I was driving last night while listening to my local public radio station. I caught part of TED talk and interview with a woman who rowed across the Atlantic in 103 days. I wasn’t in the car long, so I am certain I have missed all sorts of relevant details about this woman and her journey–including her name, which I sort of don’t want to look up and spoil the vague air of mystery around her.
The thing is, in all of the books and blog posts and stories about special needs parenting, grief, and confusion that I have encountered, this woman’s description of her experience in the Atlantic so much more clearly touched upon the way on my journey of with a child who is medically fragile…and with my work with TCS.
This woman explained that she had no skills that made her particularly equipped to decide to row across the Atlantic. She just decided it was something she wanted to do, and 14 months later after settling all her preparations for the journey, she cast-off. A tiny person, in a tiny boat, in a vast and unpredictable sea. It happened that the summer of her journey–which would have been hard enough without any complications–was the most active summer of tropical storms ever recorded.
All of her oars broke by the time she was halfway across the Atlantic.
She explained the thing about fear: you can live with Earth-shattering fear for only so long. It then becomes the norm and you settle into it. We all live with fear every day, to a certain extent. Her fears, however, were survival…not letting her boat get smashed into thousands of pieces and drowning in the ocean. This was her daily reality. And, as she explained, her larger fear was not succeeding. She was more afraid of turning the boat around and going home than she was to trudge forward into the unknown.
This is exactly how I feel–what I wish I could explain when one more well-intentioned person says: “I just don’t know how you do it.” That feeling that you have no choice but to row and row and row, driven to reach something, to attain something whose purpose is yet unknown, because you have no choice because the alternative is not an option. So you row. And when your fucking oar breaks, you grab another, and another, and another. And when the last one breaks you mend it with tears and duct tape and fear.
And then you keep rowing.
Oh my! Such perfect words for the unexpected journey through special needs.
This is a great post – our almost two year old has a congenital heart defect and your sentences (or the TED woman's) resonate with me … "you can only life with Earth-shattering fear for so long. It then becomes the norm and you settle into it." Row on, sweet warrior Mama!
Thank you!