Ripples

J, my (nearly) 3 year old is a very smart child (aren't everyone's children "geniuses"?). Like a lot of children, he's very aware of the emotional states of those around him, but he's (un)lucky enough to have had a lot of practice in verbalizing them--a pro and con of having a therapist parent, I suppose. At any rate, today he got a small cut on his pinky toe. He cried and cried! It seemed a bit much for the size of the owie, to be quite honest. We fixed it up with a band-aid, provided cuddles and kisses, distraction--nothing worked. Finally, I sat with him in the chair and we quietly rocked. After some time, J who was still sobbing, looked at me and pleaded, "Please don't cut off my owie!" Confused, I attempted to console him and let him know that's not how we fix owies...and then we both looked at my chest.

"Are you thinking about how we cut out Mommy's owie?"

"Uh-huh" came the stuttering reply.

We had a big conversation about how Mommy's owies are different than J's owies. I reminded him that I had cancer--which is different than his owie. We talked about how Moms and Dads fix their children's owies and that we didn't need to "cut" anything off of him.

It dawned on me after this conversation...the cancer may be out of my body, but it's still in my life. Even as I sit here, three weeks post-op, with a drain still in and still struggling to heal my blisters. It's a part of my life and worse, it remains a part of my children's lives. It's a reminder that although I'm a "professional" and I know how to deal with trauma, I'm still just a Mom, trying to help her children make sense of a really, awfully shitty situation.