Fran...where are you? Suz...where are you?

Sunlight

Active Member
Good to hear that lil Lincoln is doing fine! Hope things work out and you all see him again soon! I see three of the grandkids often, but one lives far away. That one I talk with on the phone, we text one another, and mail stuff back and forth in between. His mom texts me pics once a week since he was born and I save them and make a photo album when I get a bunch together. Thank heaven for technology!

Hi Mattsmom! I recall your story well! Glad that your son is doing better. Praying that the cancer gets eliminated quickly. Seems as we get older, we get this and that nipped off or fixed up.

Goes with aging...yep, there are days when we feel like OLD familiar folks. LOL
In fact, I am gonna get that box out and see some of the names on the notes to my son to refresh my memory on the old-timers here. I was thinking of Moonglow and Nate the other day.
 

Sunlight

Active Member
OK so I got the notes out and wow the folks and stories that came to mind! Here are some who wrote to Ant:
Alakat6527 (kim)
Anniesmama (remember her son Joe who went to Job Corps)
Suz
Stressed2the Hilt
Starborn64 who was Star!
Marla-(remember her? the former difficult child)
Crystal from CA
Rita
Addie from Canada with the foster kids
randysmom
alogan3 (andrea)
maverickmom (kris)
Nana searching for help
greensleeves from Dublin
taadaa58
Ila from canda with all the kids with Italian names
Fran
TrishQ from maine
Lynn J who had the adopted daughter
tonysmom
KRice-kathy
zigweegwee
Marcie Mac
Did-I (dee who made candy and had her son M)
TMom
Jessica's Mom who is now nancy
Twiz from Scotland who had Nik her daughter
Sue C from Wisconsin (she had Melissa and Angela)
slsh- Sue
...and several others. As I read their names, I remember so much time spent with them all.


Happy and Blessed Valentine's Day to friends then and now!
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
I wish that I, too, had a success story. My difficult child is 28-years-old now and still struggling. A little over a year ago, we learned that our difficult child had started shooting up heroin. We staged an intervention and sent her to a highly regarded dual diagnosis center in south Florida. She spent three months there and then went to a sober house. She left the sober house last summer and found a full time job to support herself. She did very well until Christmas. She relapsed shortly after she went back after spending a week with us for Christmas. We just found out that she had started drinking again. I already suspected but I found out for sure when she lost her job.

My hope is that she goes back into treatment. We will see. My easy child is doing great. She is 25-years-old and is in her third year of teaching high school math. The students and administration love her. I know that because one of my best friends is an assistant principal at her school and is always telling me what a great job easy child is doing.

My husband never got another job in the corporate world after the company he was working for went under during the recession. After spending two years looking for a job in the corporate world and watching the 30-year-old interviewer's face fall when he walked through with his white hair, he knew that no one in the high tech world was going to hire someone in his late fifties. So he took up an new career . . . teaching! He went through a special program for helping people transition from the corporate world into education and got his teaching certificate. He even had to student teach. After working part time at my school as a math teacher, he was hired full time and has been at my school for three years. We even had side-by-side trailers for a while.

I plan to teach for another two years and then retire from my full time face-to-face school and teach part time for an online school. Right now I am doing both so I stay busy. I like that because it keeps my mind off difficult child.

It was so good to see all of you again. Fran, I live about 30 minutes from you. I'm glad that you survived the snow storms.

~Kathy
 

Sunlight

Active Member
Kathy,
I am sorry that your saga continues for your gal. You know, she is learning so much along the way. She was educated while in the invention process as well as in the center. You and your family are teachers. So, you have helped teach her what she is doing and where it leads.

Now it is up to her to take the knowledge and make better choices. When my son quit drugs, he turned to alcohol thinking it was the safer alternative. Thing is, legal drugs can take away their anxiety and help them even more, but in some cases, they tend to only take them so long and then think that they do not need them. I pray that your daughter has a lightbulb moment wherein she realizes that she can be very successful in life, and has the example of a great set of parents.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
I'm not on here as often as I used to be, but I do check in and read from time to time. Our lives have changed a bit, but I still recommend this site to people. The Aussie situation is not too different from the US one. We have resources we can call on, but we need to know about them and know how to plug into them. With government changes, we're seeing some considerable watering down of past successful programs. Never forget that no matter how good things might seem with one government, no matter how well your country seems to be doing - it can be undone very fast.

Where we're all at - the sig tries to tell it all, but it is struggling.

husband & I now live with mother in law in her home. She is frail, elderly but compos. Our own home is a short walk away but we only see it on average once or twice a week. It is a mess. But mother in law can't fend for herself. She's nursing home material but would not survive in a nursing home. For years we've been going form our place to hers for dinner every night, to make sure she had one decent meal a day. But a year ago we moved in when it became clear she could not manage alone.

