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It's Not Okay

Out there in another part of the world I wrote a post that I thought was pretty important. I was too nervous to write about the subject on my own blog because, frankly, I didn't want to worry my family, and they might not understand. I'm hoping you will, so I'm writing out an improved version here; I guess I'm not done talking about it yet.

Here goes:

I always sound like a broken record when I talk to parents with newly diagnosed kids with Autism -- think about marriage counselling, I tell them.

We all know the rotten statistics on divorce in our families, and I am always sad that this isn't discussed with parents as soon as they discover their child's disorder. Like, "Well, your child has Autism Spectrum Disorder, oh and here's a referral to a family therapist you'll need to see twice a week to keep your marriage running smoothly." DH and I have not had counselling. We're doing okay now but at times it's been an awful struggle, and I always wish we had someone to talk to and that we'd had someone to listen to us early, it would have helped sort out our feelings about our child having autism and might have eased some of the pain and frustration and maybe prepared us for some tough decisions we were going to face. I know some of us spend so much time taking care of our kids that our relationships with our partner can really suffer and decline, and that's a terrible thing because we need to hang on and take care of one another, too.

In families where children are strongly affected by autism and whose households are filled with strange behaviors, overwork and stress, I don't know anyone who hasn't been on anti-depressants. And I've never heard anyone say they weren't grateful for them. It is not okay to feel bad every day, to cry every day, to have arguments with everybody every day, to feel like a failure every day, to want to stay in bed all day every day. Sometimes it's difficult to see that you may be depressed, but if you don't recognize yourself, if you don't laugh, if things feel hopeless and you are exhausted, if you can't remember when you last felt happy, then you need help. I am not a big fan of medication for just any old reason but depression is an absolutely justifiable reason, and parents need to take care of themselves and we need to make sure we can function or we won't be any good to our kids. And marital stress doesn't help our kids, either.

I know Autism Speaks puts out their "First 100 days kit", I wish there was an entire section on the emotional and physical well-being of parents. Exercise, eating right, getting enough sleep, finding respite for God's sake, and having someone to talk to so we can share our burdens and work things out and keep love and hope in our marriage, along with medication if your doctor thinks you will benefit.

We ask for help for our kids every day, someone should tell parents early that it's okay to ask for help for ourselves.

Like most things in our lives, this is not a an easy subject for us to talk about pubicly, but I wanted to open up the topic, especially for any newcomers that might be peeking in...and for them I want to say, "Think about marriage counselling. And take good care of yourselves."

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It's Not Okay

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