Coming back to this post; November is according to me the best month in Delhi NCR when the winters are just giving a subtle hint of their presence ... for a person struggling at a personal level with depression sometimes; anxiety at others and a constant struggle to stay afloat most of the times; this weather gives alot of hope.
One rarely opens up so casually about their mental health challenges; but I am doing so, purely from a therapeutic angle; not caring if there are going to be or not going to be any readers ... not here for sympathy ... only to journal my own evolution as a parent to a child on the autism spectrum with dysgraphia and learning difficulties and an adult struggling with mental health challenges; where each day I accept the challenge of moving forward ... sometimes strides and other times just keep breathing.
The autism journey is gradually making me the person who is learning to live in the here and the now ..... often getting tempted to catapult to a future I have no clue of; seldom but never the less to a past I perhaps had and continue to have no control over. Hindi mein bolein toh yeh safar ek sthoolta sey sookshmata kaa safar bannta jaa raha hai.
Why journaling after a long gap of five years you may ask? Or perhaps what was I upto for the past five years could be another question...
I am returning to my blog to continue to remain in the here and the now; to express and feel gratitude towards all things bright and beautiful happening for us, to keep an account of challenges and how we overcome those challenges on a day to day basis and most of all to celebrate parenting of a wonderful child that my A is... he makes the journey worth its while.
I was not really quiet in the past five years, just became very private; I wrote but not to share... the results are good I may report from five years ago... a time when the school who took A in first grade in July and said in October "we can't seem to help him, we are clueless about how to handle him" to now when A is confidently attending class 5 in the same school navigating the highs and lows with grace - dignity and courage .... we seem to have come a long way. I don't think I'll journal the progress of the past five years as we need to focus on the here and the now .... but off and on ... I will keep referring contextually to the then and now ... as need emerges.
For the current targets; amongst other things; my two very personal targets are Money Matters and Minding numbers. Well A has a school cafeteria which he is very enthusiastic about; I am starting his understanding of social maths ... money to be more precise from here... we go through the rigmarole every twice a week on cafeteria day; "How much do you need me to give you for cafeteria today?" "how do we make Rs. 60 - one fifty and one ten / how much is 50 and ten?" The second thing I felt is needed urgently is for A to know the phone numbers of the three primary caregivers in his life. God forbid; should there ever be a need for him to seek help to reach us; he must know the basics of where he lives (which he knows); what are the numbers of his parents (which I intent to teach).
For now we are taking just these two personal goals since there is already way too much otherwise to achieve ... and thank God for that.
I'll see if I can click a picture tomorrow of the Gulaabi thand...
And will keep updating my journey as I go along... should there be a reader other than myself ...
Happy reading!
