The Power of Shared Experiences
Sharing your story can be therapeutic and help others. It fosters a sense of belonging and understanding within the community. It’s not easy depending on where you are during your journey. It wasn’t easy for me. As my children got older and our struggles were more than just a grocery store meltdown I slowly started to lose friends. Or maybe it was me that stepped away because I was embarrassed. I honestly don’t know, certain times in my life are still a blur as I just try to “survive” in the moment the last few years.
It felt like one day I had my village and the next day I was all alone. I have thought at times, “they’ll never understand what it’s like.” or “I swear my kids aren’t bad kids, we aren’t bad parents, we are just really struggling” When I was younger and thought of raising a family with the man I loved I didn’t see my teenage daughter self harming herself and my sweet eleven year old boy being diagnosed with autism. When I dreamed of motherhood I thought of the struggles my mother had with me, sneaking out to parties, lying and saying I was at my best friends house when I was really at my boyfriends. There was no self harming. My poor daughter just didn’t know how to deal with some of her deeper feelings. There was no such thing as sound sensory or oppositional defiant disorder. We did what we were told and if we didn’t as children we learned by natural consequences. We didn’t get to go to the school dance, have our weekly sleepover or meet up with friends at the movies.
In 2026, natural consequences are now teenagers suffering from what I like to call peer social media suffering. When teenagers fight with friends, it’s all over social media, maybe they are being left out of an outing with their “group” of friends. Or friends are trying to get other friends to take sides. Yes, we raised our daughter to talk to us and come to us when she is struggling with feelings or something specific. Learning that a friend she trusted in could turn her back with the swipe of a finger made me want to die inside. It’s when I took a step back and realized I did something right because my daughter did NOT retaliate and strike back. She could have taken this said girl to her knees by letting her deepest darkest secrets out on social media so she could feel what my daughter was feeling. No, instead that is the natural consequences teenagers like my daughter are suffering from these days.
It’s hard enough getting my highly anxious child to school on a daily basis, pushing through on days like that example is enough to send any parent into a tailspin of “why me!?” If we shared these moments a little more often with other parents, our community, our families, maybe we wouldn’t feel so alone. I always say “You never know what other families are going through.” This is me reaching out my hand to you so you don’t feel so alone. This website is me sharing my experiences and hopefully sometime soon others sharing their journeys as well.
How to Share
Participate in forums or community events to connect with other parents and share your journey. They are out there trust me. Joining a Facebook group is simple and sometimes just reading through other parents journeys can heal you in the moment. We have to celebrate those small moments. I tried to set up a network of moms parenting neurodivergent kids a few years ago in Southern NH, however it didn’t pan out. Sometimes life gets busy and I know I’m guilty of putting myself last in my family. Maybe an on-line community can be the next best thing. If I had a website where I could have obtained all of the information I needed when we were in the thick of it, I would have been grateful. I share my “perfect storm experience.” in another post here.