{"id":5157,"date":"2015-10-28T23:31:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T06:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/?p=5157"},"modified":"2015-10-28T23:33:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T06:33:53","slug":"the-perpetual-grief-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/the-perpetual-grief-series\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perpetual Grief Series\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve had a lot of hard moments, recently!&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4928.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/IMG_4928.jpg?w=840&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This past Sunday, neither of my little boys wanted to go to their class at church. &nbsp;I know that once they are settled, they enjoy themselves; but transitioning from being with mom and dad to being in their class has been so difficult. &nbsp;Sunday was no exception. &nbsp;We managed to get Judah settled &#8211; but he wasn&#8217;t happy about it. &nbsp;And Jon took Siah up to his class. &nbsp;He sent me the picture up above, saying that Siah was pretty pissed to be there and was refusing to join in. &nbsp;He was just standing in the corner, glowering at everyone. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He finally worked his way through whatever transitioning he needed to do and realized that he could &#8220;improve on&#8221; what they were doing for the craft. At that point, he quite happily joined in.<\/p>\n<p>When I spoke with him later, &nbsp;he mentioned that getting &nbsp;a&#8221;list of what was going to happen&#8221; would help&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;and that explained everything. &nbsp;He was feeling anxious and out of control. &nbsp;His need for security and comfort displayed itself as defiance and opposition. &nbsp;But the reality was that he was scared and insecure.<\/p>\n<p>I suggested that maybe the calm Josiah needed to write the nervous Josiah a letter so when he had forgotten how fun class was; I could give him the letter so that he could remind himself&#8230;&#8230;.because even if you won&#8217;t trust me, you&#8217;ve got to trust yourself, right?<\/p>\n<p>He giggled for a long time about that. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But it breaks my heart to see him stressed beyond the ability to reason. &nbsp;He is such a smart, capable child as long as he&#8217;s not in &#8220;fight or flight mode&#8221;. &nbsp;Once he hits that&#8230;..basically we hold the course until he can come to a realization by himself.<br \/>\nAnd yet, the longer he stays in that space, the harder it is on him &#8211; &nbsp;physically, mentally and emotionally &#8211; and I hate that. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I grieve the loss of normalcy. &nbsp;I grieve the loss of ease. &nbsp;I was looking back at pictures from when I had only the older three kids and while life back then wasn&#8217;t easy&#8230;.it was different. &nbsp;It seemed simpler. &nbsp;It wasn&#8217;t easy. &nbsp;Jeremy wasn&#8217;t an easy kid but he as only 1 of 3 and at that point I had no idea of the world of pain I was headed into.<br \/>\nI grieve the loss of self. &nbsp;I grieve the loss of competence and confident capability. &nbsp;I grieve the loss of innocence.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like a part of me is stuck in that dark space of grieving. &nbsp;Like it&#8217;s been so long that grief has been touching me that it&#8217;s infused itself into me. &nbsp;Not overwhelming, just subtly changing&#8230;&#8230;..winding tiny bursts of sadness here and there. Not enough to overwhelm, but just enough to never forget&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve had a lot of hard moments, recently!&nbsp; This past Sunday, neither of my little boys wanted to go to their class at church. &nbsp;I know that once they are settled, they enjoy themselves; but transitioning from being with mom and dad to being in their class has been so difficult. &nbsp;Sunday was no exception. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/the-perpetual-grief-series\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Perpetual Grief Series\u00a0&#8220;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[57,33,77,16,78,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety","category-deep-thoughts","category-grief","category-me","category-perpetual-grieving-series","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5158,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions\/5158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}