I had a very challenging morning with my youngest. He's a ball of rage and pain and fear and anger. He got into it with his brothers this morning and just exploded.
This isn't who he is but rather how he reacts to all the feelings he keeps locked inside. Yes, Mightier helps him manage these emotions much better but there are things he needs to learn that it doesn't teach.
The overall theme to his struggles is loss. He's struggling to deal with a tremendous amount of loss. He's lost all three of his remaining great grandparents, his mother moved out, an aunt died, and an uncle passed away as well. He's lost multiple family pets to cancer and all of this loss took place over the last year and a half or so. We can't forget COVID and all the changes that has forced upon him either. It's a lot for anyone to deal with, but factor in autism and things are greatly intensified.
He refuses to talk about it. In therapy, he won't open up because his approach to dealing with it is to simply try and forget. That doesn't work and it's very clearly not working for him.
All of this pain, anger, fear, heartbreak, and grief are festering inside him. It's toxic and making him miserable.
The only person he ever opens up to is me and that's great because I'm always ready to listen. The problem is that I'm not a therapist and there's only so much I can do to help. I certainly can't fix anything, ring back his loved ones who've passed away, and I certainly have no control over the decisions made by others. Frankly, I'm struggling with many of the same things he is. The difference being that I have more than my share of life experience with which to frame these things and that helps me maintain perspective. Even with these advantages, I still have my share of bad days.
Hands down, his biggest struggle is with Lizze moving out almost a year and a half ago. It's the second time that happened and it's something that's in his face everyday. The pandemic has made this worse because COVID is so bad we've had to significantly limit visits in order to protect the multiple high risk people in both households.
He's very angry with her. He's hurt and heartbroken. In my view, this pain drives many of the rages I'm seeing in him. He doesn’t care about school or himself and that worries me.
This morning was really bad and I mean, *really bad.*
I've not seen him this out of control, and it took every ounce of everything I had to manage him. It was awful but he didn't physically go after anyone and I know he probably wanted to. So, in fairness, perhaps he was exhibiting a tremendous amount of control after all. I would say this was similar to a meltdown but it was a little different. I think it was involuntary, and his body was doing the only thing it knew to do in order to relieve the pressure. It's a meltdown, but the cause was different.
After he purged, and I truly believe he was purging, I was able to sit down with him and talk.
He opened up again and it was in relation to his mom leaving. We talked for a little while and I always, always remind the kids how much their mother loves them. There's never been a doubt in my mind how much she loves them and I know she never set out to hurt the kids. I know not being able to see them due to COVID is killing her and my heart breaks for her and the boys.
I've found a way to move passed the pain and we work very well together. That's a hugely positive thing in my book.
It occurred to me while listening to Emmett's pain, that I might be taking the wrong approach with him. While I believe he needs to talk about this, especially in therapy, maybe he's not ready to. Maybe he doesn't know how to unbury himself from all these crushing emotions?
I'm going to be very honest right now and please understand that there are some things I will not go into detail about. I'm not hiding anything or trying to protect myself. It's simply not my story to tell.
I wasn't able to move on past the loss of my best friend and wife of almost 20 years because I just forgot about everything. I was crushed, heartbroken and angry. That's not easy to simply forget or just let go of. I was able to move on because I decided to forgive.
I realized that in order to be what my kids needed me to be, I couldn't carry around all that pain. I tried to put all this stuff behind me but I was chained to it and couldn't figure out of unlock my ability to do that. Over time, it became clear to me that I need to find the key to unlock the chains that were trapping me in this dark place.
A few months into my single parenting journey, I made a very conscious choice that proved to be the best thing I could possibly do. I made the choice to forgive her and I could into more detail about that later but for now, you just need to know that forgiveness was the key to freeing myself from all that I was carrying. It's not perfect and I haven't been able to forgive everything yet but it's enough that I'm no longer controlled or influenced by pain, anger, heartache, confusion, and grief.
Making the choice to forgive has made working together so much better. I'm not saying we're ever going to be best friends, but she's the mother of my kids and my parenting partner in crime. In my view, that's the only thing that matters and we've found what works for us.
Now back to Emmett.
It occurred to me that perhaps I should be talking to him about forgiveness, rather than simply trying to get him to talk about things he doesn't want to talk about.
He knows that Lizze hurt me because there was no way to hide that in the beginning. I was caught off guard and the kids and I found out at roughly the same time. I'm an emotional guy and I was broken.
The point is, I haven't talked to the kids about having forgiven her. I wasn't sure if it would send the wrong message to the kids because our situations are different. What I went through and what they went through and are still going through, are not the same things. They're always quick to point that out.
Anyway, I decided that I should talk to Emmett about forgiveness. I asked him if he'd forgiven his Mom and he hasn't. The look on his face said he couldn't believe that I would even ask that. I said that we don't forgive people to make them feel better. We forgive them so that we don't have to carry around all that hurt and pain. I explained that maybe we need to focus on helping him learn to forgive. I told him that I had already chosen to that and it made all the difference in the world.
Emmett said he doesn't understand how I could forgive someone who hurt me so badly. Truthfully, I'm not sure how I did it, I just reached a point where I needed to make a choice. I don't expect he's going to understand right now but I feel like this is a good direction to go in for right now.
He's agreed to talk to his therapist about learning to forgive. He's doesn't want to talk about what happened and I think he's eventually going to have to do that. For now, getting him to talk at all is a positive thing. Forgiveness is so powerful and I'm hoping to help him find it.
Just so we're very, very clear.
None of this is about blaming anyone. It may seem that way on the surface but that's not at all what this is about. Before we can address a problem, we have to first identify it. From Emmett's perspective, this is the problem, or at least a very large part of it. I'm approaching this from what I understand about his perspective.
Lizze is *not *the enemy. She's the mother of my kids and my parenting partner in crime. I don't see her as an adversary and I don't know how I ever could. The mother of my children will always have my respect. Full Stop.
I actually did a podcast episode with Dr. David Hill from the APA about co-parenting through divorce. It's a really good listen and it helps to better understand the importance of working together.
I've said this a million times but I'll say it again. You don't have to agree with, support their decisions, or endorse your ex-partner's life choices but you do need to stow your personal shit and work together for the betterment of the children you brought into this world together.
