Trying to move on (from SIF)

There is still another week of the Summer school holidays here in New Zealand. It has been a busy six weeks - we've had lots of visitors from out of the region, our cat died, we got a new kitten and our daughter has regressed considerably this Summer with her autism. I also started back at work this week. Although I only work part-time (12 hours paid); life feels pretty hectic working and managing my daughter's ASD.

It was just over 10 days ago that we decided to adopt a kitten from the SPCA. It seemed like a good time to do it - our cat had died, it was the school holidays and our daughter is almost six - so a good age to take on (some of) the care of a kitten. She picked a ginger kitten out of a litter of kittens and has called him Buzz. He is one fiesty kitten with lots of spirit providing us with lots of laughs - but he is a bit wild (naturally) at times too.

Frequently my daughter needs space from the kitten - as she does from any long-term visitors that stay with us. I have half-joked with my husband that should we get the opportunity to adopt; then life would be quite similar to what it is now with a new kitten in the house. My husband commented that it would probably be a lot more intense (life) with a baby (than a kitten) - of course he's right.

In fact after having a one year old stay with us recently for four nights that our daughter struggled greatly with - and now a kitten whose erratic behaviour we obviously can't control - I do wonder just how we would cope at times with a human addition to the family. With an increase in aggressive behaviour on my daughter's part; I do worry about our future should we become adoptive parents. Yet I know no family is perfect. After going through SIF I have accepted that well and truly. I guess if we don't get picked by a birth family over the next year and a half (our time in the pool for prospective adoptive parents) then I will accept that perhaps we are just meant to be a family of three.

I haven't had a lot of time to think and reflect lately as it has been a busy Summer with visitors and an intense phase ASD-wise with my daughter. But adopting a kitten just a week after the loss of our cat has given me a taste of how it would probably feel to become an adoptive parent. Because we are still grieving our cat; we were by no means looking for a replacement pet. However the timing seemed right to get a kitten so we have welcomed this tiny fiery ball of fluff into our lives at a time when we are still feeling the loss of the cat I had for 11 years. I know for sure that adoption will not cancel out the pain of SIF. I know an addition to the family of the human kind would bring so much joy and love - but it will not wipe away or fix my SIF pain. Just like this kitten cannot fix the grief we have all felt for our cat. We have a pet again - but in some ways the kitten being here is a reminder of the cat we lost. I'm pretty sure the same feelings would come up if we adopted - we would feel our loss of a biological child while at the same time loving our adopted child.

I have made a decision to live life as fully as possible in 2011. It does feel good to have left Dailystrength (my online support group around SIF for three years), to have made a decision to host casual bimonthly cafe meetings for the IF support group I started and to hand the reigns over to someone else to run the monthly meetings and to make a personal commitment to pencil in regular weekly slots for writing/art once school goes back.

As much as I try to live my life as best as I can post-SIF; the pain is still there - the longing and the loss around having another biological child will probably always be ingrained in me. I still have to apply self-preservation and cannot always view friends photos of their two or more children on Facebook. I am not as out there so much as someone who went through SIF though these days. When someone asked me last weekend if I had another child (since she last saw me) I just said I wasn't able to have any more children. When yesterday a shop-worker talked about her two boys aged 6 and 4 and told me how much easier the second child was I just smiled.

I have to update our profile with our new pet and still have two small bits of paperwork to post in to officially be finished with the adoption process. So I will get those done asap. Our social worker said she will tell us if and when a birth family views our profile - some families don't necessarily want to know unless it's certain but we're okay with hearing about people browsing as such.

A new grief

It has been a busy Summer for us. For 3.5 weeks we had a series of visitors in the region over the Christmas/New Years break. And the last visitor left on Sunday. The day before he left - last Saturday - our cat, aged 11, was put to sleep.

It has been a hard week - and still is - post losing our cat. It is the first major grief I've faced since going through SIF. Although my SIF grief was dealt with as best as it could possibly be; it still remains, as possibly a part of me forever and most certainly resurfaces when another type of loss occurs in life - as it has this week. It's not so much the angst of not being able to not have another child that is up there. It is just the feeling of loss that has just become part of me - the broken feeling that I have accepted and had to embrace in order to move on that has come up as a result of another loss. Because I am so devastated around the loss of my beloved cat, that has been there through several rocky patches over the last 11 years; I'm feeling broken once again.

Just as I was coming to a place of accepting that life would be okay with just the three of us - the four of us including our cat - life changes again. I've been through enough grief over the last four plus years to know that some good will come out of this. It is heartbreaking losing a much loved pet; but the end of his life signifies the end of an era - but it is early days to understand just what exactly that means.

Our profile is now out of date as we had a page in our profile about our cat including photos. We will get another pet when the time is right so I won't bother changing the profile at this stage. The main message to get across I guess is that we love animals and that pets will probably always be part of our lives.

With the cat passing, our daughter has felt the smallness of our family even saying herself "Now there are only three of us!" She often referred to our cat as her brother - I know it is a huge loss for her. If we are to remain a family of three - as in three humans - then I think we most certainly need some fur companions to balance things out.

The day I went in to have our cat euthanised and was waiting for our turn (the longest five minutes in my life) ; I saw a family come out of the one of the consulting rooms with four children and their cat and the children were holding cat toys they were about to purchase. One was a cat toy that my daughter had bought our cat for Christmas. It was hard to not have some mother of many envy flare up at the sight of a big family and their cat as we sat there - our small family, about to say goodbye to our beloved Warren.

Our daughter is missing her eight year old niece who she spent time with over the Christmas holidays. She is having a hard week adapting to being home alone after all our visitors have left, after a busy period of time - and without our cat who filled the gap in our family. Our daughter did struggle with sharing our home with a one year old for four nights though. Although she craves the company of children - she also needs a lot of personal space. The older she gets; the harder it will be I think to add another child to our family so probably a good thing that we will be in the pool for prospective adoptive parents for just 18 months.

Grief comes in many forms in life - and each time I feel a loss, I'm always surprised at how deeply I am affected. Right now in my grief I would choose our cat and one child - the one we have over any other variation in our family. I miss my fur-baby who in many ways was my second child.

A New Years Wish

Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling thru
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
the dream that you wish will come true

(from "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes", Cinderella)