Exhausted Mom of 4

Well, I really did it this time. I’ve managed to put myself completely out of commission. This past Saturday night I tripped over one of the logs we have set aside outside to cut up for our woodstove. BAM! I pulled a nearly perfect faceplant on the ground… well, it would’ve been a perfect faceplant if it weren’t for the fact that my right shoulder got in the way. My shoulder started to swell up and the pain was unbearable. I ended up deciding to sleep it off (not thinking it was anymore serious than a bad bruise). By Sunday morning the pain had increased to the point where I felt like either fainting or throwing up, so my hubby drove me to the hospital. My shoulder was so swollen that he thought I must’ve dislocated it when I fell.

Of course, being a man, he had to go into great detail about what’s involved in fixing a dislocated shoulder. So much so, that by the time we arrived at the hospital I was shaking and on the brink of crying from being so scared. Nice guy, eh? lol.

The nurses were very kind to me. Totally gave me the royal treatment. They attempted to help me onto the bed but since that caused me a lot of pain, they brought out a wheelchair for me to sit in. That helped me feel comfortable. But I couldn’t shake how scared I was when I saw the expressions on their faces whenever they looked at my shoulder. Oh God! What was I in for? At that point I was ready to ask for them to just knock me out and then wake me up after they fixed my shoulder. I have such a low tolerance for pain and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle having my shoulder popped back into place.

Luckily for me I was provided with a distraction while I waited for the doctor to see me. There was another patient beside me who managed to cut off part of his thumb with a skill-saw. I couldn’t see him (we were seperated by a curtain) but I could hear him describe in great detail about how he managed to cut his thumb. What is with men and their need to go into detail about injuries? They seem to really take pleasure doing that, don’t they! Well, anyways, thinking about what he had done to himself made me think I was just being a big baby to be crying over my injury. That helped me to calm down a bit.

A few minutes later I was being wheeled off to have x-rays taken. Thankfully the technician was very gentle. She made sure that I stayed comfortable and she didn’t take long at all to get all the x-rays taken. On the way back to the ER she jokingly said something along the lines of “Next time you aren’t in the mood, just tell your husband you’ve got a headache… don’t resort to breaking your arm.”.

About 5 minutes passed by and then I clued in! “Breaking your arm.”, she really did say that, right? I didn’t imagine that, right? OMG!!! I had never had a broken bone in all the 40 years I’ve been alive! Of course, now I was starting to get scared again. If it was broken then that would mean they’d have to reset it, right? That would really hurt, right?

I was just about on the brink of a full-fledged panic attack when the doctor showed up to see me. He confirmed my suspicion… my arm was indeed broken. To be presise, I had broken my humerus just below my shoulder. But I was lucky. It was a complete break but somehow the two pieces of bone never seperated. Which meant there was no need to reset the bone. Because of where the break is, it couldn’t be put into a cast so instead my arm was put into a sling. It’s actually a pretty nice sling too. lol. It’s black (black goes with everything. lol) and wraps around both my shoulder and waist. In about 2 weeks I have to see a physio-therapist.

So far the cure has been a lot less painful than I had anticipated, but my upper arm/shoulder still hurts like hell. Now that a few days have passed, the swelling seems to have gone down just a tiny bit but now my upper arm is turning a lovely mixture of reds and blues. I look like a mess. And I can’t do anything at all with my right arm. Not even type or draw (I’m right handed). I had to type this whole entry out only using my left hand. Even trying to pick things up as light as a dishtowel with my right hand puts me into agonizing pain. My hubby and kids have been awesome… helping by doing everything for me, but I hate just sitting doing nothing. It’s so incredibly boring. Unfortunately that’s how it’s got to be.

I’ll try to keep adding updates on how my healing progress is going.  

Before I start to write about what’s gone on since my last entry, I’d like to give you an update on my brother. He has been located and is thankfully okay. Needless to say, I am quite relieved.

Now this is probably the longest entry I’ve ever written in my blog so be prepared for a lot of reading.

I have learned a valuable lesson when it comes to searching for birthparents… one so difficult to deal with that it’s left me emtionally exhausted. About 22 years ago I began my search for my birth-parents. I had been raised by wonderfully supportive and loving parents, and they stood behind me every step of the way. Their only concern was that they didn’t want to see me get hurt. Meaning that they didn’t want me to go through the pain of rejection by either one of my birthparents.

