How have things been handled?

 

As a busy working mom, sometimes I feel like things haven’t quite been handled as eloquently as I would have liked. There is stress in my life that just seems to take over. Between work and personal commitments, something’s got to give. Am I alone here or is there anyone else feeling similarly?

 

Let me give you a little information about me. I am a 43-year-old married mom of a 22-year-old daughter and 18-year-old daughter. My oldest has some special needs, but the medical system here is failing her because she isn’t handicapped ENOUGH to get a diagnosis. I was even told by multiple medical professionals “Yes, I can see she’s high-functioning autistic, but because she’s over the age of 18, I cannot give you an official diagnosis.” You wanna talk about discouraging. That doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt last year hearing those words for the third time in as many months. I felt like I’d failed my child.

 

On the other hand, her sister has anxiety and has for years. She’s worked very hard to be where she is and is graduating from high school a year earlier than we originally thought because of her hard work! She doubles up on classes and is very active in our church youth program. That being said, her anxiety has to be accounted for in the amount of stress.

 

Then let’s talk cars. Four years ago, my husband was in a car accident that totaled our only car. After that we bought our 2016 Chevy Equinox and within 6 months we were putting nearly $5,000 into rebuilding the engine. Let’s fast forward a bit and we’ve replaced the motor on one of the windows, redone the brakes, had the suspension fixed, and most recently had her at the shop because the alarm wouldn’t stop blaring. Of course the dealership couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

 

Now on the other hand, 3 months after buying the Equinox, we bought a 2013 Ford Escape. This car is super fun to drive, but then she doesn’t like to go on road trips. After our trip to Ohio last summer, we had a trip to Tennessee (3 hours away instead of 10) and we go out to start the car and nope. She’s not starting. We do a parking lot transfer to the other car. Then six months later, we had her packed up to drive to New York for Thanksgiving… She stalls leaving the gas station before getting on the road. Welp, it’s time to go home (less than a mile away) and do another parking lot change. A few weeks later, we figure out that it’s bad gas we’d gotten and nothing wrong with the car.

 

I tell you all of these things to say that in each of these instances, words were said that perhaps shouldn’t have. We should have handled ourselves differently. But in hindsight, we can look back and see those experiences as opportunities to do better. What will we do in future? Well, for our girls, we are biding our time until the youngest graduates high school this spring and are evaluating what to do next. We aren’t limited by geography after she’s done with school so we are really thinking through things. Do we want to stay in the area we are at, would we like to be closer to friends and family out of state? Or do we want to do something completely different? Only time will tell. Until next time, think about something you’ve done recently and evaluate if you could have handled yourself differently.