Sharing recipes, crafts and frugal living, the challenges and triumphs of parenting a neurotypical child and a child on the Autism Spectrum. Yoga Instructor said goodbye to her nightly glass of Chardonnay to give up habits that were not serving her purpose in life! The CocktailMom name remains, however with a new focus on healthy and authentic living.

9/29/2017

Adoption From Foster Care- This House Needs Healing


In the last two months we seriously contemplated the idea of moving to another house, in the town in which we live. Actively doing Zillow searches and drive by of potential houses on the market in our price range, while making mental lists of our “must haves”. Then we thought what if we stay in our current house but purchased a small condo at the beach! Our weekends became about scheduling day trips to make the two and a half hour drive to the beach to look at properties. We found a community we really liked and put an offer on a condo in order to have another place to go and escape to.

We bought this house with the intention of expanding our family. The fourth bedroom was supposed to be his room, and it was his room for a short period of time but now it is nothing. And it has been nothing since he left three months ago. We refer to it as the “guest room” but it doesn’t feel that way, nor have we had any guests since he left.
It feels empty, both physically and emotionally.

After our offer was countered for a second time on the beach condo and the asking price was at a dollar amount that we didn’t feel comfortable spending, my wife and I sat down to talk about what we need in our lives and what we want.
We need more healing.

We need to not walk past this empty room everyday and feel broken-hearted. It’s hard to move on when there is a constant reminder of what was supposed to be. For my wife buying a new house felt like a fresh start but for me, I started to feel waves of anxiety. In previous years, I typically am the one leading the “let’s move” crusade. But I like this house, I like being a part of this community and I don’t have the energy right now to redo a kitchen or a bathroom again. I just want to feel settled for a little while.

“What if…” I say to her with a sly smile. “What if we did something untraditional?”
My wife just looks at me guarded and I imagine in her mind that she is thinking to herself, “No Gretchen we are not hanging silk hammocks from the ceiling and turning the room into your personal acro yoga space.”
I continue, “Okay what we don’t like about this house is having an eat-in kitchen and not having a dining room to entertain and invite people over for dinner.”
She nods waiting for me to continue.
“On the other hand, we never invite people over to watch television. We never actually even sit in the living room when people come over, we end up cramped in that tiny eat-in kitchen area. So what if we moved the living room to the fourth bedroom, it’s just us watching a movie up there anyway. We can turn it into a media room! And then what if we moved the dining room into what is currently the living room, we can then expand the table and invite a lot of people over. And then we can create these little corners of contemplation in there. Where we can sit and look out at the woods and read a book, to have these glimmers of life that feel like vacation in our house.”

She thinks about it for a few seconds where the air feels stagnant and then she smiles at me. “I love it!”, she says.

The conversation goes in a whirlwind as we talk about buying a new sofa and definitely needing different chairs for the dining room that feel more comfortable to sit and talk. I look into her eyes and at this point I’m crying, “I don’t want to hate this house because he’s not in it. We loved this house before he came and we still love each other and the boys. We need to face these emotions and not run from them. I want to feel settled. I want us to heal. And yes we bought this house with the intention of expanding our family but “life” happens. There are so many points in our lives when we set out on one course expecting to do one thing and then something happens to change our opinion or a different opportunity presents itself and we go in an entirely new direction. We need to heal, we don’t need to run.”

We hold each other in an embrace and cry, the tears that we have been holding inside since he left finally are released. And it feels like the very beginning again, it feels full of hope. And now with the decor renovation coming to a close it feels like a rebirth in this house, healing feels possible.

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