The kids - easy child lives in Canberra, 3 hours drive away, with her husband and two kids. Baby Grand 1 is now 2 years old and she's a bright little button. Baby Grand 2 is 6 months old and the little boy is adored by his big sister. I don't see them often enough, but we're too tied down to travel to see them. We don't have space to put them up any more either, which makes it even more difficult.

difficult child 1 is married - never thought that would happen. He and his wife live with her father, rattling around in a huge house. difficult child 1 is still an invalid pensioner due to his Asperger's, but our Social Security system means he can earn an income as long as he tells social security how much he earned and when. They simply stop payment on his pension when he earns over the limit. When his income drops again, he gets pension payments again. daughter in law is not well herself, is studying at uni but spends a lot of time in bed recovering from the effort of attending classes. She is getting excellent grades though.

easy child 2/difficult child 2 is also married - the three eldest kids got married within one 12 month period. She and her husband live at our house. Having them move in, especially with husband & I living with mother in law, has meant a lot of our stuff has either been put in storage or disposed of. They have a baby boy, Baby Grand 3, who is now 4 and a half months old. We see them most nights when they come down to mother in law's for dinner.

difficult child 3 is now 20 years old. Can you believe it? He never finished school, it became obvious that it was going to be a lost cause to force the issue. He completed his school subject stream in Information Technology but nothing else. His school IT course also plugged straight into a post-school study option we have here called TAFE - Technical and Further Education. He has now completed a further course in IT and has one more level of study to go with TAFE. If he then wants to study more, he can use his TAFE achievements to get advanced standing at uni - he could go in at 2/3 year level in an IT course even though he has never graduated from high school. TAFE qualifications replace that need for graduation.
difficult child 3 is also enrolled in a government-based disability education program designed to train him for the workplace. He has a long way to go especially with his social skills. I was taking him to therapist appointments but I can't any more because I can't leave mother in law. difficult child 3 lives at our house and in our absence is far less motivated to clean up his hoard of computer games and the world's largest Nerf collection.

Me - I'm still trying to work on my writing but I don't get as much time as I need because I need large chunks of uninterrupted time and I can't always know when that will happen. I've had a resurgence of activism activity.

And - big news! I had a lovely visitor on Sunday. Esther from Jerusalem! All the way from Jerusalem! Oh, we had such a lovely day. Her son brought her over from where she's staying with him, and then he and his friend went to the beach for a swim. Later on Esther and I went to my favourite beach - turned out that was where her son also ended up. But we missed each other in passing. husband was with us too, Esther took his arm on the sloping path down to the beach and exclaimed, "I'm holding the arm of Marg's Man!" My two youngest kids dropped in when we had lunch, Esther also got to hold BG3 who was being adorable as usual.

While I have in the past met once with another CD member (another Aussie who was a member briefly) and talked another friend into joining, Esther is the first CD member from overseas and the first long-term member who has been able to visit us!

I really wish I was able to go collect her and take her for a drive to all the places she wants to see. But where her son lives is fairly central to the best of Sydney and Esther did a lot of careful study before coming here. The weather hasn't been too hot for her, thank goodness, but she has still seen the best we have to offer in weather.

So that's the news from Down Under - we're all still here. I'm now four years post-cancer and still doing well. I'm on Facebook a lot these days too. But CD.com has been a lifesaver for me, and done wonders for the kids.

Thanks everybody.

Marg

It's lovely to read everybody's news.
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
How lovely to read your update Marguerite and know you all are doing well. That's so terrific that Esther came to spend some time with you. Glad to read your health news, too. DDD
 

Estherfromjerusalem

Well-Known Member
Hello. At long last I have been able to get my hands on my difficult child's computer and to log in. Yes, it was an amazing experience to meet Marg and her Man. I'll write on a new thread. Love, Esther
 

SRL

Active Member
Apparently there have been 2,464 new posts since I've dropped off the face of the earth. I popped in here on a whim today not really planning to post until I saw this thread. Good to read the updates!

My life got busy with classes and work and kid's activities and pretty much cruised along pretty uneventfully until a few months ago when my oldest (college age) was diagnosed with cancer. In some very real ways it has reminded me of those early difficult child years--the stress, the lack of control, the impact on the family, not being able to plan. I've thought more of those days recently than I have in ages.

As for the one who brought me here--now high school age and doing mostly the same: pretty difficult at home, functional in school/outside world, compensating for issues and doing well in classes, challenged in navigating the social landscape.
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
(((SRL)))

I think I've missed you most of all! I do hope your oldest is doing well and will be restored to good health quickly. I can never thank you enough for your insight that lead to Duckie's cva diagnosis; you helped make Duckie a whole lot healthier. Please stop in again from time to time.
 
