❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
RMH
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occasionally subtle
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Mike Driver
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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macklin celebrini has autism
One Nice Bug Per Day
Claire Keane
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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@chaoticbeautifullife
I always forget there are maga people on tumblr, this doesn’t feel like a website you’d find them on, so to keep them away:
Reblog if your blog is a maga free zone because if it wasn’t clear enough fuck ice, fuck maga, fuck Trump, Fuck Rowling, and fuck all the other bigots I missed
In case anyone missed it
Senior Prom! Monkey's best friend took this pic after the "walk-in" of the two of us. T - 29 days until graduation!
“I’ve found that growing up means being honest. About what I want. What I need. What I feel. Who I am.”
— Epiphany
this is so reassuring I seriously needed to hear this
“Stop asking me to trust you while I’m still coughing water up from the last time you let me drown.”
— Unknown
2 YEARS??
Apparently it's been two years since I've logged into this platform. ADHD time blindness is REAL. Anyway, a quick what's new..... my oldest bonus son from my previous marriage just made Sergeant in the Army. He's a paratrooper. My next oldest is a SENIOR now and has been accepted to his first choice with a four year full ride scholarship. We're so freaking proud of him. He wants to be a HS or college history teacher. The twins are 7, in 2nd grade, and causing chaos wherever they go. I adore them to the moon and back. They recently started Taekwondo and LOVE it.
As for me, I've been back in school to earn my Human Services degree. I had gastric sleeve surgery and went from 350 lbs to currently 279 and struggling to lose more, but I'm pretty determined. I also started Taekwondo just last week and it has been incredibly humbling, seeing as I'm incredibly out of shape....
My husband is a GM of a popular family pizza restaurant in the city here, and in the last two years we moved to a new house, not a duplex, and have added more cats to our family. Our one, lone, giant, dog acts like the cool uncle to all of them.
Our lives are crazy chaos, but I wouldn't change a thing about it.
This month has been SOOOOO busy! I now have a 15 year old SOPHOMORE and two 5 year old kindergarteners!!! Back to school season has been super crazy, but I think we're settling back down now. My husband I also both had birthdays this month. I have more to write, but I'll get to it a bit later this evening.
and very, very often, self care is not plants and ice rollers and fluffy blankets of peace.
it’s standing over your kitchen sink and crying while doing the dishes because you just want to go back to bed but the dishes need done. and you don’t know why you’re crying but you're trusting you need it. and you aren’t listening to the music that pulls you into a spiral; you’re listening to some cheerful shit your friend sent you. it’s getting up and staring at your fridge and closing your eyes and then cooking yourself food even though you hate it and it’s miserable. because you know that you’d cook for your friend, and you are trying to befriend yourself. it’s dragging yourself into the shower because you know you’ll feel better afterwards. it’s doing mundane tasks with patience, cursing under your breath, trying desperately to give yourself grace. grace is the beginning of care. care is the beginning of love.
we think it’s supposed to be peace and yet the most powerful self care moments are when we hate everything but especially ourselves. and life does not feel worth the loving. to look into that pain and yet choose to care for yourself in however many pieces you are — that is care. love. grace. trust. belief. it hurts because it’s love where there was no love before. it heals because it believes there will be love, one day, soon.
Sometimes I wonder. if I just disappear, would anyone notice? Would anyone care?
I'm hanging on by the thinnest of threads and I don't know how much more I can take.
Quick shoutout to everyone whose disability directly conflicts with their passion.
People who love light and color and photography but have extremely sensitive eyes. People who love food but have digestive disorders and intolerances. People who would play every instrument they could get their hands on but lack dexterity and muscle strength to play. People who can’t make themselves focus long enough to study the field they want to be in. People who want to paint and draw and sculpt but can’t coordinate their hands well enough, or cramp up every time they hold a brush/pencil/tool. People across all passions who face a massive barrier to learning because following a set of instructions is difficult when they don’t feel specific enough.
There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing you’d be good at something and that it’s not your fault you can’t prove it. Especially in a world that seems to only recognize top level picture perfect talent at all times. Your passion isn’t negated by not being able to follow it, and neither is your potential. You’re not lazy. Do what you can and fuck ‘em if they think it’s not good enough.
I think the biggest misconception abled people have about disabled people's pain is that it feels like normal pain everyone has felt before, and that you can get used to it and grow a tolerance like normal pain.
ITS NOT LIKE THAT
Here's an example, when I was 12 I got a daith piercing in my ear, It was the worst pain I had ever felt. I felt like someone was trying to crush my skull.
Then I became disabled, And that became the worst pain I ever felt. My joints felt like they were literally on fire almost constantly for over 3 years. It NEVER felt less painful.
Last year I had to get my daith repierced, it felt like a tiny pinch.
The constant chronic pain I feel has increased my tolerance for normal pain, but you cannot increase tolerance for chronic pain. It is always excruciating at worst, very uncomfortable at best, the pain never hurts less. You just learn how to accept it and strengthen your mind enough to think past the pain. YOU CANNOT GET USED TO CHRONIC PAIN. That's why we can't "push through it", or "toughen up". It's not normal pain, your brain is literally confused and forces you to feel pain because it thinks you're extremely injured.
