Happy Thursday! Here is part 2 of my story:
So began my quest for the truth. And maybe that’s where you are right now. This shedding of lies that has been wrapped around us to make us believe we were safer ‘trusting the experts’ than trusting our own intuition. That the doubts, both spoken and unspoken, we have are somehow not valid, even when it involves our own children. That our lack of education that acquires a degree in the medical field somehow disqualifies us. That we are not enough—not smart enough, not capable enough, not strong enough.
Releasing these lies is HARD. We’ve allowed them to define us for so long, whether we truly even understood how we allowed them to describe us.
I’ve had friends mention to me how their doctors have said something such as, “Thank goodness you aren’t like some of the other moms who come in here—not wanting to do what is best for their baby. Denying medical care that is available and saves lives. They act as if they’d rather live in a third-world country.”
And there it is—this subtle shaming of other moms that have questioned the systems and we think, “I don’t want to be talked about like that.”
So, we do what we are told. Molding ourselves to the expectations, until we’ve had enough, and we want more.
It wasn’t that we weren’t enough—it’s that we weren’t given enough.
Enough information. Enough encouragement. Enough support.
That’s what I started to search for. I pulled my son from the system and I began the journey of figuring out what hope and healing looked like instead of the script that has been written for us of trauma, victimhood, and accepting less than.
Hope is actually the part that is most important, but it is often the one that is easily let go of. We trade our hope in so easily for labels that forever keep ourselves or our children defined by less than. We are told to celebrate their suffering instead of celebrating their healing, and I’m not okay with it.
Are you?
Are you okay with days and months dedicated to a label? Being told the funds being raised are to further research to find a cure? Solutions that are never found because that wasn’t really the point to begin with.
We are fully aware of these labels—what we aren’t aware of is the healing that can happen. Those stories are silenced. Those stories are labeled as misinformation. Those stories are ones that are told by mothers who are crazy.
Another reminder of the shame that will be attached to choosing a different ending than the one the system has written for you and your child.
But I’m here to tell you now—you can pen a different ending. You don’t have to settle for less.
More to come in Part Three….