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rita

Member
OK so I got the notes out and wow the folks and stories that came to mind! Here are some who wrote to Ant:
Alakat6527 (kim)
Anniesmama (remember her son Joe who went to Job Corps)
Suz
Stressed2the Hilt
Starborn64 who was Star!
Marla-(remember her? the former difficult child)
Crystal from CA
Rita
Addie from Canada with the foster kids
randysmom
alogan3 (andrea)
maverickmom (kris)
Nana searching for help
greensleeves from Dublin
taadaa58
Ila from canda with all the kids with Italian names
Fran
TrishQ from maine
Lynn J who had the adopted daughter
tonysmom
KRice-kathy
zigweegwee
Marcie Mac
Did-I (dee who made candy and had her son M)
TMom
Jessica's Mom who is now nancy
Twiz from Scotland who had Nik her daughter
Sue C from Wisconsin (she had Melissa and Angela)
slsh- Sue
...and several others. As I read their names, I remember so much time spent with them all.


Happy and Blessed Valentine's Day to friends then and now!
 

rita

Member
Hi everyone, cannot remember when I was last here but for some reason was thinking back over the years and how much this place helped me during my journey with my son. To say he was trying growing up would be a gross understatement he had diagnoses of odd, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) ,cd, adhd my alphabet soup kid,,ak.a my gift from god. So after juvenile, group homes, jails and prisons J is now 30. Never thought I would see the day in all honesty. He lived such a dangerous life style. Back in his first long term incarceration in a juvenile he met with the original six as they called themselves. Since then all have passed on in one tragedy or another with the last about a year ago. According to a psychiatrist many many years ago kids with cd statistically could expect these odds...I remember how terrified I was when I first heard that told to me. So on to today.......... J got out of prison about 20 months ago and decided to move across the country. I think this was best for us all, his reputation proceeded him in this area and for miles around so it was unlikely anything would ever change. With the ok of his parole officer he put in for a transfer and since it was back to the province of his original birth it was accepted. This time he was alone and had opportunity to be whoever he wanted to be...the first few months he struggled and it was not pretty but he persevered..then he finally found his opportunity. He got accepted to a work camp in the very far north hours from anywhere in the wilderness...This is where it gets great..here he has thrived like never before..Miles from civilization he has found peace...finally, over the last year he has exceled reaching position of foreman on some jobs and working on an apprenticeship as a skilled tradesman. He flew home the other week for a quick visit and finally I saw a man standing before me, strong healthy confident..My heart just about burst...He stayed only a short time as he said "round here, for me , nothing will ever change, there is no hope here" He tell me he is at peace he learns something new everyday, structure is high and the food is great..he only gets little time off about 6 nights a month..As he says it is jail with good food, breaks and they pay yah!! he laughs because in some ways it is true and he knows he has found his niche. It is a dry camp so at night he goes to camp gym or off to the bush to hunt of fish or he says just be with nature. The weather is often brutal in the negative 30' and 40's and the conditions can be awful but somehow it has only made him stronger and it agrees with him.. I write this in hopes of giving some mom out there hope tonight, never give up as long as they live there is hope..I pray the peace this family has found after all our trials stays and I know those in heaven have watched down over J and I. Finally all my prayers are answered...I have found peace.....rita
 

Sunlight

Active Member
Rita...my son also thrives outdoors....hunting fishing and working outside. He is nearly 31 took a while to grow a brain but doing much much better! So happy to read your post dear Rita ! You deserve a peaceful life!
 

rita

Member
the infamous Ant ....31 now...wow...gosh when I first came on here j must have been 14....it has been a long haul..Hope you are well and glad to hear Ants found his niche
 

Sue C

Active Member
Hello to all my old friends! Something made me stop in here tonight. I haven't been here in years. I once did a Google search of my sign-in name and one of my daughter's names, and a post or two came up on this board and I was horrified that they might see the posts. I shouldn't have used their names. So, let me say that the oldest daughter (difficult child#1) is 34 now and has been married for 13 years. She has a little girl who will be 2 in July. difficult child#1 is doing so awesome. Has a successful career as a fashion designer and is a great mother. She's married to a terrific guy who also has a successful career. Younger daughter (difficult child#2) is 28 now and STILL lives at home. She's doing so so so much better than years ago. She works at a daycare part-time in the infant room and loves her job! She's happiest when she has a boyfriend. On occasion, she will blow up with "F" this and "F" that (usually when she's having boyfriend issues), but never any throwing of things or breaking things. For the most part, she is respectful and happy to be with us. My husband has brain cancer. It's been 2 years and 8 months. It's the most aggressive kind. He had surgery, radiation, and chemo pills. Chemo stopped working, new tumor appeared, and he went on a drug (Avastin) given by infusion every other week for a year (shrinks the blood vessels going to the tumor). Tumor shrunk. Was off the Avastin for 6 months. New tumor appeared right before Christmas. Nice gift, huh? Went through radiation again and is on Avastin again and will be for at least a year. But we are believers that God is healing him. All prayers are appreciated! .... It was nice catching up on my old friends' lives. ..... Melissa and I were just having a calm talk the other day and "reminiscing" about some of the horrible things she did and how through it all, I still loved her (even though I didn't like her many times). She said she knew she was a little "B" word sometimes but that I was always here for her and she was glad I'm her mom. :)
 
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