I don’t know if the perfectionism Mom trap applies to you, but after my son Mark was diagnosed with autism, I fell headfirst into the quicksand of perfectionism. I would likely have lived under the pressure of “perfect” without a special needs diagnosis, but once life thrust me onto the autism detour, the long-term consequences of “chasing after perfect” certainly took their toll. 

​Are you aware that perfectionism is a form of self-abuse because it means that you are setting unattainable self-standards? The very definition of unattainable standards implies that you are driving yourself to achieve something that is forever out of reach! Perfectionism also means that you are measuring your self-worth based upon your behavioral performance. Perfectionism comes into play when your ego has you lost in compulsively seeking outside approval and validation from other people. Chasing that outside validation and approval is a way to prop up your sagging self-esteem. Yes, I said it… perfectionists actually have low self-esteems!
 
As a perfectionist Mom, your fear-based ego is trying to tell you that you are only as valuable as what you can accomplish and is continually determining your worth based upon your last time-up to bat! Your Ego is driving you to EARN love, approval and grace! You are not required to earn any of those things, as they are gifts that are freely given, once you learn to make a practice of giving them first and foremost to yourself.
 
As a perfectionist Mom, you will find yourself obsessively critiquing your outward performance, while simultaneously gauging the reactions of others, most especially authority figures. This is not a healthy pattern to fall into, in light of the fact that much of your life likely revolves around interacting with health care professionals, social service agency administrators, special education administrators, and a host of other specialists that knock on your door related to your child’s special needs. When the professionals aren’t weighing in with their opinions, then it’s your friends, your significant other, your family members, other Moms and even perfect strangers who are watching from the sidelines and have plenty of opinions and insights to offer!
 
Perfectionism is worlds apart from healthy striving for excellence. Healthy strivers are inwardly focused toward self-improvement, whereas perfectionists are hostage to the tyranny of needing external acceptance and approval. Perfectionism is characterized by errors in thinking. The biggest error of all is adopting the belief that you are required to live perfectly, present an image of perfect and do everything perfectly in order to avoid or minimize the painful feelings that come from experiences where you felt the sting of shame, blame, humiliation and/or judgment.
 
Perfectionism is an adaption that often began during a stormy childhood. During childhood, you may have erroneously internalized the belief that you were responsible for controlling other people’s perceptions of your behavior. You may have ceaselessly monitored you own behavior as a barometer for whether you could ensure your own physical and emotional well-being. These internalized beliefs are no longer serving you. Remember, your perceptions, choices and behavioral responses fall within your responsibility; everything else belongs outside of your domain.

​
 
As a perfectionist Mom, you likely believe that you are your accomplishments and thus, your ego has pushed you into adopting an identity of neurotic over-achieving on behalf of your special needs child. Your Ego-mind holds you hostage to the idea that it is never safe for you to step off the treadmill of the unattainable. While engaged in your exhaustive efforts, your ego continually measures your performance and assigns a score… your result either approached the mark or was deeply flawed. Due to the black and white assertions of the ego, there is little to no grey area between the two extremes.
 
Your Ego continually hammers you with the idea that mistakes are unacceptable. In the event that you’ve actually encountered shame, humiliation or judgment, your Ego will push you to double down on your efforts, rather than having you challenge the faulty premise of attempting to earn other people’s support through your performance.  The Ego will insist that you work even harder the next time around to stamp out your so-called deficiencies. These measures by the Ego are harsh, tyrannical and unforgiving.
 
What’s quite troublesome is that perfectionism holds the promise of offering external rewards but those rewards come at an exorbitantly high price.
 
Perfectionism robs you of your joy, resiliency, your freedom and potentially even your health, while keeping you addicted to gaining a modicum of validation from other people. The rigid black and white thinking of perfectionism, in combination with the fear of failure, potentially keeps you stuck in a cycle of constant anxiety, strained relationships and chronic procrastination.
 
Carol Look has discovered that even when a perfectionist attains the trapping of success, it results in deep emptiness because that success is based upon the wrong ideals and values. 
 
Your true power as a Mom is never outside of yourself. Neurotic overachieving, perfectionism and workaholism are nothing more than a set of masks to cover over your fear, shame, pain and lack of self-love.
 
This journey is about you learning to love and accept yourself without conditions, so that your special needs child can learn to love and accept themselves unconditionally as well. Remember, your children internalize the truth of who you are, more than the words that you utter!

• Are you ready to give yourself permission to drop the burden of perfectionism and instead replace that burden with unconditional self-love, self-acceptance and self-compassion?

 

• Are you ready to surrender to the idea that it is one hundred percent acceptable for you to make a misstep? Can you validate with kindness and compassion, as though you are speaking to yourself as a dear best friend, why it’s totally safe for you to display less than perfect behavior? It is safe for you to throw gutter balls in life because gutter balls are integral to the learning process.

 

• Are you ready to courageously assume full responsibility for all of your life choices, by placing your attention on the pivot and correction, rather than the so-called missteps? Are you ready to preserve your life force energy by dropping the Ego-mind’s survival story of observe, complain, blame and explain?

 

• Are you ready to give yourself permission to complete certain tasks in an acceptably average manner? Not all tasks require the same level of commitment.

 

• Are you ready to set healthy boundaries so that your home life and your work life don’t bleeding together in a nonstop work cycle? Are you ready to make yourself a priority in your own life by carving out your own time for recharging, renewing and revitalizing yourself?

