You've probably been wondering where I was. In fact for much of this year I've been wondering where I am too. I've been lost.
It has been a difficult year. On the positive side, Son 1 did exceptionally well at college and is now at his first choice university. On the negative side Son 2 regressed into increasingly difficult behaviour. His anxiety increased and his mood darkened. We still don't know whether home or school was the cause, but I suspect both. Without wanting to go into too much detail, I became a victim of abuse.
I was lucky that Son 2 currently has an excellent social worker who responded very quickly, but he and I were badly let down by another professional who was supposed to be helping with his behaviour. The crisis escalated to the point where we had no choice but to let social services accomodate him in order to safeguard me, as a physically vulnerable adult myself.
The wonderful social worker swung into action again and just a couple of weeks later Son 2 was able to move from respite care into a specialist residential placement which will hopefully be his long term home. It means that he has left school a year earlier than planned, but he can get consistent care and regular psychology input at the home as well as learning life skills and trying new activities. It is a lovely, newly renovated building and he was the second resident into this brand new service. He seems very happy and settled there and it is very much what we'd have been wanting for him next year anyway.
Of course you don't stop being a carer just because someone no longer lives under the same roof. Son 2 now lives 50 miles away from us but we visit when we can and I am in regular contact with his carers by phone. I organise his finances, liaise with his social worker and attend meetings about his placement. He is still very much part of our family, even though, like his brother, he has reached the age to leave home.
The events of this year have left me shaken and for a while I understood exactly how women who victims of any sort of abuse feel. My health is currently suffering and I have not been able to write creatively since the start of the year. I'd had lots of plans for the next year, to bring me to the place I wanted to be when both boys had left home. The timetable has been thrown into disarray, but I shall still go ahead.
But that brings me to the future of this blog. It's been a record of my sons and my writing. The boys are now both independent adults and it is no longer appropriate to write much about them. The creative writing has temporarily stalled. This is the 700th post on this blog but it could be one of the last.
I'm planning a new writing and creativity related blog to accompany what I hope will be my future life path. I'll be sure to let you know when that is up and running and I hope you'll follow me there. In the meantime thanks for reading about my journey so far and bear with me while I reinvent myself.
