HERE’S WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU IF YOU’RE NEWLY DIAGNOSED…
Someday, this period will be a hazy memory. The pain will be dull around the edges. You WILL move through this pain.
Someday, everything that seems so foreign to you now, you will be an expert about. And once you're an expert at one thing, another will pop up and you'll become an expert at THAT, too! Doctors will ask YOU what they should do.
Someday, your emotional (and physical!) muscles will be so strong, you'll look back on this period like the start of something huge. You'll be buff. You'll be ripped. You'll be a friggin monster of strength, resilience and badassery. And the things that you used to consider problems will make you laugh.
Someday, you'll get new challenges. New diagnoses. New crises. This first diagnosis of Rett syndrome won't be the last curveball of life with your kiddo. But with each new stage, you will look back on the previous one(s) and remember how you thought you couldn't do it and then you did. And you'll dig deep. And cry. And maybe scream. And then you'll get up and keep going. Because you weren't built for this BUT are any elite athletes built for their sport? No, they train. They push. They dig. They strive. And you, my friend, are about to become the most elite athlete of parenting anyone who knows you will have ever seen.
ON THAT NOTE, THOSE PEOPLE WILL START SAYING STUPID SHIT.
About how you must be a special parent given a special child because you're just so especially special. Or how they "could never do it", but you're clearly just SO strong and superhuman.
Some people will disappear because they can't handle it. And some of those people might be family. It's ok. You have bigger fish to fry.
At any rate, I'm glad you're here.
10 years later, I'm still screaming and crying and laughing and losing my mind. But I'm buff. I'm ripped. I'm a friggin monster of strength, resilience and badassery. Welcome to our club. You can sit with us.
