Since October, I have been training as a Face 2 Face Befriender which I have absolutely loved. It has been so wonderful to spend a couple of hours each week with a group of people who know exactly where you are coming from and to whom you do not need to make excuses and justify yourself. This week we had to do 'disclosure', explaining the events surrounding our child's diagnosis. Strangely I found I could remember very little of the period of time surrounding finding out that Michael has special needs. Despite being the biggest event in our lives everything is such a blur and seems so distant. Even John could not remember very much when I asked him. Obviously our way of coping was to shut the whole thing out and file it away somewhere as a kind of defence mechanism. I know that the point of the exercise was to make you face your emotions in case someone you befriend stirs something in you, but at the same time I am not sure if I want to unzip everything as I really am Ok with it all now, and would not have adopted another child with special needs otherwise. As a consequence, my presentation was very factual and was the only one that did not end up with every one crying!
That is another thing too, as I was the only one in the room who did not cry that session and in a way that worried me as I feel sometimes that I have become a bit of an unemotional robot. I  have cried so much at times I do not have any tears left to give and even though I was really moved by the overwhelming stories that I heard, I did not allow myself to get emotional about them because I couldn't afford to. Having been in 'that place' before and managing to get myself out of it, it petrifies me to return there and as a result I try to emotionally detach myself from the situations when I can. I'm not sure that this is the right approach and one day the flood gate may open a chink too far, but at the moment it works for me.