This morning a Facebook memory popped up that was an interview with Terry Waite about his time when he was held hostage in Beirut. Although the point of the interview was to emphasise the importance of the arts and imagination, the thing that really, really resonated with me was him saying that: ‘This is your life now. Not tomorrow, not yesterday now. And in this moment, don’t be defeated’.

I feel like a bit of a drama queen in a way, as this amazing man was talking about 5 years as a hostage, enduring isolation, beatings, and unimaginable hardship, but his words really spoke to me and how I was feeling last night and this morning after another night sleeping on the floor of our teen’s room.

I sometimes feel like I am struggling with everything, that I should be handling things better, that I shouldn’t be behind at work or the house should be less feral or I could be doing things better to support our family. However, if we had a new born or a young baby and I felt like this, people wouldn’t be surprised at all. Almost everyone who is a parent has felt the exhaustion that a new baby will bring, so people nod, understand and sometimes give unsolicited advice.

We, however, have an anxious, autistic teen, and as I have blogged numerous times before, if you have met one autistic person you have met…. one autistic person, so even if I talked to lots of other parents in the same situation as us, the chances are they would be having a completely different time with different highs and lows! So, we are in unknown, uncharted territory. This is our normal. This is our now.

With our eldest, when he was a teen, sleep was ok but the days were angry. With our youngest, the days are, generally, ok but sleep is the issue. The big plus is that we have 8 years between them so at least the anger stopped before the sleepless nights started!

We are lucky to have two amazing children with amazing brains that sometimes overthink, but more often are, well, amazing. If the downside to that, was angry daytime teenage years or restless nighttime teenage years, then that’s fine. This is our normal, this is now, and we will not be defeated!