An emotional week

I'm very glad that Jenny McCarthy and Holly Peete got to have their say on national television shows in the past week. I was especially happy to see Dr. Jerry Kartzinel on the show, a DAN! doctor who joined the practice of Dr. Julie Buckley in Jacksonville, Florida and who wrote the forward to Jenny's book (and who is about six hours away from us). He and Dr. Buckley are conducting their own research and presenting it to the Think Tank at the DAN! conferences.

I think all of the publicity is positive. But, as I said in a previous post about how hard it was to actualy read Jenny McCarthy's book because it brought up so much of my own pain and struggle with Liberty's recovery, watching a lot of television this week has knocked me out of my comfort zone. I find that, when I am trying to achieve and maintain a steady state of serenity about my son's current condition and what we are actually doing each day to try and help him, I do better when I don't talk about it constantly. I find that I have to create a balance of knowing when I really need to reach out for support and need to talk or when I need to retreat, to pull my feathers in around me and conserve my energy. I believe I heard Carolyn Myss say that you have to ask yourself where and to what you are sending you energy out to. This is one reason I did not join support groups right away. They upset me more than they comforted me.

I also do not want to be called a "warrior" mom or fierce. At least not in the sense that I am going to take a banner and go and "fight" for my son's recovery. Fighting is not what I want. That is NOT the energy I want to cultivate. I believe in the power of attraction and if I think I have to fight, then a fight I will get every time. I want to promote instead of push. I want to teach instead of lecture. I mean, really, I think your approach to anything is so important in predicting the results.

There is no doubt I experience a lot of sadness. It just is what it is. There is no doubt that the CDC angers me a lot just because it is caught up in so much obvious bullshit. I'm not here to cram the vaccine theory down anyone's throats. I experience anger, too. But, I'm not going to carry that anger on and on and wear it like a banner. I have read the Teachings of Abraham for years, and one thing I have learned from those teachings is the way I am feeling is an indicator of whether I am allowing my well-being or if I am cutting myself off from its flow. If my thoughts are making me miserable (read that NOT the autism but my thoughts ABOUT the autism), then I reach for higher thoughts until I reach a feeling of relief. When I reach a thought that brings relief, I am back to allowing my well-being to flow. And, when I am in that state of mind, everything else falls into place and I can be the mother I need to be, the wife I need to be, and the best ME I need to be. The bottom line is I have to be very careful not to allow my emotions to run away with me.

I used to belong to Al-Anon and attend weekly meetings. One of their beliefs is that the meetings are not intended to be bitch sessions where you go in and gab on about the alcoholic in your life. Rather, the purpose of the meetings are to share your experience, strength and hope. That's the approach I want to take when I talk to anyone about autism. Mostly, I talk to other mothers who just want to know what I have tried, or are relieved to know that I have experienced the same range of emotions they have. My sponsor and dear friend used to always say, "put the focus back on you" when I had wandered into a fearful place.

So I am putting the focus back on what I want and foresee for my son's recovery and leaving that fearful place of what ifs and should haves. I will still be glad to read articles people send to me, will still be happy to sign petitions and primarily be involved in recoverying our kids. I will not fight, though. There are already too many wars: The war on drugs, fighting cancer, battling diabetes. Our words have power. We need a gentler, softer approach and I think that the gentler, softer path is actually the more powerful way, and more of an attractive magnetic force for getting what we want than slashing and burning our way through the forest.