This blog post comes with some “Rage”! If you have an inclination of where this is going, kudos my friend.
“I’m a mother with a furious mind… action must be taken… we don’t need the key we’ll break in…” (Yes, I’ve been listening to some wonderful 90s Rage Against the Machine music – in the form of Brass Against, who I have the privilege of moshing to in a few weeks time).
My rage stemmed from fear.
“Fear is nature’s protector” Tara Brach gently whispers in my earphones, as my train rocks and cradles me on my journey to work. The fear turns up as anger, as rage, as negativity. These thoughts have been widespread in my consciousness for many years now. So too, have positive thoughts like, love; affection; compassion; understanding; comfort; wisdom and open-heartedness. For, I am human. Yes, it’s true! It’s a revelation to me too folks. At some point in time, I put so much pressure on myself to try to be more than this. This is where my rage stemmed from. The conditioning, the beliefs, the fear that I was somewhere, in my timeline, a protector of his death.
My son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 4. His life was on hanging on a wire. It still could be. It’s that destructive, and life-threatening. Until you see your child’s life struggling to hold on, when a severe hypoglycaemic/hyperglycaemic event occurs, you won’t know this fear. The panic takes on real physical attributes. Your sense of fear can manifest as a pain the heart. Shaking. Tightness in the throat. Perhaps shivering. A drop in temperature. Inner screams of help (because you would never let your child see this, but they do). Not unlike a hypo?
All of this physiology happens without your control, sympathetic nervous system ways to handle homeostasis – the body’s way of coping in such traumatic experiences. Similar to a hypo? Well, actually no. Many times a hypo occurs due to a side effect of insulin replacement and the human aspect of interacting with that dosage – which is beyond any current mathematical genius. How many times have you felt this – Is this the hypo that could take him? Will he wake in the morning? Should I be more complacent and just chill the F out? I was living with fear – for years. I was so locked inside the fear that I could loose him at any moment “still in a room without a view“.
Did you know that blood sugar is life-threatening if it falls below 4.0 mmol/L ? – 1.2 was severe, and we’ve lived through thousands of these. Some through the night, some on first day of school, some half way round the ocean in a canoe, some half way down a ski slope and some thousands of miles high in the sky travelling by air. You get the gist?
“That when I say go, go go! Amp up and amplify” – ready to jump at any moment, constantly on-call. Yes I knew my enemy. In the song, the band refer to teachers who taught him to fight himself. This fear, this constant fight of flight response to protect my son (and myself from his loss), was nature’s protector, my limbic brain, my sense of self – tied up in being his mother. Mother. The protector?
Slowly, I’ve noticed my rage turn into something different these days. It’s been 14 years, of monitoring the essence of his life – blood, insulin, food, exercise, hormones, stresses, fears, joy and everything in between. We’re alive. We’re living this way. I have been by his side, I’ve been his voice in times when he was too small to speak up, I’ve been his friend, his nurse, his advocate and his bank! However, I’ve slowly realised who I am in this.
Who am I? I’m forever growing and changing. Changing into someone with awareness and hindsight. I can look back and see the damage of the stress, fears, worries. Recently I learned that worry originates from the word to strangle. For not letting this win, for building resilience, for standing up for his life and his precious light – I strangled myself with severe worry. I am now aware of the years of rage I held. I’m so glad I found this awareness. For now, I soothe it. I understand it. I don’t judge it. I hold it. I comfort it and I don’t let the anger take me under. I still do have fears and worry, but I don’t trap them under and deny them. I let them have air, and I forgive myself. I don’t try to be more than I am.
In coming to this place, I also now don’t judge him. He has taken the reigns himself these days, and I know he avoids self-care, I know he doesn’t face it at times, I know he doesn’t have in-range blood glucose. But I see him. I really see him. He’s had years of living with fear, with real trauma, and with a mother who’s been at her wits end. I forgive all of this. The awareness of realising I can see my inner strength, by not avoiding my fears, by not displacing my worry, and facing fear straight on builds love for myself and others. This is re-parenting myself.
For those parents out there who have sat up all night, or two/three times through the night last night, and fed their child glucose, or injected insulin, or adjusted doses of insulin, and then crawled back to bed just as the sun was coming up – I am there with you, I am you. I know. It does feel like we’re battling an enemy within our children. I wouldn’t be who I am without knowing that I am never alone in all of this. Connecting with other parents, has been nothing but a lifeline at times.
“Now I’ve got no patience, so sick of complacence“. Now, I don’t have time to be complacent with myself . I brought my unconscious fears, anger and rage to my fullest attention. I brought myself to a place where I learned to love myself, to let go of the years of guilt. The years of judgement and I brought myself to a place where I can finally feel, really feel, in every cell of my little heart, what my mother means when she says to me, before she hangs up the phone – “take care”.
Know your enemy.
Thank you rage, now I know how important love is.
Diane Morrow - Parent, Postdoc researcher - Type 1 Diabetes and caring 