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Strip Me Bare

Last year, they were probably heard screaming through to the second floor of the clinic, and there were fights…battles…battles that they did not win. No one did.

A friend shared a link on social media yesterday, and I read every word, as often I do when this particular friend posts things. If she finds something worthy of her time, I know it will be worthy of mine. What I read was a post on the toll taken by the coronavirus from the perspective of writer and blogger, Helene Wingens; I have shared the link below. The words which spoke great truth to me were these: “Being the keeper of everyone else’s sadness and hurt (even if I am self-appointed) is heavy. So heavy.”

Heavy, indeed. These resolute words were a painfully accurate summary of how I, and certainly many others have felt about what is going on around us these days.

As I read, my feelings took me elsewhere, to a place inside of me that evoked a similar level of exhaustion and fear, but for very different reasons. As with any art form, the viewer, the listener, or the reader will find meaning in its interpretation. We will make sense of what is before us from our own experiences.

I never liked getting shots, but what seems far worse is watching my children endure a similar fate. As a two-year-old, Elliott had to have a lead screening for preschool class. I was the anxious and fearful one: a young mother more than half my lifetime ago. I remember taking the stoic boy to Burger King after the appointment. My sense of relief must have been palpable as we ordered our Whoppers and as Elliott donned his cardboard crown.

For these years sprawling into decades of throwing my best effort into parenting children with trauma and mental illness, I have certainly tried to hold the sadness, hurt, fear, grief, and anger of my children. Often, though, it cannot be contained. It flows from me, as from my child, and we drift from one another through trials and misunderstandings, displaced anger and defeat, perhaps even to be washed away entirely, back to nothingness, where we are stripped bare of all that we have.

I took the three little boys for flu vaccines yesterday with the promise of not Burger King but Nerf guns from Target after the battle, which somehow was not even a battle. They knew. The magic of one child’s medical cannabis regimen along with new psychiatric protocols for the others might have a bit to do with how things went this year, but we made it through. Somehow, we have arrived at today. It wasn’t easy.

It’s just a short time here, really, to be full of so much that cannot be understood. Just maybe, we are not fit to try to understand.

Maybe there really isn’t going to be a watershed or a life-altering turn of events. Perhaps things will really begin to get easier. Perhaps we will get used to how things are, and for this they will seem easier. Maybe the hard things that I hold so tightly will not seem quite so hard anymore.

The littlest boy, equally brave yesterday as was his big brother Elliott some twenty-seven years ago, kept his bandaid carefully in place “in case his arm might hurt.” At some point this evening, he was ready to take it off. He asked for my help, because he was worried that it might hurt. As I stripped the superhero bandage from his tiny arm, I knew that then that the true healing could begin.

For my big kids, most of whom have historically cooperated with their vaccines, thanks for seeing me as more than I am, and for believing that I am worthy of your company. I will be ready when you find your way home.

Here is the link to Helene’s writing which inspired my blog post:

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