Walk In My Shoes, Will You?

A nasty anonymous email will throw anyone for a loop. Why do people bother putting such effort into hurting another human being? I'll never understand it. This woman is angry, I take it. She doesn't like that I 'don't tell it like it is' in my blog concerning my daughter's RAD diagnosis and current behavior. She thinks I should take down the info on RAD and the mention of RAD in my profile if I'm not going to directly address it anymore. Obviously, this is a fellow mom dealing with RAD who feels the need to lash out. So be it. But aren't we here to help one another?

I choose not to blog about the significant spot RAD still holds in our lives because my daughter is older now, and she has friends online and these friends can read. I choose not to blog about the specifics because I respect my daughter's wishes and growing need for privacy. I choose not to tell you all the details of our current day to day life because, frankly, it's none of your business, unless I decide to share it.

I choose not to share about RAD much anymore for other reasons, too. Our lives are far more than my daughter's diagnosis. I actually purged my blog reader of some fellow RAD bloggers a few months ago simply because almost every post I read was so very angry. I hated reading about the parental rage. Even if it wasn't addressed directly, it was there simmering under the letters on the screen. It made me sad, and depressed. It wasn't getting me anywhere. I like reading about what works. I don't enjoy reading about another person's daily traumas that have no resolution. I have enough of my own, to be honest.

It's always best to be honest, so I will say very openly that I am also against many of the methods used by fellow RAD bloggers with their children. For me, it's all about love. I know it's easier in the short run to follow the likes of Nancy Thomas than to get down and dirty with what Heather Forbes asks of you, but I'd rather try harder and take longer, and be true to what I believe is right and true. It's scary to do that kind of work, especially when it requires your own self-reflection. I know not everyone agrees with me, and so that is another reason to keep RAD pretty much out of the conversation in my blog these days. I would rather be a light in the darkness than another mom ranting about how hard RAD is and how there is no cure and no way out.

Hard? You betcha. I feel like I have lived two distinct lives, if truth be told. I have my pre-RAD life and post-RAD life. I lost good friends. Heck, I even lost family for awhile. I lost my child-like exhuberance for life (or alot of it.) I lost the ability to laugh every day, but I'm working on getting it back. I lost a wealth of things. But when I said yes to my daughter, I said yes for life.

These days, we still deal with RAD issues, and of course I do talk with our therapists and a few very close friends about it, but not here. If a mom writes me privately and asks for help, I talk openly with her about my experience, but not here. Here, this blog, is where I try to inspire myself to keep going every day. It's where I explore my own need for inspiration and for my desire to find kindred spirits in this cyber-world. It's where I try to crawl towards the light and even point it out to others when I feel I can.

I'm sorry if this post offends any of you. I'm sorry I don't choose to be part of that RAD club anymore. I am on a different journey now. I'll still write about RAD when I feel inspired to, but probably not directly about our personal experience of RAD here at home. I'll save that for private conversations and emails. I want everything I write here, to the best of my often inadequate and naive human ability, to be about hope and light and making the world a better place. My old bumper sticker said it best,

'My job here is to comfort the disturbed, and to disturb the comfortable.'

Please let me do this without feeling the need to attack or control me. It's what God wants me to do, and who am I to argue with Someone who so obviously has the greater perspective?

Anonymous mom, I have no idea what you are going through right now, but I suspect it is rough and you are lashing out in pain. I will pray for you and hope you find the resolution you are looking for. but I promise you, it is not here with me. Look at your own path, your own shoes. Mine are already filled and hastening down my own path. And --I wish you peace and wisdom on your journey, even though you chose to disturb mine.