The traumatized brain is an outside-the-box thing.
The paper he brought home from school was too small and structured a practice space (so thankful for the kitchen chalkboard wall!) and he wouldn’t get even one single of the ten words right on the spelling test several days after I took this picture, but he practiced and he TRIED.
After a long day in the classroom, he was willing to come home and re-bend his brain to the shape of letters, re-work his hand muscles to hold the chalk, re-will his short-term-reticent brain to remember these new words that need to mean something to him.
These small tasks that I can do in my sleep cost Chase’s brain space dearly. These sleep action for me are coaxed into Chase’s ability only with years of practice and rounds of expert therapy teams. Even the ability to curve a letter (like the first in his own name) is a fixed and practiced thing, refined in the fires of frustration, tears, and intense determination.
Sometimes this life isn’t about traditional success, but rather extraordinary effort – an incredible victory in and of itself. This moment; it isn’t about the memorized words or the score on his test, but about him pushing through “I can’t” to “I will” and “I did”. In an outside-the-box existence, sometimes the attempt is greater than the accomplishment.
This boy… he changes how I see life.
~MbM~
