I have a secret I’d like to share with you.
Do you get frustrated helping your kids shop for Mother’s Day?
Let’s get real for a moment. I panicked, oh yes I did.
I was getting ready for work and decided to check my face using the mirror that magnifies 10 times. I was specifically trying to see if I had unwanted hair growing on my upper lip *wink*. To my utter amazement I saw brown spots and spider veins…on my face!
This is where I began to panic and my stream of thought went something like this. “What if one of my kids gets married and I look Old? Wait what? Remember when you were 40 years old and you saw your mom’s legs peeking out from under my dress? Oh yeah, and when I turned 50 my mom’s hands were attached to my wrists?”
Everything was ready. Another therapist would be seeing my clients. My surgeon was confident. I was excited that I would be walking within two to four weeks without limping or pain in the knee. On May 25, 2012 my life changed. Rather than a simple meniscus repair my “hoffa pad” had to be trimmed down due to impingement. I was one of the few who had nerve disruption and an increase in swelling due to my body’s reaction to the anti-inflammatory. I had lost control of my days and life. This has been a long year of physical therapy, acupressure, stretching and icing. Sometimes I managed this ordeal with grace. Other times I slipped into discouragement. But quitting was not an option.
Many times when I work with families I help them develop hand signals to slow or stop a heated discussion. This way everyone has the potential of gaining control of their words. During one of these sessions I reached over and poked a father in the shoulder to stop engaging in a verbal battle. The son turned to me and said, “You just Cesared my dad.” Of course I googled who Cesar was and discovered, “The Dog Whisperer.”
Over the years I have seen many children and teens of divorced parents. I have observed that many times the divorce does not stop the parental fights. In the chaos of the divorce many parents forget that the primary concern is now their children. So I have decided to share what many kids want you to know.