The Leap From Control to Humility

I apologize for the rambling of my last post. Because there has been such a great lapse of time between posts, I seem to have much more to share than if I was posting every couple of days. Therefore, this post will probably be equally, if not more wordy than the previous.

The first thing I want to share is that I took Alma to her doctor and he said that her face looked consistent to what was described by the assisted living facility and she seemed to be healing well. He also made a point to remind me not to get too caught up with demanding documentation from the facility. He states that there aren’t a lot of options around and we don’t want to “burn any bridges”. I will concede to his argument but share here that this line of logic really irritates me and I believe this contributes too many people having a great fear of advocating for themselves or others.

That being said, I will hop off my soap box long enough to acknowledge how touched I am by all of the positive response to this blog. It appears that my goal has been realized and it is nice to know that this has been an effective way to share what is going on with Alma. It’s wonderful to see that Alma truly has so many people who care about her as well. I am grateful for any input and support that we are receiving as a result.

Alma has only been home for a few days and, as usual, it has been a rough transition. Sunday was a really bad day filled with power struggles as we tried to find our groove and get back into some sort of regular routine. Most of our struggles involved hygiene issues and I refuse to bend on those (I won’t get into the gory details surrounding all of that). There were several moments where Alma tried to lash out at me physically and I became increasingly frustrated as the day wore on. It seemed as if we were feeding off of each other’s negative energy. The more she resisted, the more frustrated I got and vice versa. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and fearful that her good mood was gone for good. 

In relation to that, I'm beginning to realize that I may be wound a little too tight for taking Alma out in public. Without getting too far into my own psychoses, I will share that I may have a teeny tiny issue with control and a slight tendency towards self involvement. As a result, my obsessive worrying about what others think may outshine Alma’s emotional well being at times. This became grossly apparent when I took her over to my friend, Kelley’s place to work on some house projects. I thought it would be easy to help Kelley paint her fence and Alma would be content to play with her son, Silas. It seems that this idea was not very well thought out as she was in the midst of wanting to be in control of everything she was involved with (And rightfully so. However, it simply wasn’t practical and I became overly concerned about the way we might be affecting everyone else.).

Yesterday and quite magically her good mood was back and she hasn’t stopped cracking herself up since. Things are back to “normal” as she has been easily going along with whatever we are doing at the moment. It probably doesn’t hurt that I have also made a conscious effort to make light of whatever task is at had and avoid the power struggle through redirecting. As much as I hate to admit this, once again Keith’s “feedback” was pivotal in encouraging shifting my thinking. I suppose we all need redirection sometimes.