inspiring

I wish I could be inspiring. There are all these blogs out there with very inspiring mothers. Maybe someday I will get there, but in my quest to deal with what is going on in our family I have come across some inspiring stories and quotes. I thought I would share a few since this blog is mostly my journal and it's a place to put my thoughts.
I read a story (in Elle magazine of all places) of a little girl who was hit by a car. There was so much damage that they had to remove 2/3rds of the left side of her brain. While in recovery she had a massive stroke. The doctors put her in a medically induced coma, took her body temp down to 33 degrees and told her mother to expect that her daughter would never walk or talk ever again and to prepare herself for a life with a very disabled daughter. I wept as I read how this mom went through all the stages of grief. I can relate to the idea that life will not be what you thought and mourning that loss. One day in the hospital as the mom listened to her daughters roommates plug being pulled and the sobs of the parents as they held their daughter as she passed, she decided that she had to have hope for her daughter. She wrote down a little mantra everyday to get her through, and would say it to herself when she felt hopeless. Four months later her daughter woke up and talked, eight months later she walked to her mom using a walker. Miracles happen, and until I hear different I have to believe that there is one in store for us. So I have copied this mothers mantra and it is on my door to the outside and everyday Quinn and I say it:

Lila is going to see. She will have a long, healthy, happy, normal life.
She will be a miracle child and grow up to inspire others.

My mom gave me this next quote. Again from an inspiring mother and it has helped me.

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability- to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this:
"When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The Gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, 'Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!" "Holland?!" you say, "What do you mean Holland?" I signed up for Italy!" "I am suppose to be in Italy." "All my life I have dreamed of going to Italy."
"But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place."
"So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandt's."
"But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, 'Yes, that's where I was suppose to go. That's what I had planned.' And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland."
-Emily Pearl Kingsley

And of course, Lila. Simply put. She inspires me everyday.....