Almost 15 years ago I was fortunate enough to find my birth-mother. We developed a strong relationship with each other and have been in each other’s lives since we were reunited. Finding her made me feel complete. Unless you’re adopted you couldn’t understand (no matter how much I could try to explain it) the exact feeling. I was the only child she’s had so finding each other was very special for both of us. I had definitely NOT been rejected.  

My birth-mother didn’t speak too much about my birth-father other than a few details… his name and age… and that he had 2 other children (apparently boys) who were older than me. She also told me he had a bad temper and would become violent when he got angry. With that knowledge and the realization that he was 15 years he senior (yes, he was nearly 30 and she was just 15 when she became pregnant with me) I swore to myself that I never wanted to find him. He disgusted me.

But over the years, the urge to find my 2 older siblings started to become very overwhelming for me. How could I find them without finding my birth-father? I had no idea how I could accomplish such a feat. Reluctantly I started searching for my birth-father. I expected complete rejection by him and only hoped he’d have enough heart to give me the names of my siblings.

A little over a year ago my search turned up a surprise. I had found an online ad placed by someone claiming to be a child of my birth-father! I was able to find my sibling without having to find my birth-father! And even more surprising… my sibling was not a brother, but a sister instead! My birth-mother had been misinformed… I did not have 2 older brothers. I had an older brother and an older sister. Unfortunately my relationship with my sister became very rocky and we stopped talking to each other.

I had almost given up my search for my older brother but in May of this year I decided to give it one more try. My sister had given me the name of our birth-father’s brother when we met so I tried doing an online search for him. Incredibly I was able to find him! I sent him an email and he quickly wrote me back… eager to give me a wealth of information about my birth-father and the entire family (aunt, grandparents, cousins and about himself). He seemd like such a wonderful man and without hesitation I sent an email off to my sister to let her know I had found him and told her how she could contact him. It didn’t matter to me that we weren’t speaking to each other… this was information she needed just as much as I did. Thankfully this was what it took for the two of us to start speaking to each other again and more importantly we have forgiven each other for hurting each other in the past.

Well, with what we learned from our uncle we indeed do have an older brother. Our uncle gave us his name and also the names of our six younger siblings. SIX!!! And he told us that there might very well be many more. Our birth-father was a musician in a band and travelled across Canada and parts of the US. The actual count of siblings may be as high as 20!!! Our uncle told me that 3 of those siblings would probably never be found since their mother took off with them, and even though he and his mother searched for them for years, they have not been able to find them. He told me that my birth-father was violent and made a lot of poor choices in his life. He told me that their sister had a lot of emotional problems. And he also told me that their parents were very abusive towards them as they were growing up. That was a lot of information for me to take in all at once.

I decided to focus on finding my youngest brother. He was still in touch with my birth-father so I felt if I found him, I would have a greater chance of finding the rest of my siblings. I found him on facebook and told him who I was. I didn’t expect a postive response from him but he wrote me back and told me my birth-father was willing to meet me. Whoa! That scared me. I hadn’t planned on actually meeting him. None of this was going the way I had expected… I wasn’t prepared for any of this.

Then I started thinking of those 3 impossible-to-find siblings of mine. If you don’t know me by now, you need to know I am a very stubborn person. If I’m told I can’t do something I’m going to go right ahead and try to do it. I had searched for 22 years to find all of my birth-family and for my uncle to tell me I wouldn’t be able to find those 3 siblings was nothing more than a big neon sign flashing the word “CHALLENGE!!!” in my face. So I took on that challenge and within a couple of days I was able to find one of them on facebook… another brother. I wrote to him asking if he was the person I knew… if he had a sister and brother with the names I was looking for. He wrote me back and said yes and asked how I knew him. I told him and then he stopped writing to me. My search had taken me this far and then suddenly ended… it was too difficult to sit and wait for him to write me back. Was I being rejected? Or was he simply too busy in his life to login to facebook and read his messages? Without a reply from him, I had no way of knowing. So I decided I needed to get really brave. I looked through his facebook friends list and saw the names of his brother and sister… except their last names weren’t the same as his. I had to take the chance that they may be who I was searching for and I sent them both messages. The only one to write me back was the woman… she was indeed the younger sister I had been looking for. She was cautious at first (can you blame her?) but after a few messages back and forth we developed an incredible bond with each other. We had so many things in common with each other and our personalities totally clicked!

