Still Messy…Still Beautiful {the rebrand that’s not really a rebrand}

Beautiful…messy…motherhood…marriage…faith…life.

That’s what it’s always been. That’s what it will always be.

It’s hard to know where to begin this post. The short story is I got a job, which inspired me to refocus on branding. The long story is a lot messier.

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I guess that 2018 was harder than I thought, when I look back at it. I took 10 credits in the spring semester, 4 of which were biology. That really did me in. We had a pretty low-key summer that I honestly barely remember. Then school started back up – both for me and for Ezra. I had cut back to 6 credits in the midst of taking him to multiple appointments to have him tested for autism. We had just received his non-autism mood disorder diagnosis when a hurricane hit, a tree fell on our house, my husband came down with vertigo for a month, and Little Brother was starting to not succeed in preschool either.

When I wasn’t watching hours upon hours of ice skating or working on school, I was trying to remember to breathe.

Related: In which my life is one constant extenuating circumstance

The LB preschool thing was a bigger deal than I let on to anyone.

I just kept thinking…I can’t go through this again. I can’t go through this again. 

Every time I would walk in for pickup I would dread the report. It was a physical tightening in my chest. When it got to the point that he was spending half of the preschool day in the school administrator’s office, I knew there had to be a change.

I can’t have another kid expelled from preschool. 

Call me selfish. Because I know it’s not about me, its about my child succeeding. But in those moments, I realized that what I had lived (and was now reliving) was a trauma. The pain was still fresh. The hot tears still rolled down my eyes as I started crying in the preschool lobby. I walked away with a lump in my throat when I left him, knowing that we were going to have to find an alternative.

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Much like everything relative to Little Brother, this experience was far better than that of his elder sibling. This time, I didn’t wait for suspensions and expulsions. I didn’t wait to get help. I didn’t ignore the voices in my head that were nudging me to find a better option before a better option was absolutely necessary.

Here’s the thing about Little Brother. He’s far less of a pretty-much-normal-but-maybe-there’s-some-extra-needs-there-too kid than Ezra ever was. He’s always been more normal, more typical, and less challenging. He doesn’t really have too many sensory challenges, and he was able to self-soothe from Day 1 of his life in ways Ezra still can’t. He’s my easy(er) child.

But he still wasn’t succeeding in a typical classroom environment.

With him, it’s lots of layers – just different layers than Ezra has. He’s exposed to a lot of conflict within the home due to having an older sibling with a mood disorder and defiance problems. He doesn’t really have calm, obedient, and compliant modeled to him. He mimics a lot of behaviors that I don’t think would have ever occurred to him otherwise.

There’s so much on his tiny shoulders. While his looks mimic those of his father, his heart and personality are truly mini-me. He’s empathetic and sweet and calm and very much the emotional glue that holds this family together, yet is strong-willed enough to hold his own in the midst of an oft-tempestuous environment. He also carries a hefty dose of anxiety (often over very irrational things) and a wee bit of obsessive and perfectionistic behaviors.

Related: Ode to the Neurotypical Sibling of the Special Needs Child

I toured a second preschool – the only other church-based preschool within a two-mile radius of our home. I felt like it would be a good fit for him. Maybe. Honestly the idea of pulling him from one preschool and putting him into another made me sick to my stomach. So did the idea of going back to him being home all day every day with me. So did the idea of keeping him where he was and waiting for him to get kicked out.

I was sitting in the outer lobby of our YMCA when I made a call to the administrator of his current preschool, really just to clear the air.

We are considering a move…what’s the process if we decide to pull him…how does the finances work… etc. 

It was then that she asked me if I had heard of such-and-such a program or talked to So-and-So. It just so happens that I was familiar with So-and-So because we had mutual friends who were also our neighbors, and I had actually been on So-and-So’s website a few weeks earlier because this mutual friend of ours had sent me links to sensory stuff on Pinterest that was housed on So-and-So’s Pinterest account.

It was really strange because I was like, “Oh yeah…her…wait, she does what?”

I immediately pulled up the website, right there at the Y.

“…a sensory friendly class for children with social delays ages three and four…Classes will maintain a low student-to-teacher ratio as we integrate social skills through a preschool curriculum.”

So like, a program for special needs kids who aren’t quite “special” enough to get special education but not quite normal enough to succeed in a typical classroom? Where was this program 5 years ago?!?!

That afternoon I talked with So-and-So (did I mention that I discovered she lives down the street from us) for almost an hour in the midst of breaking up sibling squabbles. I sat on my back steps and poured my heart out to her. How tired and exhausted I was. How hopeless I felt. How divided my time, attention, and energy are – all the time.

She listened and empathized, and I felt heard and understood. She shared that she had a heart and vision not just for special needs kiddos (like our Ezra) but also their siblings who often fall through the cracks and need real help and attention too.

Then she shared with me how their organization had programs for BOTH of my children to attend at separate times and days of the week that would assist them in their emotional regulation and social skills with peers their age – and ultimately within the home.

The only drawback was the cost. The cost. The cost.

I wrestled with how to break this news to my husband, because I was sure that he would say no. To my surprise, his answer was yes yes yes…I don’t care how much it costs…it’s a no brainer. 

I felt both a relief and a weight hit me all at once.

Okay. Let’s buckle down. Let’s cut the budget. Let’s make this happen.

The boys started the following week as we stepped out in faith not knowing where the money would come from to pay for these programs. 

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The first few weeks were an adjustment, but they both started thriving. One of the wonderful things is that these programs share staff members, meaning that the staff work with both of our boys separately, at different times, but have truly gotten to know us as a family.

I had a flash of genius and decided that if…maybe…I marketed myself as a virtual assistant to So-and-So that she would put me to work for the organization in an administrative capacity.

That morning at the Y – a different morning, this time I was on the treadmill – I dictated the bare bones of a resume into a Google doc. By the end of the day, I had sent it to her. The unfortunate reality is that she already had a pretty great team and didn’t really need my services.

I decided at some point in the fall that I was burned out from school and needed to refocus my attention on my family and also invest more time and effort into my affiliate marketing gig – which does produce some income if you count about $30 monthly in Amazon credit and a random $100 here or there for other companies an income. I also made a friend who needed some part-time VA work, but that’s was kind of hit and miss as well.

But as our debt continued to climb and we tightened the belt even more, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough.

In a state of desperation, I wrote a blog post about money, and I started accepting donations from friends and family.

In the month of March, we spent $757.59 on therapies, medication, & counseling for our family plus the $515 for preschool and after school programs for the boys.

But…