Category: Just Keep Swimming
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I Hate That Red Wristband
This is our first full week of summer vacation. I wrote last week about how challenging the break would be this year – one kid at home trying to avoid anxiety and panic triggers, one kid at a different day camp each week, and me trying to balance both of them while also muddling through one of…
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Summer Is Coming
My kids have exactly 3 hours of school left in the 2015-2016 school year. That means Summer Break begins at 12:01pm tomorrow afternoon. Summer break this year is most likely going to be anything other than restful. With my son’s anxiety levels as high as they are right now, and potential triggers for panic attacks…
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Outgrown
When my son was first assessed for speech therapy through the school district, I started a file folder with every piece of paper we received. Over time, the file folder got too full of IEPs, progress reports, addendums, etc. and I up sized to a 3-ring binder. Fast forward 3 years – outside assessments, testing…
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The Cheese(s) Stand Alone
This morning was the annual volunteer breakfast at the elementary school. The teachers and staff do an amazing job of putting together a morning of food, goodies and performances from the students. I went into the morning expecting to see my daughter play a flute duet with a friend, and hopeful that my son would…
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Healing Water
We’re in Arizona this weekend. As a family we have a love/hate relationship with traveling. It’s mostly love – time together away from the stress of real life, exploring new places, and revisiting old favorites. But I’d be lying if I said it was easy. The truth is it’s hard. One change to the schedule…
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It’s Not a Phase…and 4 Other Things I Want People To Know About My Son’s Anxiety and Panic
I get it. People mean well. They are trying to be sympathetic and make us all feel better. Anxiety disorder and panic disorder are big, scary, frightening ideas. Nobody wants to know that somebody they know is struggling with something like anxiety and panic, especially not when that somebody is a child. So out of a desire…
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Letting Go to Hold On
This week has been hard. Most weeks are hard lately, but this week was hard in a different sort of way as I painfully let go of something I loved, in order to hold on tighter to the people I love. I believe deeply that we all have an obligation to do as much as we…
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Between a Rock & a Hard Place
Parenting a child struggling with anxiety and panic is the personification of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Our days are marked not by hours, but by the spaces between anxiety fueled outbursts or shutdowns and panic attacks. We have very little control over the “rock” or “hard place” moments. But I’m beginning…
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It Might Be Time for a Dream Catcher
When I was 11, my grandfather had a brain aneurysm rupture. He was hospitalized for days before he died. The entire time he was in the hospital, I had a horrible dream each night that a masked man with a gun was threatening to shoot every person in my extended family. That dream was my adolescent brain’s…
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Your Most Important Tools
I was able to do one of my most favorite things today – chaperone a class field trip. I was with my daughter’s 3rd grade class at a living history presentation about the daily lives of Native Americans. The educator giving the tour asked, “What was the most important tool the native people had?” My…
We're All A Little Broken 