Guest blog at Divine in the Daily - Grant's troubling aggression towards others

Today my friend, Amy, invited me to guest blog on her site called "Divine in the Daily". I am very touched that she offered me the opportunity to connect with the people that are following her story/blog.

When she reached out to me; I was a little stumped at first. There are many stories I could share and it's hard to know when to lay it all out and when to hold back. I have always been a rather "open book" type of person. But, the last 6 months I have really pulled back. I never know what people really want to hear and then I shut down because frankly I am experiencing some PTSD like symptoms. I have started to question if I am over sharing and wondering if it's no one else's business anyway. Sometimes I have heard on the news/media, criticisms about parents like me. They call this "share-inting". This implied shaming to over sharing our parenting stories. This makes me question my social media presence, I over analyze, I am in pain, and then I withdraw. I don't want to be judged.

On the other hand, these fundraising efforts have brought out another side of me. The side of me that always wanted to tell you how hard life was as a mom and worse yet, how hard it is to be Grant.

If you click over to her blog (and I would love if you would) then you will read more about how Grant is now being quite aggressive. It was not enough to attack himself, to starve himself, but also to hit, kick, scratch, choke and head butt others. As you know, these are not good days.

Yesterday, Scott accidentally scratched Grant's face. To watch how Grant responds to pain was fascinating and completely overwhelming. He screamed in horror, ran away from dad, laid on the ground and began to attack his own self. He started to pound away at his head while screaming and crying. It leaves us nearly helpless as he would hardly let me use a tissue to catch his tears and wipe up the blood. There was no doubt he was really hurt. There is a mark proving it. He was lucky it wasn't his eye. I will never know why running away from us is more comforting. It is hard to watch your child be in pain. It's worse when they don't want you. It's worse yet that they believe hurting themselves further some how is calming. It is so confusing.