But then I found out things about our birth-father and his siblings (and their parents) that I was nowhere near prepared to learn about. They were extremely abusive people. As children, my birth-father and his siblings were severely beaten by their parents. When they grew up they chose child-brides (most were in their late teenage years)… probably because they could easily control them. And when those wives got “out of line” they were beaten severely. I learned the reason why my younger sister’s mother had left with her and our brothers… to protect them from any further violence. My cousins no longer spoke with my uncle… and there was a very valid reason for this too. He had attempted to kill their mother in front of them when they were very young children. Yes. Kill! He had been arrested and convicted of that crime. These people were monsters and the more I learned about them, the more I understood why my birth-mother refused to put my birth-father’s name on my birth-certificate. She wanted to keep that family from gaining custody of me. My heart broke for my cousins and siblings… why did they have to live with such awful people?

I confronted my “kind and loving” uncle with the information I had learned… expecting him to either deny it ever happened or at the very least express his remorse for what he had done. I was shocked when he wrote back neither denying a word of it nor showing any hint of remorse. What’s worse he actually made excuses for what he had done and showed no signs of regret. I was now seeing the man who I thought was kind, show his true colours… fully exposing the monster inside of himself. It sickened me to see who he really was. And why did I have to find out this information from someone else? Why didn’t he tell me about it? Afterall, he had no problem telling me about how terrible my birth-father and their sister and parents were.

I decided right there and then to cut him out of my life. And at the same time I decided meeting my birth-father would be one of the biggest mistakes I could ever make in my life. I wrote to my youngest brother and apologized to him (since he had done a lot for me with helping to get me in touch with my birth-father) and told him I no longer wanted to talk to my birth-father.

I have come out of this learning a very hard lesson. Adoption reunions are not a simple case of either acceptance or rejection. Sometimes they’re a case of learning more about your family tree than you could ever prepare yourself for. I have gone through so many emotions so quickly. I have learned just how courageous my birth-mother was and I have learned that monsters really do exist. I have learned that God is responsible for placing me with the kind of adoptive parents that every birth-mother would hope for their children to grow up with. I have so much love in my heart for my siblings and I feel emmense guilt that I, along with my older sister, were never exposed to the violence that our other siblings were. Why were we the lucky ones? While we were safe and sound, sheltered from violence, they watched as their mothers were beaten over and over again. I also have incredible respect for their mothers… to have gone through such abuse and to finally have the strength and courage to say “Enough is enough!” and take their children and leave. They are my heros for protecting and therefor saving my siblings. My heart is also filled with sadness and anger. Because of what my birth-father has done, I have siblings who can’t bring themselves to talk to me. They have worked so hard through their lives to block out the memories of what our birth-father has done and with my sudden appearance, all those memories are quickly coming back. I am sad because I don’t know if those siblings will ever want me to be a part of their lives, and I am angry because our birth-father was such a controlling monster that even to this day his actions have control over us.      

This was a lesson I needed to learn. I had to know the truth. And even though it’s been very difficult for me, it’s had many rewards. Those rewards are my siblings and I love them all very much. Even if some of them aren’t ready to speak to me, just knowing that they exist fills my heart with such joy.

A reader of my blog left a comment asking about forget-me-nots and how long they take to bloom. Typically it takes 10-20 for the seeds to germinate (depending on your weather conditions and the temperature of your soil). If you’ve planted them early enough in the year (or you’ve started them indoors), your plants should be blooming by April-May. What I love about forget-me-nots is that they are low maintenence… they resow themselves year after year. She also asked if they can be planted in large pots. I say yes! I’ve done this before with great success. Here’s an example of how I planted them. I had an old chimnea that had rusted out and was no longer being used. So intead of throwing it out I decided to take it apart and use it as a planter. I took small forget-me-not plants and poked them into the mesh door of the chimnea and viola! Once the plants began to bloom I had myself a unique conversation piece in my garden!

