"I have found that grief due to loss is a common lived
experience for almost everyone who has experienced life with a chronic
illness or condition. If people are stuck in denial, depression, anger...
they need to get unstuck. Often just having someone to really listen is
enough."

What can be expected for a creature so willful as to defy God, risk and lose
perfection?  Not since Eden has humanity lived in harmony, grace,
wholesomeness, health, serenity, peace.  There behind the fig leafs of our
own pride and delusions, the addictions or predilections of our brain
chemicals and synapses, the dictates of our culture, the dictums of our
families, the foibles of our characters, the mistakes from being simply
human is the naked truth that no matter how we try we shall never regain
Paradise.  We are ever angels with broken wings.

At best we tinker and toil through the generations, create this and that
redaction and novelty with this and that thread of the old themes.  These
times are those times differently and the same.

From birth all life is one or another level lived in post traumatic stress.
We are ever compelled to gain a semblance of temporary serenity, to
assimilate our experiences and appropriately cope with today and tomorrow.
Some of us fortunately do so with better skill and success than others.

The human race mourns the loss of Eden.  We turn to one another in grief and
find few willing hearers.

You parents of CP children I will leave you with one request: give your
child room to grieve, accept his/her mourning.  Share your pain and grief
about your child with your child.  Do not deny and suppress.

Toddy and Yvonne, much better than I can muster in my current state, have
begun to illuminate what I believe goes behind and beyond what we have so
bravely and passionately discussed to date.  I have not studied Kubler-Ross
though I have her books--I've been too busy and often overwhelmed mining
with bare hands the realities of death, loss, grief, and transfiguration.

I had read that as we grow older we grieve more.  I have taken advantage of
what life, intelligence, and experience affords me to grieve not only recent
and present losses but those past which I did not know how or was not
permitted to grieve.  The privilege of my hard fought and won adulthood is
that while the process never completes I get better in its practice and
emerge ready for whatever life offers next.

I have read every post on pain, depression, steam boilers, cracked crocks
and wrist rapping giants, suicide, abuse, denial, corrective surgery, rape,
incest, mutilation, Sodom and Gomorra, and managed to keep track of the
Microsoft ruling, and my own investments--all while starting Zoloft over the
last two weeks and nearly losing what my accountant today called my even
mindedness.

Given any harshness or pain that any of my recent posts, public or private
may have caused I humbly apologize and ask forgiveness.  If I have offered
any support or clarity in my vagged and murky way, then I am glad.

My new Dell laptop should arrive by the end of the month.
Until the end of January I hope to concentrate on health, getting out of the
house, planning my next year or two, minding my investments, and working
locally on Post CP Syndrome.

I'll try to keep track of threads, irritate some, inform others with an
occasional ADAPT forward, if find time and energy send an occasional post.
Mostly I'll detach and lurk.

I want to give a special wish of success at college to Anee and to give
thanks for your eloquent, inspiring, and insightful writings.

Enjoy Thanksgiving EVERYBODY.

Steve M.

From: Yvonne Craig <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Depression and disability -Reply
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 11:02:49 -0500
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Toddy

I had much the same thoughts as I was reading those threads ( and the
same reluctance to jump in, lol).
I am a psychiatric nurse/ counsellor by profession. On my caseload I
have
clients living with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, PTSD, depression,
anxiety disorder,etc. Most of my work involves grieving: the losses
incurred
as a result of their illness or disorder, whatever that is and  having
the
actual illness itself.
Over the years I have found that grief due to loss is a common lived
experience for almost everyone who has experienced life with a chronic
illness or condition. If people are stuck in denial, depression,
anger... they
need to get unstuck. Often just having someone to really listen is
enough.
The whole purpose of the grieving process is to come to acceptance. Of
the loss, of the change, of the new limitations, of the need for new
hopes
and dreams...
My son will need to grieve his differences from others as he grows AND
learn to celebrate his own unique gifts to come to accept who he is (and
like himself).  Acceptance from others is so important as Carla's post
attested to. Rejection and abuse create a breeding ground for the anger
and denial that many others spoke of.
I  don't think this is an area exclusive to CP... it applies to anyone.
Didn't mean to go off on too much of a tangent.. just my $0.02 FWIW. :)

Yvonne
Mommy to 2 year-old triplets: Robert (NDA), Anthony (PVL, CP), and Our
Angel, Joseph {April 14/97-Dec. 31/98}. Ottawa, Canada