Imagine burning your arm on something reeaaally hot, now imagine the burning sensation you feel is inside your muscles and joints and not on the surface on your skin, now imagine feeling that 24/7 and you can't get rid of it. That's what I'm dealing with man. Do you abled people get it now??
A little admission:
When I was about 15 years younger, my mom once asked, "Don't you want the life your brother has? The big house, and all the extras?" She was commenting because a guy I was dating looked, *gasp* like a blue collar worker, and I was working for a non-profit for practically peanuts.
At that time, I told her no. I'd rather be happy and I didn't feel that a bunch of possessions was the key to happiness. I was firmly in the, "money can't buy happiness" camp.
I've changed my mind. I still believe that money can't directly make you happy, but having money allows certain things to be less stressful and other things more accessible so that you can be happiER.
I now WANT that great paying job, and the bigger house with a pool and a beautiful yard. I DREAM of a car newer than 20 years old and not stressing over the most basic of necessities.
I'm currently manifesting this and taking the necessary steps. I WILL be successful. My children deserve a better life and I'm going to make it happen.
Adjustments
I've commented many times over the years about the sad state of my back. Of course, I just assumed that I had a bad back from the many injuries sustained while cheerleading and in martial arts. Then I had that incident with a client who flipped me onto concrete and the professionals told me THEN that the injury would have lifelong affects. I just never realized the extent.
After the twins, my thyroid shut down again, I gained MORE weight, and I had even more back problems. Of course, this time I was blaming the strain that the twin pregnancy took. I mean, they even dislocated my pelvic bone and I had trouble walking at all and well....everything in my body took a beating.
May of 2021 everything came to a head. I was in the boys room and my spine had a weird feeling and all of a sudden my thighs on both legs started convulsing and then went paralyzed. I could feel them, but I couldn't move them AT ALL. I was in the hospital for five days while they ran many tests. Nothing was conclusive, but that seemed to be the trigger point. After that incident, the paralysis episodes came more and more frequently. I was sustaining injuries from falls left and right. I was having more tests, but the only thing they conclusively ruled out was MS. I can't even roll over in bed. If I move a quarter turn, everything from my L4 vertebrae to my knees goes into a paralysis episode. Then I have to wait for it to pass, move a little bit again and then wait for the next episode to pass. I have been put on many medications for pain and nerve issues, but nothing touches it.
Anyway, the final diagnosis was arachnoiditis and ankylosing spondylitis. I had never heard of arachnoiditis. It's painful and debilitiating and there's no good treatment or cure. The amount of pain that I'm in on a daily basis often takes my breath away and there have been many mornings that I wake up crying and just wish for it to end. There's a reason it has the nickname of "The Suicide Disease". Of course, I have my three children and my husband to keep me grounded and reminded why I fight my way through every day. I have a wheelchair now for when I do out of house activities. I chose a manual wheelchair because I want to still be as active as I can, but it's hard because, as I said, I've gained a LOT of weight. I've been told so many times that I should have bariatric surgery, but my insurance refuses to cover it, even for medical reasons. I'm trying very hard to do as much exercise as possible and to strengthen my upper arms, but it's slow going and often frustrating. I have every faith in myself that I can do it, though. I'm looking forward to seeing how far I've progressed come this time next year.
I could watch this forever. It's so calming.
SEVEN Years
I haven't written in this blog for SEVEN years. SEVEN. That is insane to me. Especially because this blog was my straight up sanity for the longest time. It saw me through being single, being married to the military, fertility problems, getting divorced and then the journey of being a single mom to a child with challenges. Now, I'm back and I'm no longer a single mom. I am a married mom of THREE!!! Obviously, a LOT has happened but I'm going to stick to the main things that have changed and just move forward from here. I find myself in a position where I really want to write again. I really need to, in order to get my brain on straight.
I am no longer JUST MonkeysMamaBear, and that is because almost 5 years ago I gave birth to identical twin boys, Punkin and Peanut. Talk about my world flipping upside down! Monkey was 10 when they were born. It is still absolutely wild to me that next month I will have a 15 year old and two 5 year olds. Monkey is now a Sophomore in high school and the Littles are starting Kindergarten. Just...wow
2. I am no longer a single mom. Not that this will come as a surprise to some people, but my best friend, that I had written about many times over, and I fell in love. We had the twins and then we got married. It's been a fantastic just over 2 years since we got married.
Times haven't been easy. We moved to Ohio. I'm not in love with it here, but we're here for stability for his mom, and I love her, so here I am.
The economy sucks and we are struggling financially, but figuring out our way through it.
I was diagnosed with arachnoiditis and ankylosing spondylitis and now require a wheelchair for outings outside of the home. That's a challenge that I will write about more in another blog because grrrrr.....
That pretty much covers the big things. It's good to be back.
