and shocking way but my son is home and i'm grateful. i'm also lost and i have no idea what the future holds but instead of being fearful as i face the unknown, i'm choosing to be hopeful.

since recovering this long-stashed away card i've referred to the emerson quote often and when sketching out the girl and the balloons on this recent piece, i wrote it down on the canvas (then painted over it). today brings me here, re-reading the quote. it almost makes light of everything that fell apart in order for things to fall together but now, more than ever, the message is to let go and in turn; trust.

finally found all the courage to let it all go