Loud Mouth Brown Girl

First and foremost, I want you to know, that it’s 99.9% not your fault.

For those of you looking for help and trying to find avenues to work with your kid so they can be a happier, healthier version of themselves, it is not your fault that your kid lives with trauma.

I have a friend whose child is constantly lashing out, often in verbally violent ways, and during a recent conversation with this child’s mother, I started to understand some of my own trauma. “He doesn’t communicate, he just gets vicious,” yeah because he doesn’t know any other way.

His brain can’t:

• Stop – Stop worrying about every little thing and focus on the person speaking to you

• Drop – Drop the attitude, and relax.

• Think – about what you are hearing.

• Process – process so you can respond in a way that is not vicious or violent.

• Release in a way that doesn’t hurt others

And lots of people – especially parents – don’t understand that our processing ability is often hindered by the fact that we are oversensitized and then everything we *think* we know, goes out the fucking window.

When she was telling me her experiences with her son, I realized, “I was like that,” I also learned her son is on the spectrum, which leads me to ask “am I too?” it’s possible, but what’s super frustrating, is knowing that for years and decades really, I went misdiagnosed, because the medical industry convinced the world they knew what was up, when they had no idea.

Recently Nada Chehade – my BFF in heart – reached out to me to ask how I was doing, I told her quite honestly, that I was tired, done, and ready to die. Period.

Now, I’ve always promised that ending my life was never how I intend to go out, and I stand by that, but it doesn’t change the fact that I think about suicide all the time. How it would go, where I would go, what letters I’d leave behind, all of it.

And all I can think is, ‘I can’t do that to the people I love.” I just can’t, so my goal is to get better, and I know that on this side things look like I have it all figured out, but that’s because now at 41 I finally know how to do the work.

I didn’t always, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to listen, it’s that I didn’t – or couldn’t acknowledge – that as a child and teenager, my brain didn’t allow me to understand, how to explain, what was going on inside, so I could make it make sense for people outside my brain.

Imagine being stuck in a dark room, and on the other side people are trying to help you escape, but they have no way of communicating with you, they have to figure it out on their own, but you have the answers, and you can’t communicate with them either.

That’s mental health issues in teenagers. We’re speaking different languages, and sometimes kids aren’t prepared or ready to say “This is what’s wrong,” I suspect mostly it’s that they don’t fucking know.

And it’s not because kids aren’t smart and can’t figure out shit on their own, it’s that this world pressures us in ways that none of us are prepared for, and since it does, we have to find ways to navigate the world in ways that keep us here as long as possible.

THE PROBLEM HOWEVER, is that it can take decades to figure out how to navigate this world, and some people aren’t ready, willing, or able, to wait.

So as a parent your job is to be there to help them with their mental health issues, while also learning to manage your own.

This is especially hard for those of us who didn’t grow up with safe spaces, who grew up with abuse and isolation rooms, and the torture of constantly being reminded we were different and therefore punishable because no one cared about the different kids.

Today there are safe spaces, and there are people who understand, but there’s also lots of abuse and lots of reasons to be traumatized and as a parent trying to navigate your own mental health issues, AND your kids (and multiple if you have more than one,), your life? Kinda sucks sometimes.

I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all the parents out there who are doing the work, who are showing the world that they love their kids and that you’re not giving up on them just because shit gets a little difficult.

I PROMISE you it gets better, my relationship with my mother is proof that things can get better, and yeah it takes a lot of work and tweaking and figuring out what works and what doesn’t, but I promise you, if you don’t give up on them, they won’t give up on you.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, The Loud Mouth Brown Girl