Not Anymore

Today provided me with a couple of powerful moments, a couple of reminders of where we’ve been and where we are not anymore.It started at about 4am this morning when I was woken to change a set of sheets. It’s been years since I’ve had to deal with an accident, even more years since I was dealing with one after another after another. Since 4am used to be a regular wake up time in our house. Since three or four hours of broken sleep was a good night. Since night terrors and being awake for two or three hour stretches in the middle of the night were regular occurrences. Wet beds used to be one of the early signs that things were going downhill again. Week long stretches of wet beds after he’d been day and night trained for months. As I crawled back into bed this morning, after stripping sheets and deciding against waking her to shower her, a familiar feeling stirred within me. A feeling of being exhausted and also wide awake with thoughts and worries racing. What had happened? Is something wrong? Will it happen again? What do we do to fix/prevent it? I stopped them, we just forgot to remind her to go to the toilet before bed, I went back to sleep.The feeling came back as I piled the sheets into the washing machine later on. Dread, worry, fear, the threat of something being wrong and unsolvable. It’s still a trigger for me. This time, a little more awake, I was able to be aware straight away, this feeling was a memory, was the past and didn’t belong here and now. It didn’t get to stay but it had done its job of reminding me of where we’ve been and where we are not anymore.Later in the day another reminder. We took a big drive and stopped in at an IGA halfway for supplies. I was surprised by the cold that hit me as I got out of the car and stayed with me inside the warehouse style shop. I had three things to remember and get. I also had a five year old feeling carsick and threatening to vomit at any moment. One, two, three I focused and collected what was on my unwritten list. I was shivering with arms full looking for where the queasy child had gone when “can we get a bag of chips for the car?” came at me. While we were on the road last year there were a couple of occasions where, unprepared for sharing snacks out in the car, I had allowed them to grab a small bag each. Obviously they had loved such a treat and it had kept them happy for a long time afterward. I didn’t have the capacity to discuss or even mull it over in my head in that moment. I said “Yep, grab one for your sister too”, then came “can I try these ones?” from Mr 9. I looked at the green packet of chicken flavoured chips and the two packets of bright orange Twisties my other son was holding and quickly thought ‘what could be worse than Twisties?’ and ‘it’s a once in six months treat’. I was cold and stressed that we’d be cleaning up vomit in the aisle if we took much longer so we headed for the checkout.Once we were safely back at the car in the fresh air Mr 9 offered me a chip. I took the bag from him and turned it over just to have a look and saw that yes, something could be worse than Twisties. They didn’t have the fluoro colour but they did have somewhere between six and ten additives and flavor enhancers that we usually avoid. I really wanted to kick myself but that wasn’t going to change anything. Instead I took the opportunity to show him how many questionable ingredients it took to make those chips so tasty. Having just watched a documentary on ultra-processed foods and their effect on the brain and body, it was easy to get the point across. Then I took a deep breath and hoped for the best as we carried on with our drive.The behaviour change was so obvious. His eyes changed, taking on the glassy, distant appearance that used to make my stomach flip and knot up. It was the other sign we would see return over and over after one or two ‘good days’. It shows up with such contrast these days. His cheeky nature and strong willed temperament never left but the excitotoxin induced overstimulation and haze hasn’t been a regular part of our days for a long time. The dysregulated emotions, disordered thinking and destructive expression of both settled when we started to learn and understand what was behind and underneath it all.Genetic variances, impaired detox pathways, increased sensitivity to chemicals, damaged gut health and accumulation of neurotoxic heavy metals- all of which we were able to address by changing what we eat and more importantly what we don’t eat and boosting some key nutrients through supplementation. The immediate full body reaction I had when I saw those glazed over eyes and saw that my words were not able to land anywhere within him was the same as I felt when changing his sisters sheets. I had to reassure myself that it was temperory, that his body, no longer full to the brim of these toxins and stressors can handle what is contained within one bag of these ultra-processed and flavoured chips. I had to remind myself that it’s where we’ve been and where we are not anymore.These reminders today made me realise that many of you don’t know our full story and many of you wouldn’t have seen or read even half of the snippets I’ve shared here on the page. While I’m in the process of compiling and composing the layers of our story in a way that shares an important message and empowers those who will read it, I write about the present moment here because that’s where I am and really all I have. Most of the things we do now, to manage it all, we do automatically. It’s just how we live and it doesn’t often seem noteworthy but it underlies everything that I do write about. It would take an impossible amount of emotional intelligence and energy work to counteract the physical obstacles we were up against all those years ago but where we are physically right now is a good place and so we are working on resolving, reframing and rewiring the many patterns that we created, lived and relied on as a family while we were struggling to survive. We are a fair way along our healing journey now, in a place where there is hindsight, insight and still the occasional reminder of where we’ve been and where we are not anymore. These reminders serve to keep me anchored and focused on the message that all of that struggle was given to me to create.