What if Denying Self-Care Is an Injustice to You and Your Family?

by jphilo | Apr 28, 2021 | Advocacy, Different Dream, Self-Care and Stress

What if Denying Self-Care Is an Injustice to You and Your Family?

What if denying self-care is an injustice to you and your family? Guest blogger Sandy Ramsey-Trayvick poses that question in today’s post. Her thought process is both convicting and empowering.

As special needs parents, many of us have advocated for our children educationally and medically to ensure the services or treatments they need to grow, heal, and thrive.

As the mom of a son with special needs, I’ve been playing the role of advocate for over 20 years and have been pretty successful in gaining access to services my son might have otherwise not received. He, his classmates, and schoolmates have benefited because strong advocacy can affect real change. We can all attest to that.

I wonder what would happen if we advocated for ourselves as passionately as we advocate for our kids. In not doing so, how have we been deprived of the things we need to grow, heal, and thrive?

There is so much being shared about self/soul care these days. The need for both, and ideas for how to address both, are well documented. And yet these are still areas where special needs parents, especially moms, continue to struggle.

Why is that?

The answer might lie in the mindset we need to adopt before we can prioritize self and soul care? Because advocacy is a response to a perceived injustice, What if denying self-care is an injustice to you and your family? With this perspective, would you then be more willing to advocate for your self and soul care? Perhaps then we, as special needs parents, would be willing to:

Look and advocate for solutions that make self-care possible.
Stand up against the voices that tell us we don’t need to care for our physical, spiritual and emotional health.
Advocate against the supermom/dad syndrome that drives so many of us to have unhealthy expectations of ourselves. Advocate for the truth that both we and our families fail to thrive when we don’t care for our own well-being.

With so many other things to do, it can often seem easier than not to let our own needs slide. In my case, the Lord Himself had to reveal that my mindset about self-care needed to change. Prior to His revelation, I’d never considered that sacrificing my own care did not line up with God’s desires for me. According to His exact words, the choices I was making to neglect consistent self-care were rooted in a disabled life mindset. He wanted me to make better choices for my well-being.

That’s so like God, isn’t it? He doesn’t want anything to prevent us from fulfilling His good plans for our lives. He’s given us His Holy Spirit, the Advocate to help us. He’s willing to help us if we want to make better choices. But He won’t force us. So ask yourself these questions:

What if denying self-care is an injustice to you and your family?
What are some of the areas in which your self and soul could use an advocate?
If you’re not sure, ask the LORD and His Advocate will guide you.

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Sandy is wife to Terry, mom to 3 young adult children, a Bible study teacher, an encourager to those who are weary, a fitness enthusiast, a lover of books, and a certified professional coach. She and her husband are also marriage mentors. Twenty years ago, after her son was diagnosed with multiple disabilities, Sandy became his full time caregiver and advocate. She knows that living in the world of special needs or disabilities can lead to a “disabled life” mindset that focuses on limitations and settles for less life, less joy, less fulfillment. She coaches parents of children with special needs to help them see their circumstances from a perspective of hope, purpose, and opportunity. She helps them choose actions that create a life for themselves and their families that is joyful, fulfilling and fruitful. You can learn more about Sandy, her work, and her blog at www.UNDisabledLIVES.org.

Author Jolene Philo

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Uncertainty and Lack of Control: What’s a Caregiver to Do?

“I can’t.” I sat in my office one morning a few weeks ago and sobbed as my daughter rubbed my back. “I just can’t.”

Only one of the vehicles needed for our family of 4 adults and 2 kids was in working order.
The washing machine quit.
The drywall crew working on our 5-months-behind-schedule home addition had delivered more bad news.

“I just can’t.” I sobbed.

“You don’t have to do a thing,” my daughter reassured me.

Which was good. Because really and truly, I couldn’t. 12 months of pandemic life combined with 12 months of the addition construction encroaching further into our limited living space had reduced me to a blithering puddle of snot and tears.

“Are you feeling better?” my daughter asked an hour or so after my breakdown.

“No,” I said, “and I may never feel better again.”

“That’s okay,” she replied. “You don’t have to.”

It took me the better part of the morning to regain my equilibrium and the better part the day before I could reflect on the despair that had engulfed me. The last time I had felt so hopeless, I realized, had been almost 39 years ago when our son had been 2 months old. Though the circumstances were completely different and separated by almost 4 decades, the reasons for my despair were the same: uncertainty and lack of control.

39 years ago, my 2-month-old son and I were being flown to a hospital over 700 miles by Life Flight. He needed life-saving surgery to correct complications caused by the life-saving surgery he’d had at birth. Tears streamed down my face as I peppered the doctor on board with questions. “Why did this happen? How will they fix it? What more could go wrong?”

To read the rest of this post about uncertainty and lack of control visit Key Ministry’s blog for special needs parents.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.