Fiona has been struggling the past few months. It has been hard negotiating the ups and downs of her mood swings, but last weekend we had a good visit. She said to me that she finds it hard to visit home right now. She wants to live here and can't. To her,visiting here feels like waving this in her face. That is of course, not my intention. The goal of coming home to visit was to have healthy loving relationships with the family. For a long time she has bought into my very genuine belief that what we are working toward is her moving to another less restrictive level of care. I have repeatedly talked about how as kids get older they don't live with their parents. They get their own place, or they have a room mate and share expenses etc. It may help when I actually have one of my kids do this so that she can see I am not making this up! Rob is close but still in college and not quite there yet.
However, despite her not doing well visiting here I wanted to do something to maintain connections so we went to lunch at a fast food chain of her choice. The food was fairly ghastly but the time together was fun. There were selfies and laughter -- lots of laughter. I wish I knew a better way to help Fi. Her mental health challenges and her cognitive delays are kind of the perfect storm for behavioral challenges. But since I can't come up with any better model than what I am doing right now, I am glad we had time together to laugh, love each other and reconnect. This is Fiona and Lissa at the restaurant.
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