It is a delusion to believe that you must be well to treat a person who is sick or suffering.
–Dr. James Orbinski
When my son Carter (whose diagnoses are of the emotional/cognitive/behavioral/social sort) was two years old and had been screaming and wakeful every day for approximately 98.6% of that two years, I embarked on a most ridiculous quest: I wanted to know why I, fallible, broken, screwed-up-in-the-head, and lacking a seemingly essential has-her-shit-together quality, had become Carter’s mother.
It seemed to me that there had been a cosmic mistake. Shouldn’t broken babies go to better-than-average mothers? That’s the story, after all. We say that God never gives us more than we can handle, and to him who much is given, much is expected, and a thousand other tidy quips.
Read the rest at Hopeful Parents.
