Mondays don't tend to be a friend of mine. The to-do list of the week ahead leaves me sleepless on Sunday nights. Combined with the end of the always too short weekend, and I find Mondays hard.
Each Monday morning, I drag myself out of my warm bed to get ready before my troops awake. As if they can sense that it is the end of the weekend, where they delight in getting up before 6am, I find myself having to wake my children to get them going, prompt them to eat their breakfast, wrestle them into their clothes, hold them down to brush their hair, and bribe them to brush their teeth.
Running a little behind this morning, I found myself telling each of them a little more sternly than usual that they needed to get a leg up. And then it hit me. The realization that I had little ones to get ready for the day. The sad thoughts of those that didn't have the privilege of this Monday morning.
Immediately my tone softened, behind it the awareness that every moment, even the tough ones, are a gift. My eyes welled with tears thinking of those Mama's and Papa's in Newtown whose Monday, and every day since last Friday, has tragically been changed forever.
Over the weekend I read an amazingly well written perspective of a Mother living with a child with Mental illness. Liza Long's I Am Adam Lanza's Mother is an article focusing on the struggles and uncertainties of Mental Health, and the lack of resources for both those who need help and those who want to help them.
I was deeply touched by the article. Being both a Mother, and having had a career working with individuals with Mental Health Issues, I grasped to understand how difficult it must be to parent a child with a mental health diagnosis. Liza Long's writing provides us a glimpse into her and her son's relationship, good and bad, and how it affects parenthood and the family unit.
It was surprising to come across articles this morning criticizing Liza's post. Her critics attack, stating that the comparison of one child with mental health to one that has committed the most horrendous of crimes is ridiculous, and that family history and parental involvement were not properly documented. I find her critics to be uninformed, as, when I delved further in, I could not find one to be parenting a child with mental health issues.
In an age of instant and over sharing, their unwarranted criticisms are infuriating to me. The aftermath of the events in Newtown has had a focus on gun control. This seems to be the focus after any kind of incident involving firearms. I do not agree with the right to bear arms, but I am also not an American citizen, so the Constitution has little bearing on my life. That said, I do not believe that guns kill people. People kill people.
Until we, as a global nation, can offer the resources and help to individuals requiring it, these tragedies will continue to occur. The same day as the Newtown tragedy occurred, a man in China attacked twenty two children with a knife. Thankfully, no fatalities occurred. But it glaringly shows that mental health affects people at home, in neighboring countries, and across the world.
It's time to start the discussion. It's time for mental health to be given the same immediacy as cancer and heart attacks. It's time to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
