Our Children Are Our Garden

Our children are our garden. They absorb our stress, just as they absorb our peace. They absorb our negativity just as they absorb our joy. And we have the power to control what they absorb, but first, we must tend to ourselves – Rachel Macy Stafford

August 2020: This hits home so hard for me right now. I can imagine I am not in this boat alone either. I am not doing a great job of tending to me…

I feel like I have been under water since March of last year and slowly drowning.

I thought going back to work and having Coop at school would normalize things again, but it hasn’t. He is going through another life change and needs me now more than ever it seems.

Through the pandemic shutdown I was it. His play mate, teacher, mom, his go to all day and turned into nights as he was sleeping in our bed. Now that he is back to school he is missing the interaction we had so it is extreme nonstop by my side when we are together. I don’t say no as I have to put my mommy hat on and think how a three year old is processing all of this.

He went from normal going to school and playing with his friends to a shutdown for months with no real interaction. It messed with his psyche no doubt and took us a long time to convince him he wasn’t being punished for not getting to go to school or see his friends. We had to stop the class Google Meetups as he would be so upset and cry asking why his friends were at school and not him. He told me he would be good and listen to his teachers more. Do you know how tough it is to explain that it had nothing to do with his behavior and he is a great kid! It was horrible! I would drive him by the school to show him no one was there and after a few weeks of that he finally believed it. His little spirit was so broken and I am thankful this part is behind us now.

Present 2021: I wrote the above in August of 2020 and life has certainly changed since then. Lock down’s were lifted and slowly things opened until we are now at 100%. Coop has been back to school for a year now and while I can’t believe it has been a year already, he has recovered from his ordeal. The lasting effects this has had on so many of us is beyond words. I wonder if we will ever get back to “normal” or if this is how we will be here on out.

Coop is still very aware of things going on. His uncle was recently sick and he asked if it was the bad bug that kept him away from his friends. This breaks my heart. He has a memory unlike anything I have ever seen and I hope that this experience will be a thing of the past to him soon. We have attempted to keep life as normal as possible while staying safe. He wants to go back and see Mickey and I hope that next year this will all be different and he can have the same experience as he did in March of 2020. No masks and life back to good.

I hope that all of you are well and I pray for you daily…. (Photo Credit Pavel Danilyuk, Pexels.com)