Wounded Healers....Parents and Caregivers of the Disabled

                       

                                             A traumatic injury occurs at birth, or three years later, or twenty years later to your child...there is no magic formula which predicts what happens to you.  The reality of your child's trauma fills ever cell of your body; your soul is helpless; you make promises to always be there for him/her.  You are only as worthwhile as your word.

       A parent of a young or adult disabled child experiences every conceivable emotion.  You are at once hopeful, optimistic, caring and always looking for ways to heal.   At the same time, you are hyper vigilant, quite capable of catastrophic thinking, chronically anxious and always in fear of not being "safe."
This is the world of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).  In most cases, the trauma is focused on a single event (death),  or a series of similar events (war); in the case of parents of severely disabled children, the trauma is a continuing event.  It is not a past event which you can deal with in a number of therapeutic ways.
       So for parents of very disabled children, life is about survival...your survival and that of your son/daughter.  Life consists of avoiding everything which could impinge on that need to survive.  You do whatever it takes, at whatever expense.   There is no therapy nor medication to remove that imperative....you survive and out of this quest you slowly thrive.  The road is dark, has many curves and the journey is always in the quest of the light...the quest does not end.