eat the cake first

Eat the cake first - sweetness in the bitter

I have a kid living with a rare, often debilitating and complex medical illness. On our journey, I have gotten a lot of advice - some of it good and some of it, let's just say well-intentioned. 

One of my favorite pieces of advice has been to let my daughter "Eat The Cake First".  Simple , brilliant, and effective - guaranteed to preserve the magic of childhood. 

I used to wait until after dinner was done, gifts were opened, etc. to break out the cake. Often my kids were too sick or tired to eat the cake and we never got to it. Now we literally eat the cake first.

Just for the record - I am not by nature an optimist - nor temperamentally grateful. I am bit prone to overthinking and anxiety - so having both my kids get sick really rocked my world view. I am also a problem solver and a minimizer so it took me awhile to realize that my life, and my identity, were about to undergo a profound and permanent transformation.  I didn't, and don't, ask "why?" as much as "how?" am I going to manage.  

In talking with other caregivers, I realize that there are some shared experiences and practices that have been part of our journeys in accepting that we, and our children, are going to live with illness and all that goes with it for the foreseeable future.  It took me, and others, awhile to:

• Move from the shock of "This Is Not My Beautiful Life How Did I Get Here...." to moments of grace and joy
• Make meaning of something that doesn't make sense at all - like having a really sick kid
• Be grateful 
• Connect with others
• Choose "action" over "reaction"
• Leverage mindfulness and gratitude practices to increase resiliency
• Find hope when things seem pretty hopeless

Bit by bit and day by day things changed - and one day we could not remember a time where we did not eat the cake first.