I need to address my response and the following response from Bryan. Thank
you Bryan, I will lighten up. My concerns where misrespresented in my text
regarding what Kara's mother had said regarding the handicap parking sticker.
I meant to express my concerns for the family members of indivuals with TM.
My daughter Brooke is only 15 and has had a very difficult time watching her
mother go through such a horrible transformation. This past Christmas Brooke
was going to come home for her normal holiday visit (she is in boarding
school on the west coast) and about a week before her arrival home I recieved
a call from her asking if she could stay at school through the holiday
season. My heart almost broke, then I told my family what Brooke wanted and
they nearly twisted off. This set off a chain of events that could only be
surpassed by the tribulation and the Battle of Armageddon. Everyone
chastised Brooke for requesting this subbatical from seeing me in such an
altered state because of TM. She had been a real trooper through out her
life putting up with a single mother in a high profile political position.
Brooke, never cared what the evening news said good or bad about her mother,
she could even keep up the pace of "Mach 2 with my hair on fire" but she
could not take what was happening to me. Up to this point I never realized
what happened to the other victims of TM, our family members. Needless to
say at this point during Christmas everybody said things I am sure our family
could have done without. I then, being the defender and peacemaker that I
am, tried to patch things up. What a mess, we finally came to the decision
to allow everyone in the family the chance to say what they needed to as a
form of dealing with TM. Some of the responses were not what you would have
expected but it made all the difference in the world in my recovery. They
needed to talk, especially my only child, who for the year never said how
afraid she was that I would die, nor did I know she had done her own research
on spinal cord injuries.
Brooke needed to be heard and given some form of venting in an effort to deal
with the fear, yet she did not need the chastisement of "Your mother is very
ill, how dare you act like this and not come home for Christmas." Still to
this day I can weep at the thought of the other victims.
I guess the reason I defended Kara's mothers comment regarding Handicap
parking is simple to me, no one defended Brooke when her heart was breaking
because she was a silent victim of TM.
Please forgive the length of this correspondence but I needed to let you know
why I spoke out in this manner.
Thanks from the bottom of my mending heart,
Beth