My husband and I were over the top excited with the birth of our second child.
Those words were music to our ears, UNTIL… the music was drowned out by, “Your baby boy has a birth defect, your son is born with spina bifida”. The next few days were a blur of emotions. I was scared, really scared.
I was 22 years old. We were young parents. This was not suppose to happen!
We were told that our baby would need a shunt placed in the ventricles of his brain to relieve the pressure of the spinal fluid on his brain, better known as, hydrocephalus. This was all so foreign and terrifying. Surgery after surgery became our baby’s life.
FEAR, SADNESS, ANGER, DISAPPOINTMENT, GUILT and BLAME on MYSELF became part of my world. Would our baby boy have brain damage? Would he walk? Let alone…live?
Surgeries and long hospital stays all took a toll on my emotional well being.
Instead of being raw and vulnerable with my feelings, I buried them. I was “Super Mom” (or at least that’s what I thought). I learned to wear a mask and I was good at it. I looked the part and I acted the part because I was “Super Mom”.
However, I pushed my feelings down DEEP, I pretended they were not there. This way I DID NOT NEED TO FEEL so deeply. It took awhile to notice, years to be exact, but I was slowly losing control of my emotions. My stress was going through the roof. Panic attacks and depression became real in my life.
Years passed....
At the age of 23, our son developed a brain infection which caused him to have colonic status seizures (you know, the kind that do not stop except through medicinal interventions). TERRIFYING to watch!
To top it all off, my husband survived a heart attack (thankfully he is doing well), my mom died of breast cancer, and a few years later my dad died of bladder cancer.
All of this added even MORE STRESS and WORRY.
By Gods grace, and because of our deep faith in HIM, we have and continue to weather the storms.
Because of the RESEARCH I've done, today, WE DO LIFE differently. We’ve discovered ways to implement and make changes that support our IMMUNE SYSTEMS as well as our EMOTIONAL and BRAIN health. We’ve made changes in the amount of TOXINS that we surround ourselves with. We have become more aware of how “toxic exposure” has an affect on the internal structure of our brain and can trigger both short and long term effects.
I’ve also found ways to manage my stress level. Those terrifying panic attacks no longer torment me. We have found the tools we need to live our BEST LIFE, and for that, I am grateful.
It's our life, and though there are parts of it that we continue to look for solutions in, we will continue to move forward.
LIFE IS A JOURNEY, and it is BEAUTIFUL.
If any part of my story connects with your own story I would love to chat and connect with you.
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