When you’re an Autism and/or Special Needs parent, your life revolves around meeting the never ending stream of needs that your child/children have. It’s demanding, constant, endless, overwhelming, heartbreaking, exhausting, difficult, challenging, frustrating, emotionally draining, and sometimes demoralizing.
It takes a toll.
Sometimes, I desperately crave a sense of normalcy, even if only for a brief moment. I love my family, challenges and all. I wouldn’t change or trade them for anything in the world but I’m human. Wanting to feel normal is well, normal and certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
Part of feeling a sense of normalcy, is Lizze and I doing something together, when we have the opportunity, even if it’s a sacrifice.
Tonight we have an opportunity for a little normalcy and how we chose to imbrace that opportunity remains to be seen.
Maybe we will go to dinner or use some movie passes we have to catch a movie that’s not kid friendly. Perhaps we order a pizza and watch somethibg on Netflix. I don’t know what we’re going to do but I’d really, really like to get out of the house for a little while tonight.
We desperately need a little normalcy in our lives right now and these opportunities don’t come around very often.
I’m not even talking anything fancy or super expensive. It’s not so much what we do but instead that we’re at least doing something for ourselves and to nurture our marriage.
Still, it’s not necessarily the most fiscally responsible thing to do but maintaining our sanity is crucial to everyone’s success.
Lizze and I almost never go anywhere together, especially without the kids. Sometimes the importance of going to dinner and being able to pretend for just a little while that everything is okay, justifies the expense.
As Autism and/or Special Needs parents, we often hate the word normal. At the same time, we can desperately crave a sense of normalcy in our lives and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Hey Rob, doesn’t the insurance company assess the claim and then cut you a check for the amount less the deductible?
I understand the work still needs to be done, but could you not do some of it yourselves, like clean up the tree branches and repair the fence and anything else that wouldn’t necessarily require a “professional” so you don’t have to come up with the shortfall? Just a thought
That may very well be the case. One hiccup comes in the form of the mortgage company. They have to cosign the check and are involved in managing the repairs. I haven’t worked with them since our mortgage was sold to them a few years ago, so I’m not sure how this will go. We can certainly do some of the cleanup but it’s extensive.