This Crazy Life

We’re back again to taking baby steps.  Small steps forward.  I was in the art room at McCallum yesterday.  It was a pretty cool place.  Quotes and pictures all over the walls.  Most of them I’ve heard before during this journey but there was a new one, I really liked.  Falling down is still forward progress, just with extra steps.  How true is that.  Some people may recover in 100 steps, while others may take 10,000 steps, but if you’re moving forward, even if it’s slower than a snail, you are making progress.  Back to my daughter.  She 100% struggles with eating anything I fix at home.  She struggles with me giving her supplement for what she doesn’t eat at home.  This makes it really difficult for her to be home for any length of time.  And it’s making her stay in 10-hour php longer than it would have to be.  When she steps down to 6-hour days she’ll do dinner at home every day.  We had 2 dinner passes this last weekend.  Neither of them was even close to successful in my eyes.  Neither were completed to 100%.  Both included lots of name calling and general angriness from her ED.  So, we came up with a new plan.  We’re going to start with lunch, at McCallum, that I bring in.  With the goal of getting me some control back and her eating my food.  I started simple with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, cheese-its and grapes.  She ate the grapes.  I ate all my food while trying to coax her to eat a bite, to eat one cheese-it.  On and on and on.  Nothing.  So, then I poured her supplement for her.  It was the wrong amount.  I didn’t know what I was doing.  I do, I am your mom, this is what you need, please drink it.  Over and over again.  She wanted to ask her dietician if it was the right amount.  No, I’m your mom, I know what I’m doing.  She wasn’t going to complete.  She was mad.  She said mean things.  But I persisted.  And eventually she drank it.  Then my daughter was back, and she started talking to me and showing me her things in the art room.  So, she drank a supplement for me.  It’s crazy to thing in 18 months into this journey and that’s where we are.  When I was trying to get her to drink, she told me “You do realize if I don’t want to recover, no one can make me”.  Oh, sweet baby girl I know that is true, but I’m going to keep you in treatment for as long as I can where you will eat then.  If you want more time at home, you must eat.  So, you can pick.  That decision is 100% yours I agree.  However, starving is no longer an option.  That option has been thrown off the table and beaten with a hammer.  It’s not coming back!