Always HOPE

Always HOPE Advocacy Outreach for parents navigating parenting children with mental illness. You are not alone.

Here to hold you in a space of support, compassion, empathy, strength and acceptance.

A friend going through some really hard stuff with her kiddo sent this to me today. It reminded me why I’m here. To co...
01/26/2023

A friend going through some really hard stuff with her kiddo sent this to me today.

It reminded me why I’m here. To
continue to remind you that hope is a real true important and beautiful slice of life to cling to. It serves as our life jacket….to keep us afloat when we we will drown otherwise.

It’s hard, I know. What you’re going through. It’s impossible it seems. The darkness suffocated our ability to be rationale and grounded on the days when our child is suffering.

Hope isn’t a season. It’s what keeps us tethered.

Whatever your January holds for you, your loved one struggling, your family, your healing…. Please take care of you. Kno...
01/03/2023

Whatever your January holds for you, your loved one struggling, your family, your healing…. Please take care of you.

Know that you’re not alone. The weight of the New Year hype can feel overwhelming and add sadness and grief to an already grieving heart and spirit.

Remember to breathe. Find a stillness if you can. Reach out for support. Always hope.

I remember…Each New Year approaching, felt like a second chance.I would pretend I’d actually believe that somehow, magic...
12/28/2022

I remember…
Each New Year approaching, felt like a second chance.
I would pretend I’d actually believe that somehow, magically and beautifully, any or all the struggles she faced the year before would dissipate and melt like the snow in temperate March.

Whatever prayers or wishes I’d saved up for not being trustworthy to a higher power previously, I’d summon up to the sky with pleas and fabricated wishful thinking.

I’d imagine that somehow turning the page of a calendar was going to crinkle the pain as the paper had become.

This will be the year. Please let this be the year. Never really sure exactly what the list entailed… just bargaining with the Gods.

Peace
A quiet mind
Self worth
Self love
Strength to keep going
Less agony
More laughter
Fewer reasons for hospitals
Doctors
Emergencies
Panic attacks
Meltdowns
Intrusive thoughts
More friends
More light
Less darkness
And weight
And burdened psyche

All these things for her…
Wishes floating out from the birthday candles she’d blown out just a few days before.

Let her be okay
She deserves more
She deserves better
She has met her quota

But mental illness doesn’t work in exchanges

It doesn’t fit your agenda or heed your resolutions

So as you anticipate the coming of the ball drop, sparkles and fancy new digits on the calendar,

Know that I am wrapping you in a space of love for I carry the secret we hold together; twisted in this beast mutually loathe.

I will keep praying and making wishes for mine…and yours.

And I will always hope. I hope you can too.
#988

Two years ago this holiday,we didn’t have our baby with us. She had already left to go find healing at a residential fa...
11/23/2022

Two years ago this holiday,
we didn’t have our baby with us. She had already left to go find healing at a residential facility three weeks prior. Though I knew it was for the best…. For her safety…. For her well being to have a chance… and for her life, it still haunted me; the decision to be okay with her leaving me. She was gone for 57 days. She missed Halloween. She missed Thanksgiving. It was in the midst of COVID so we couldn’t be with her. We couldn’t visit, we couldn’t hug. We shared the holiday on a zoom call for 30 minutes if that.

I was grateful. Grateful my baby was getting support and services and healing in way she just couldn’t while being home, but had never been more resentful of the universe for taking away one of my most precious gifts and blessings. So I had her, But I didn’t have her. She was in our lives, but not in the way she or we deserved and craved and wanted.

I hated that Thanksgiving. It left with me the many invisible scars, we as parents collect with loving a child who suffers with mental illness. No one else can see them, but the tissue underneath presses and fills our souls and our bodies with deep wounds that will leave behind risks of complications later.

Being grateful isn’t always easy. You’re tasked with thanking your higher power for what? Heartache? Pain? Suffering? Chaos? Uncertainty? The world of others reminds you to see the gifts in front of you and the guilt inside of not feeling blessed can do a number. The costume you must wear to show your other children you’re so very grateful for so much, for them, our home, that she’s alive… is the bitter taste alongside the turkey and stuffing.

