There is a thin line between being grateful for the support and help people are willing to give you during something like this and feeling like you’ve been rendered completely useless. I know that we need help with dinner several nights each treatment week. I know that we need help with the boys while I’m at appointments. I know that some days are hard for whatever reason and we need an extra hand. I also know that there may come a time when we need more than that. But for now, there are still a lot of things that I can do for myself and for my family. I want to do them. I NEED to be allowed to do them.
From time to time, well meaning people will insist that I not do something or that they will do it for me. I’m super grateful for their offers but my emotional state takes a hit every time because my brain processes their insistence as “you’re not capable.”
Please hear this correctly, offering to do things or help is NOT itself a problem. In fact, offering to do something and meaning it is something we can’t express our full appreciation for. What I am talking about is when I go to help Wyatt wash his hands, where all I have to do is turn on the water because he is a hair too short, and someone tells me I should just go back and sit. Or when people reprimand me for walking around the zoo with my family. Or when someone tells me that I should let other people do all the cooking because people are willing and I’m just being stubborn by saying I’d like to still cook some days a week. For context on that last one, cooking is therapy for me. I LOVE it and giving it up at all is hard but I know that we need help for treatment days and a few days after each treatment because I may not be strong enough and smells can get to me more easily then.
Anyways all of that to say, something I have truly come to be grateful for are the pockets of normal we can find in a day or week. Sometimes my pocket of normal is doing a complete load of laundry. Other times it is cooking dinner or preparing the snack tray for the boys. On super tough days, my pocket of normal is simply coming to the dinner table with my family. You truly have no idea what it is like to have normal striped away until it is. Once it is you want it back, or at least most of it. Even cleaning the bathrooms has new appeal.
Today was a good day. We spent time as a family. We drove to Dayton. We hiked three miles or so. We found our pocket of normal together and I still feel good.
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