Value

We are taught growing up that certain things hold value. I'm not talking about monetary value, although I'm sure that could apply, but milestones, achievements, goals, things that make up your value. I grew up differently than most people. I grew up away from my own family, but for the most part an outsider to the families that I did grow up with. Growing up in foster care is complicated. It may seem simple enough to the outsider, oh okay you didn't grow up with your family, but it isn't that simple. It means that forever your values, outlooks, spiritual beliefs, traditions you chose to pass along, those are hodge podged, things you've collected along the way, a little from this family and a little from that. People look at you and say, "oh you're Jewish, no wait, you're Christian" Myself I like to think I strive to be a good person and those titles don't matter. But they come up over and over again.

So value, I mean the value that floats between tangible and non tangible. For me this meant college. I didn't grow up in a family that said "You need to go to college" quite the opposite actually. I grew up amongst people that didn't hold those high expectations for me. I'm not pointing fingers, just the families I've lived with didn't even hold those expectations for themselves. But this attitude fostered in me a drive to find meaning in my education. It was very very important to me. During very difficult years that included 7 different high schools, I forced myself to pull it together and earn good grades. It wasn't easy. It wasn't at all. High school in many ways will always be my greatest achievement. And that is sad. Super sad. But college was the goal and I told myself that this was a very important part of myself. I went to college, I had a degree. And that degree lead to another degree. And I became the first person in any of my families to earn a Master's Degree. But it wasn't just any Master's Degree, it was a specialist's degree....and that held immeasurable value to me. I told myself, this is who you are and no one expected that of you, no one thought you could, not in a million years. And then at 26 I was accepted into a doctoral program, and that held an unreal amount of value to me.

Only life takes you on different turns. Instead of a Ph.d I chose to raise a teenager, something that held a different kind of value...in many ways a much more important value. After all, this child was so much like me, who I had been, and I thought that if I did everything right, gave her all the advantages I had, taught her how to use certain tools, well I could help her find the "value" I had discovered. I used to be so stupid. I was the smartest stupid person I'd ever met. So book smart, so street smart, but so interpersonally stupid. In trying to make better for this little girl, I was really trying to save the little girl I had been, which is also incredibly sad. And in the end, after all that effort, I'm not quite sure it helped either one of us.

But slowly my ideas on value began to change, I didn't dismiss my education, it was still an important part of who I was. I looked in the mirror and I saw a very intelligent woman, someone whose skill was extremely valuable in her field. I saw someone who could teach the unteachable to read, someone who had something to offer. It made me feel valuable. The sad part is that I never felt valuable just by virtue of being me. No one had ever told me that I was.

So life moves on and I look in the mirror and now I see myself as someone's wife, Phill's wife. I am a good educator, a loving wife, a great friend and sister, and now I'm an aunt. And that is who I am. And I feel good about that value. And then I am pregnant, I'm almost a mother, but not yet. But my identity is changing slowly. Still I held onto the importance of being Holly Cole, a reading specialist, a special educator, a damn smart person. After all, many are blessed with charmed childhood's, those gifts that I have never experienced. For all the bad I'd been given, I have never once taken for granted that I was given the gift of above average intelligence. It was so important to me. My brain was my value.

So Asher came along. I expected to look in the mirror and see my value grow. I would see Holly Cole, a loving mother, a wife, a great friend, the world's best auntie, a smart woman who indulged in brain research for fun, a prolific reader, and a progressive teacher. In reality I saw a struggling mother of an infant who was very ill. I was too tired to be a good wife, I became an unattentive friend, sister, aunt, I couldn't work, I was no longer an educator. And that brain research? No, it was replaced with immuno disorder research. And Asher became the only thing of real value in my life, and he was broken. I know people see me in a better light than this and I'm sorry to burst bubbles, but the truth is...I was incredibly depressed. I had no idea who I was anymore. And nothing was about me, I lost myself. I became the least important person in my life, the last person I considered, and everyone suffered for it. I lost my value.

Slowly life with Asher became easier. We learned how to manage PID, we learned how to cook for many many food allergies, we figured out the medical food game and there was more time to be a friend, mother, wife, aunt. I remember emerging from the fog and looking at my nephew and realizing, I didn't really know him that well, for all his six months on earth, I wasn't that close to him, not the way I wanted to be, not the way I was to his sister. I had been unavailable for too long. I went back to work, I felt good teaching kids to read, I started up my brain research again, I debated with coworkers the merits of research based phonics instruction over whole language methods. I felt smart again. And yippee...I brought money into my household...what a concept. I looked in the mirror and I saw these things. And I felt valuable again. It was nice....while it lasted.

Somewhere between 16-18 months for Asher, that picture started to become distorted again. Starting with the day I walked into a room and my son didn't look up. I kneeled behind him and screamed his name, he didn't startle, he didn't move. I banged pots and pans, nothing. Oh dear god everything went blurry...the picture started to acid peel away, it fizzled as it went, taking my sense of me with it. Then we dove into unknown territory. I looked in the mirror and all I saw was Holly Cole Autism Mama. Everything else that I had deemed so valuable and important was gone. I became again, the least important person in my life. My real value lying in what I could do for my son.

I couldn't work, which means we lost my income and suffered financially. Someday I'll write a blog about that, because it is unreal what having a child like Asher does to your financial security. I no longer had the means to pay on my student loans, loans that had paid for my precious education. I couldn't work, not if I wanted to get Asher the services he needs, keep him in the school program he needs, make the most of this most important developmental time period. And I'm not a martyr, I'm not an amazing mom, I don't have super strength, anyone one of you reading this would do the same thing. You'd do it. You just don't know it yet. I hope you never need to know.

And that is where we are. Only I look in the mirror now and I see Holly Cole, Asher's Mom, Autism Mom, Phill's wife, Lola's Mom. Now I think a lot more about my value, I'm reassessing. I can't stand before you and say that being a mom makes me super valuable, that is a smack in the face to every woman who longs to be a mother and can't. I can't say that an not take our sex back several generations. I won't stand before you and say my children are the best gift I can give to the world, little heroes just by existing, the bright lights that give my life any and all meaning it needs. Much like growing up in foster care, it isn't that simple. I love my son and I will love my daughter, I already do. But I love myself, I have to in order to be a good friend, a good wife, a good person, those things I also find quite valuable.

And I don't have answers. But I know that many of those who read my blog are special needs mamas and I know from conversations that we are all struggling with our value. It is a concept that is evolving slowly for all of us. And maybe my value on this Earth will never be tangible, maybe it doesn't need to be. And maybe my only real job is to not lose myself. I guess I just haven't figured out how to do that yet.