Perspective

Have you ever been feeling frustrated or upset and you don't quite have the words so all you can do is think inside of your head something like: AHHHHHHGGGRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep. That was yesterday. I was stuck in a loop in my head and all I could focus on was the problem. And then I remembered: I'm damn super hero.

My husband and I are in the throes of adopting. This is not something we talk about publicly for legal and other reasons, which adds to the isolation and frustration some days. There are loads of completely amazing and magical days. There are also days that I sit in the bathtub and cry. Super hard, ugly cry. Whether it's private adoption or foster care or kinship or family, you live on a roller coaster any time you are caring for a child that is not legally yours. Monday was stressful but manageable. Tuesday and Wednesday were amazing and Thursday gave us another frustrating stressor. And I got in my head about it. My internal dialogue was on an endless loop of, "Why can't ONE thing about this be easy?! Why is every. single. step. so damn difficult?! Don't these people know what we've been through?!" What we've been though. I was yelling at another person inside my head because they didn't understand my point of view and they didn't seem to care. I was yelling (at no one) about how I just wanted ONE damn person to meet us with compassion instead of every single thing along the way being so unnecessarily difficult. This, my friends, is drama. When we get inside ourselves like this, we are creating drama. It's a "me-me-me" and pity party shit show. But, can't we have big feelings? Yep. And our experience is full of them. It's totally okay to have big feelings about anger, frustration, grief, loss, or when things are very hard. And adoption - even private adoption - is very, very hard. So how do we experience hardships while keeping the drama at bay? Perspective. I allowed myself to feel the feelings. I found the right, drama-free words to express what I was feeling to my husband. He acknowledged it by saying that yes, we have been through a lot over the course of several years but we're in the home stretch. It's almost over. Hang in there. We got this and we're going to finish strong. I began to change my perspective. There is way more going right than there is to overcome. There is far more ahead than what is happening in this moment. Then I went to bed. At 9:30. When I woke up in the morning, I noticed my Wonder Woman coffee mug. It was calling me. I immediately said to myself, "I'm a fu&!#$! super hero! Let's fu&%!$! do this!" I may or may not have watched The History of Swear Words before bed.

Acknowledge your feelings. Feel your feelings. Find an outlet for them (exercise, punching a heavy bag, going outside and screaming in the woods, ugly crying, etc.); then put on your cape and remind yourself that you're a damn super hero. And this thing that is eating at you and you wonder why or why now? Remember that you're here on fu$%!#! purpose. And you're right on fu$!%! time!