I spoke very minimal Spanish when our little man was first placed with and adopted into our family. What motivated me initially to continue to learn was our son, because I had wanted him to be able to have a conversation with his birth mom should he ever choose to want to meet and talk to her. He’s had Spanish and English spoken around him his entire life for this reason.

This morning, when as I was getting ready to walk out the door with Tony on our community safety walk, I noticed a young rabbit nibbling contentedly on the mesquite pods littering the ground. I was trying not to get close as I took pictures, so I used the zoom on my phone camera, but our mesquite-loving visitor noted me pretty quickly anyway, posture changing immediately to high alert, assessing for a possible threat.

At this point, I’ve come to expect a higher level of challenges will be facing us on as the parents of a kiddo with such specialized needs, and my emotional armor is pretty substantial and more than enough most of the time to get me through just about anything. But sometimes it can feel like I am that bunny, trying to munch away at having a peaceful life, but there’s always some crisis or problem coyote wanting to hop the fence so to speak, and it’s much harder to find adequate resources to meet those challenges when you have a kiddo with more significant needs. There are times when I can shrug it off, and others where my nervous system reacts like a bunny clambering under the gate to somewhere it thinks is safer.

We’ve had a lot of stressor coyotes hopping the fence in the past year. Nobody over here’s been eaten alive thankfully, but it’s also true that my nervous system wants a break from the stressful event parade it’s been running around in and it’s just not been coming yet. I’m sure it will, because that is life and periods of calm get sprinkled here and there even at the Quiet Crisis Next Door. But until that calmer period comes, sometimes I have to give myself a break and temporarily reduce the hab hours I am working, focusing on just the current essentials in therapy time with Tony (like his safety skills or sound canceling headphone tolerance in prep for fire drills or his tolerance of ace bandages) so I can take time off to keep my emotional system from overheating from all of this. Sometimes it’s just a lot, and I’m just a human trying to do the best I can with situations that I think could eat just about anybody alive emotionally or otherwise.

There are lots of self-care things I like to do (like my makeup), but sometimes it really helps me to read or listen to something in Spanish, because I have to focus on it so much more because it’s not my primary spoken language and it’s a lot easier to give my nervous system some room to breath if my brain isn’t as capable of multi-tasking. Watching or listening to something helps me the most because understanding native spanish speakers cuando están hablando bastante rápido es un debilidad para mi. Sometimes I focus on trying to think only in Spanish too, not just because I want the fluency (I definitely don’t have the fluency of a native Spanish speaker, though I am aiming to gain that), but because again it can stop my system from going into challenge-related stress hormone overload. I actually had part of a recent dream in Spanish and I woke up feeling happy simply because I felt that more than anything showed me how much I have gained towards my goal.

For me, it’s been such a blessing to have that bit of free time during Tony’s current ABA sessions. When I’m not having to trouble shoot a problem or clean something, I can find a few moments to watch something if I want to on my phone, or hunt down a song from something I am watching that I like. Today while I ate my lunch it was “Ana de Nadie” and the opening song for the episode I am currently watching.

I don’t have perfect answers in English or Spanish for all of the challenges life can bring. Sometimes it’s just hard all the way around. And you know, I’ve had mesquite flour before, and it gives me stomach cramps. So for my inner bunny anyways, that’s not the life I’m enjoying living for. But the good parts with my family and loved ones definitely are. But sometimes I still just need to engage in something capable of requiring as much focus as possible to prevent ruminating or over-analyzing. Maybe tomorrow it will be watching an episode of “El Amor Invencible” while I wash dishes. That is, after all, what I have for my family regardless of the stress.