I allow my forget-me-nots to go to seed each year instead of pinching off the dead flowers. I gather the seeds and sprinkle them throughout my garden for a more dispersed look the next year (instead of letting the seed fall on their own and grow in “clumps” here and there). For more information about these pretty little flowers, bet sure to visit this site: http://home.howstuffworks.com/forget-me-not.htm

On a sidenote, my youngest son calls forget-me-nots by a different name. He calls them lego-flowers. lol! If you have ever seen the little flowers that lego makes you’ll surely agree… they really do look like forget-me-nots!

It’s that time of year again where I get my hands dirty in my garden. It’s so encouraging to see the rewards of all the work I’ve put into my garden over the years.

My camera doesn’t do these flowers justice, but hopefully you can get an idea of how inspiring it is for me to see my work paying off. My garden is my sanctuary… a private hideaway from the rest of the world. I can’t imagine my life without it. That’s probably why I live in a house instead of an apartment… balcony gardening just wouldn’t satisfy my love for gardening.

My other perennials are growing beautifully. My clematis, irises, peonies, hostas, hollyhock, violets, forget-me-nots, lily of the valley and daisies all appear to be promising me another summer of beautiful blooms. My apple and pear tree are full of blossoms and their blossoms will soon be out-done by the blossoms on my lilac trees. Oh, then we’ll see the breathtaking flowers on my rose of sharon trees! But of course, this just isn’t enough for me. lol. I had to go out and buy more perennials for my gardens today. I bought 2 delphiniums, 3 lupins and 1 purple coneflower. I’ve tried growing lupins in my backyard garden in previous years without success but my next door neighbour has had a lot of success with the lupins she’s grown in her front garden, so this year I’m planting them in my front garden. Hopefully that will do the trick.

I also bought some impatiens which are my favourite annual for filling in those empty spaces in the garden where my perennials haven’t filled in yet.

*sigh* I really need to save up for a new camera.

Anyways, while I was looking online for gardening tips for my new plants, I found some good news! Beginning next spring, it will be illegal to use pesticides and herbicides in home gardens in Ontario! (you can read about it HERE). All I can say is it’s about time! I have never used chemicals on my gardens… not on my flower gardens or on my vegetable gardens. Originally my reason to not use them was because I had small children (I didn’t want to expose them to that) but as they got older I just didn’t see the reason to start using chemicals. It never made my garden less prolific. Sure maybe I had a few dandelions growing where I didn’t want them and I had to fight to keep the creeping charlie from taking over but so what? That’s part of gardening. So I thank you Dalton McGuinty… it makes me glad that I voted for you!

Mother’s Day was a real treat for me this year. I’ve been blessed with my kids… instead of a Mother’s Day they gave me a Mother’s Week. My oldest child spent a few days with us (she had some time off of work) and spoiled me rotten while she was here. She cooked supper every night and gave me a make-over/ mini spa treatment… it definitely gave me the boost I needed. My middle son made a beautiful wooden serving tray in school and said it was for the breakfast in bed he was going to make for me on Mother’s Day. I’m normally up quite early (at least 1.5-2 hours before everyone else) so  he wasn’t able to serve me breakfast in bed, but I did get to enjoy a wonderful breakfast (my husband and the boys all made it for me). My oldest son grew a gorgeous geranium in horticultural class and gave it to me… it reminds me so much of the geraniums my mother grows in her house. It’s so big! I always envied my mother for how beautiful her geraniums were. Now I don’t have to be envious anymore! My youngest son made me some daffodils at school out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners (they’re so cute) and a card (although it looks more like a father’s day card. lol. He drew a picture on it of him golfing.). The boys made sure my day was totally relaxing… I didn’t have to do anything.

I had also phoned my mother and wished her a happy Mother’s Day and then later on in the day I got a chance to talk to her again. My sister (who lives near my mom) invited her over for dinner so they both talked to me (via speaker phone). I couldn’t have asked for a better day.

It just a shame that everyday can’t be as stress free as Mother’s Day. Unfortunately there’s still no word on my brother. That’s stressful enough, but now I’m worrying about my Mom #2 (aka my birth mother). She’s had some post menopausal bleeding so today she had an endometrial biopsy performed on her. I phoned her tonight to see how she’s doing and she sounded completely exhausted. She is so sore. She put on a brave front but it was obvious how stressed out she’s been over this (who can blame her?). She’s been scheduled to go in for another one in June where they plan on removing a larger tissue sample. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.