This is Us.

Thirty Five.

35 sparkling grays, signifying each year of wisdom I’ve gained thus far in life. Perhaps that represents the fabulous mind game played to create a positive spin while I glance in the mirror at the end of another day.
Secretly, I may be as proud to sport those silver highlights as I am to display smile lines, otherwise known as wrinkles.

“They” say a good life is only as good as the wisdom we gather along our journey. “The Journey is the Destination”. Our journey may be the road less traveled. Therefore, with every sprouting gray and each new crease decorating my smile; I’m reminded life continues to move. Silver sparkly reminants & carefully placed creases that will forever hold our captivating tale. Memories within our hearts as well as our reflection. So. We reflect. We embrace. We live.

The story of me. The story of my daughter and I. Not sure hair dye and botox holds a candle to the beauty in our hearts. The beauty in our perfectly flawed reflections.

Life before my daughter is quite difficult to envision and little resemblence to the life we presently embrace.

One constant has been my work in the Mental Health Field. Fourteen years and counting. Counting these days holds no comparison to admiring my three year old excitedly counting one to ten. Something so minor, holding monumental value in our lives, as 10 short/long months ago we were told the words engraved in my memory for eternity.

“…your daughter can not hear you.”

While navigating our new reality, work was interesting to navigate. When you’re told your two and a half year old daughter should have been diagnosed years before & the window for her to hear (potentially catching up to peers in the 5yrs + a lifetime of monitoring) has passed, with a 6mo window left before she’s 3, what is a single mom to do? She takes every single appointment as fast as humanly possible, reads every research article, studies everything there is to know about the anatomy of the ear, sound, audiograms. She studies cochlear implants ,the history, reads books, compares processors and doesn’t flinch when recognizing the whispers as to why I can’t be at work and in Boston simultaneously. If only bodies split in two. I quickly learned, I am also living in a deaf community.

One would think her workplace of 12yrs would support. But what others don’t endure, others can not understand.

So we built our empire. My daughter and work continued on because that’s what we do.

It is not every day someone finds out their child is deaf. The best time to start a private practice. (Said no one ever, besides a single mom who knew if she did not make changes, she would not be able to sustain the level of medical appointments and survive financially).

For being a single mom has some advantages as well as significant barriers and being a rockstar single mom of a child with hearing loss holds an entire different set of obstacles.

Anything is possible if you believe. And so, we believe. We believe in the magic of Santa’s bell…
And so, here we stand. And so, here we rise. And so, here we climb. And so here we fall. Fall down seven, get up eight.

I once defined myself as a runner. I suppose once a runner always a runner at heart. That 5th marathon will be achieved in my thirties. 13years a runner means I ran for many reasons and none included staying fit. Staying fit was a mere byproduct. I ran to live. I ran to survive. I ran to think. I ran to challenge myself. I ran for zen. I ran for peace. I ran for tranquility. For photographs. For nature. I ran for my senses to experience the way the elements felt upon my skin. I ran to feel alive. To wash away my anxieties. To think away my fears. I ran to be unplugged from our world of social media overload. I ran for freedom from my thoughts. The past three years have been challenging, mostly because there is little time to engage in such. But life is changing. Although I can not justify infringing on my daughter’s schedule or miss work to fit in a run we all can maximize the time we find. But how do we find the energy on the weekends and cart our children to a gym daycare? How do we cope with family chirping in your ear how selfish that may be. My goodness, we are only parents once, how dare we not eat, breathe, sleep our children without a second to revive our bodies and minds. How dare we be offered help to engage in an activity that may extend the longevity of our lives to be there longer for our children. Ha. Why my Catch 22, but certainly not one I longer fuel or pay much mind to. Neither should you.

A mom, who took her daughter for a hearing test in April 2018, to be told she is severely-profoundly deaf, leading to the journey that will be revealed in our blog.

You should know, my daughter, can now hear me tell her I love her.

I’m a professional who refused to allow our new challenges to cripple our ability to succeed. I refused to follow suit of those turning backs. We stand tall despite ignorance & we stand taller after life sat us down. Not to rest, but to learn how to balance the impossible, because the impossible is possible when we believe.

When life handed us lemons, we made lemonade, because with every situation there is a solution.

Here we are, standing together.
Here I am, sharing our journey.

To find peace as well as to remind you, you are not alone. Repeat that every day. You are not alone and you are enough.

If you have thought it or felt it chances are, I will say it…with little care to filter.

I have this ridiculously crazy notion that we need to just say things as they are, with raw truth, without the pretend fancy bells ringing to the tune of what we have been taught is socially acceptable.

So this is me.
This is us .
Welcome to our journey.

…to be continued

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