THE ENDING DOESN'T MATTER...NOW IS ALL WE HAVE

JILL - She is going to change this world...no mountain is too high for this kid!

It is 10:37 on a Saturday night, Shane is camping in the Eastern Sierras by himself and I am home with the girls trying to catch up on my life now that I have a full time job, but for some reason I must - I mean ABSOLUTELY MUST update my blog right now. I never question these feelings.  There must be someone out there who needs this information right now so I am going to share it.

 If you are not quite sure why this picture above has any significance, it is most likely because you do not know the struggles that our family endured during 2015.  If you do know, then you understand that this picture of Jill taken just TWO MONTHS ago with an ICE CREAM in one hand and FRENCH FRIES in the other is practically a MIRACLE!

( If you are interested in the back story you can start here: JILL'S STORY BEGINS)

In a nutshell, about 18 months ago Jill became phobic of VOMIT, to the point that our life as we knew it changed dramatically.  She had thrown up once in her life (happened two years prior to this phobia starting) and in 2015 seemingly out of the blue she began to think EVERYTHING would cause her to throw up.  This is a short list of what she thought would cause her to throw up:

• Any and all food, especially sugar and junk food
• fruit (because that was what she threw up the one time)
• any tummy sensation at all - hungry, full, thirsty, scared
• pooing
• going to sleep
• waking up in the middle of the night
• me going away from her at all
• sunny days (it was sunny the day she threw up 2 YEARS prior)
• someone else having a tummy ache
• eating in a restaurant
• touching her mouth after touching her nose
• coughing
• talking about throw up
• saying the word throw up
• driving in the car
• being in the room with someone else who has thrown up

etc....I think you get the point.  All day long, every single day and into the night she asked me over and over if she would throw up.  She basically stopped eating for 2 months, she did not sleep through the night for 9 months, and she spent the majority of every day and night in some form of a tantrum.

So, that is why the above picture carries so much meaning.

To say we have made progress is a major understatement.  How did this happen you ask....well, basically it happened when I left her for 5 days and went to Fort Bragg alone and she came to realize she would not die (throw up, not sleep, not eat, not have any fun) if I was away from her. (read it here....THE STORY WITH NO ENDING)

If you remember, when I left I told her - When I come back you may just realize you are a lot stronger than you think you are.  And

that was exactly what happened.  While I was in Ft. Bragg she had a fantastic time with Shane and Alli.  She ate a DONUT!  She SLEPT ALL NIGHT!!!  She HAD FUN!

Then I came back and wondered if it would all fall to pieces once I got home - because I was clearly the problem!!! and it kind of did but Shane and I (and my parents) were prepared.  We made some rules.  I was 100% off limits at night.  If she needed tucked in, then Daddy could do it.  If she needed any sort of comfort at night, it was only gonna be Daddy coming to save her. I was NOT dropping her off at activities anymore - If Poppy dropped them off

then all the questions (Mommy, when will you be back, how long will you be gone, what if I get afraid, what if I get a tummy ache)...would not happen.  If she needed picked up from an activity cuz she was afraid then Poppy would do it.  She needed to realize she was going to be OK if I was not involved.

Guess what...we had a rough three nights, but by night 4 she was sleeping ALL NIGHT LONG.  It has been 9 full months and she goes to all her activities without a problem and has never called me

or Poppy to come and pick her up.  Night time is a different story, but I am actually really content with what we have done with nighttime (more of that later in the post).

One week after I got back from my trip to Ft. Bragg, Shane and I decided we needed to keep it up that she was OK away from me.  He took her camping up in Lassen just the two of them.  They went for 2 nights.  Those are the pictures up above.  They skied and built a snow fort and had hot chocolate and slept in the back of the cruiser.  She didnt want to come home on Sunday.  A week later he took Alli alone...Alli, she sure got the short end of the stick for a while there.

Two weeks later we went away alone...cross country skied in Tahoe, slept in the cruiser, hung out at coffee shops and read and played cribbage and caught up on life together...ALONE. 

Recall, 5 months prior to this trip where I SKIED up a MOUNTAIN, I had been unable to walk, stand, drive, etc...for 21 days.   Only 3 months prior to this I was still needing to ride in a RASCAL to go grocery shopping because I couldn't stand longer than 10 minutes.  

The fact that I could walk, hike and SKI is nothing short of BEAUTIFUL. (THE LAST CHAPTER)  The girls stayed with Mimi and Poppy.  It wasnt perfect, Jill had trouble going to sleep, but that's ok...things dont need to be perfect.  And bless my dad...he texted me the whole time saying she slept great and there were no problems so I had a wonderfully peaceful time.  

February I turned 40!  Can you believe it?  I never would have imagined I would be so over the moon excited to be 40.  I wanted to get as far away from 39 and the year 2015 as I could.  March and April were amazing.

May - Shane and I celebrate 24 years of being together, 17 years of

a marriage that just keeps getting stronger and more amazing every year. 

June - we leave for our summer trip.  7 weeks of camping - first time ever with a dog.  Chaco is the best camping dog EVER!  Jill sleeps great the whole time, eats ice cream and junk food the whole time (so much for paleo, huh???)  and doesnt worry a single second!

I get to go on a 12 mile hike ALONE over the Virginia Lakes pass...yes 12 miles....yes over 10,000 feet...all without a single pain in my entire body.  Isnt that INCREDIBLE!!

Here are some other gems from our summer trip:

We got back from all of our travels Aug 28th (the girls and I were gone longer than 7 weeks, Shane had to go back to work) and Jill started to struggle with sleep again.  She has always had a bit of trouble with sleeping after our summer trips because she is so used to sleeping in a tent with all of us.  Shane and I had already talked about what would happen if she started getting up again in the middle of the night so we were prepared when she started showing up in our room at 3am asking to be tucked back in.

We pulled her extra mattress into our (TINY) room and now when she wakes up in the middle of the night she knows to quietly crawl into her sleeping bag and go to sleep.  She always grabs my hand, first and then she goes right to sleep.  I think about all the months of crazy, traumatic nights when Shane and I refused to let her sleep in our room with us and I feel a little guilt,

but THEN I remember that NOW is all that matters.  If I hadn't lived through THEN, I would not appreciate NOW so much.  This is a beautiful time in our life and we are all growing closer and more loving with one another and nothing but good is coming from all of the suffering we have experienced.

I'm gonna end this huge ESSAY on that note and just say that the title of this post could not be more true.  Really, the ending does not matter.  Now is all we have.  


If you read all the way to here, thank you.  If you know someone with a child who might need some "help" share my info with them.  My dream is that others do not need to go through HELL first to find the answers to what their child needs.  We are all in this together.  Reach out to each other, we are never alone in our struggles.