How to Handle More Than You Can Handle
Our monthly theme is “Navigating a Medical Diagnosis,” which is a major theme of my new book, How to Handle More Than You Can Handle: Caring for Yourself While Raising a Disabled Child. Here is a brief excerpt that I hope brings you some wisdom and comfort.
“My son Asher was born with a disability that impacts his cognition, physical abilities, and communication and dramatically affects how we function as a family. He has high support needs and will require a full-time caretaker for his whole life. Since he was born, I have felt grief—both for a version of the future I had always imagined for myself and for the one I imagined for my child. I’ve felt helplessness—both while waiting for a proper diagnosis and then in trying to find competent and compassionate care after the diagnosis. I’ve felt incredible loneliness, unable to relate to the parenting experiences of my closest friends and family. I’ve felt rage—often!—at the world that is not built for my son and others like him. I’ve felt fear—mostly about the future and who will be there to take care of Asher after I’m no longer able to.
I’ve also felt hope, happiness, gratitude, pride, empathy, and determination. With a lot of hard work, I’ve reached a place of acceptance where I can integrate these two opposing states and allow them to exist hand in hand. And it began with letting go of any shame around the hard feelings and embracing the ways in which having a disabled child has changed me.
Because the question is not if parenting a disabled child will change you, it’s how. Will you be someone who throws themselves so fully into the role of caretaker that you lose sight of who you are at your core? Will you allow anger and envy to make you an uncompassionate and jaded version of yourself? Will you be riddled by anxiety day in and day out, unable to find any semblance of hope and joy? Or will you face your emotions with tenderness and work through them to become kinder, more authentic, and accepting? My hope is for the latter—and that this book can be your companion as you work toward acceptance and self-compassion.”
If you’re charting the unruly seas of a new (or old) diagnosis, for yourself or a loved one, I hope you allow time to care for yourself and connect with how this experience has shaped and impacted you.