You want them here. You want them better. You want them safe. You want them to not be in pain… in suffering… in a hospital… you want them home. There is no gratitude in the unraveling of your child’s spirit.

I see you this holiday season. I hear your cries of despair and fear and the suffocating resentment, and jaded jealousy of the circles of friends and family whose children bless them with their normalcy. It’s a sick season. It’s a sad season.

If tomorrow you can’t find gratitude, know that it’s ok.

Thanks, .positive for this important awareness reminder!
10/31/2022

Thanks, .positive for this important awareness reminder!

Fall…Into sadness Out of sense Into trauma Out of calmInto uncertainty Out of rhythm Into anxiety Out of control Into so...
10/13/2022

Fall…
Into sadness
Out of sense
Into trauma
Out of calm
Into uncertainty
Out of rhythm
Into anxiety
Out of control
Into sorrow
Out of comfort
Into panic
Out of what is normal
Into what is a bad dream
Often

But what if…
What if we could

Fall…
Softly landing
With gentleness for possibilities we don’t know of yet?
With grace in honoring what we didn’t and don’t know how to navigate yet or still.
With forgiveness for the ways we let ourselves down
Or our child

With perspective that the magnitude of “what is” is often more palpable and tolerable than “what if”

With a whisper, often difficult to circumvent with such panicky noise around us, that says…

HOPE


Today. Every day.
10/11/2022

Today.
Every day.

Sundays are hard. I have never been able to fully embrace them like others do; never been able to relax, rest, chill, a...
10/09/2022

Sundays are hard. I have never been able to fully embrace them like others do; never been able to relax, rest, chill, all those things. My anxiety always amps up for what is coming… tonight… tomorrow… the next week. It all feels so daunting and doomsday when you’re navigating parenting with a child(or children in our case) whose complexities of their beautiful brains make a week ahead feel like a war zone. So I see you. I see you pretending or convincing or practicing the skill of, relaxing like the ones around you. I feel your weight and hold it with me.

You are not alone.

So today, I wish for you ONE moment where you can try to shelf the swirl of scared and anxious feelings that make life today, hard. Even if it’s for one minute. I wish for you a hand to hold… someone who will and can sit in that space with you and recognize what you’re going through. If you can’t, I’ll be that for you today.

Always try. Always HOPE.


I love everything about autumn… I do! Its beauty sucks me in. And there is also pain and sadness and a longing that ho...
10/07/2022

I love everything about autumn… I do! Its beauty sucks me in. And there is also pain and sadness and a longing that hold me today. Can’t quite put my finger on it other than the rough week it’s been and a yearning for a calm and safety we can’t be promised. I promise to try to stand tall and sturdy like the Oak waiting for the better days, if you do.

Please remember you’re not alone.

This is grief. This is sadness. This is anger. This is remorse. Regret. Wishing for what won’t be- can’t be- longing...
10/04/2022

This is grief. This is sadness. This is anger. This is remorse. Regret. Wishing for what won’t be- can’t be- longing for something better for her. Longing for who she could be and may not be. Regretting parenting choices while trying to forgive myself… trying to be gentle to myself for what I didn’t know… didn’t understand…. Couldn’t see… didn’t want to see…. This is being a Mom whose child suffers in a cage of mental illness she screams for me to release her from; stretching her hand out to me through the bars of her brain, pleading to the Universe to let her go. Her sentence is life.

This is therapy.
I’m told there is hope in it. I hope so.

I strongly recommend you do the same if you can.

Always hope.
💚

Remember that you are not alone. Remember that you cannot do this alone; find support for yourself, too! Remember that...
10/02/2022

Remember that you are not alone. Remember that you cannot do this alone; find support for yourself, too! Remember that your child is more than their illness. Remember that mental illness doesn’t define you or your loved one. Remember that there are people who are suffering alongside you. You are NOT alone in this darkness. Remember your child CAN heal…CAN recover…CAN overcome…CAN make choices toward growth… CAN have a brighter tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, maybe the next day or month or year. Remember to breathe. To hold on… and to hope. Sending love 💚

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Saint Charles, IL

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