 

• Are you ready to create a meditation practice so that you can begin to tap into your highest wisdom, take measured and guided actions that are based upon the inspirations offered from your Higher Self? Are you ready to save time and spare yourself unnecessary struggle because these inspired steps invariably lead you in the right spiritual direction? Are you ready to free yourself from the compulsive run on the hamster wheel?

 

• Are you ready to embrace the following truth from Dr. Wayne Dyer; “What other people think of me is none of my business. One of the highest places you can get to is to be independent of the opinions of other people?”

 
          For more Spirit First Mom tips, please visit Facebook@SpiritFirstCoaching.

​Do you believe that your child's soul chose you to fulfill the impactful and uplifting role as mother in this lifetime? I wholeheartedly believe that a sacred soul contract exists between mothers and their special needs children. You are your child's spiritual companion through life, and as such, you are here to support your child in reaching his or her highest potential in this lifetime. Understanding the sacred nature of your contract underscores the fact that both of your souls have chosen an outline for your spiritual curriculum, your physical suit and your overarching mission for this lifetime. All of these choices have been made via the soul's free will in a loving multiverse. Your children have wisely determined that taking on the challenges associated with their special needs would serve the overall purposes of the Higher Self and the soul's evolutionary progression. Similarly, your soul has also decided that fulfilling the role of mother would enhance your soul's spiritual expansion.

​Even if you don't subscribe to the idea that you and your child's souls have formed a contract prior to incarnating, you can subscribe to the idea that you are being offered the opportunity to enter into a spiritual partnerships as equals, for the purpose of both parties spiritual growth and evolution. Parenting a special needs child is a tall order that hurls you out of your comfort zone and offers you the opportunity to shed your fear-based conditioning and step into your authentic power. When you view your relationship as a spiritual one, you recognize that all of your parenting experiences create the perfect spiritual soup for growth, mastery and the attainment of wisdom.

Characteristics Of An Awakened Spiritual Relationship

It provides ongoing and heightened opportunities to live consciously by design.

It recognizes that both parties are equal and unique manifestation of Divinity.

It provides a partnership where both parties have the opportunity to awaken spiritually and evolve much more quickly due to the special synergy that is created by two souls forming a spiritual alliance.

It provides a framework for leaving behind stereotypical roles that were previously fulfilled for means of survival.

It is based upon a covenant that operates with the highest degree of truth and integrity.

It offers a space of safety where both parties can share and process their healing feelings.

The mother/child relationship is always mirroring back both the magnificence and the disowned parts of each other that your egos have judged as unacceptable.

"Spiritual relationships are the closest thing to heaven that you can experience on earth." 
Hu Dalconzo

Your children prompt you to remember that, "you are in this world but not of this world." They push you into the realization that you are first and foremost a spiritual being who is playing out a human experience. With that understanding in place, you can come back to the remembrance that you are not at your essence the roles you are fulfilling here, i.e., you are not a sister, child, employee, friend, wife and even mother to your beautiful light bringer. Your role as special needs Mom typically has the most seductive pull of all! This is the role that puts you in jeopardy of attaching your worth, value and identity to a set of arbitrary behavioral performance standards for mothering.  Let's face it -- it's so much easer to feel uplifted when your children flourish. When your children struggle, it's so easy to fall down into the rabbit hole of fear, guilt, grief and despondency because your ego is condemning you for falling short of accomplishing an idealized version of your parenting role. Any time your ego enmeshes your worth, value, and identity to the ups and downs of the roller coaster ride, it has led you astray.

As  you embrace the knowledge that your children are here to teach you, every bit if not more than you are here to teach them, it will help you begin to gradually dis-identify with the seductive role of mothering. Your children are here, in part, to help you learn to transcend everything that goes along with ego-identification illness. Some of your children have opted out of the achievement "rat race"  and the societal rewards for doing so, and therefore, they highlight for you the most essential cornerstone of life... in a word, LOVE! As spiritual teachers, they underscore the emptiness attached to garnering things outside of ourselves. They teach all of us that having more, doing more and being more is not the path toward a consciously awakened life! Your children ask you to answer the following question: how can you embody more love and transmit more love through every interaction that you encounter? 

Some of your children are not here to be molded. No matter how you parent them, they stubbornly adhere to their own values and perspectives on life. They are formidable change agents who came here to overhaul the ways things have always been done in societal institutions. They invariably dance to their own songs, as you are left trying to follow their steps, without being able to hear their music playing in the background. 
Forming an awakened spiritual relationship with your child is not necessarily easy. However, the benefits of doing so are numerous. Via the creation of a spiritual partnership with your child, you establish a foundation overflowing with love, laughter and compassion, that is built on honesty and trust. You empower yourself to be emotionally vulnerable, emotionally intimate and honest with yourself, so that you can personify those traits on behalf of your child. You no longer participate in a facade that propagates the virtuous, idealized, self-sacrificing mother who consciously denies herself. Instead, you burst open your heart chakra and live by your own set of standards; you engage in activities that are high vibe for you! 
You commit yourself to a consistent practice of examining your own behavioral motivations. To the greatest degree possible, you courageously model ownership for your less than perfect behaviors. You then model your willingness to take a deep dive into discovering the root causes of the energetic disruptions. When your Ego-mind has you lost in reacting rather than responding, you recognize that it is not about your child's behavior. Rather, it's a call for you to come to terms with some unhealed aspect inside of yourself that is demanding to be seen, felt, heard and released. By validating the truth about your own buried wounds and then releasing your pain, you will be clearing unhealthy trans-generational patterns that are no longer serving your family line. Your children invariably serve as the catalysts for the establishment of new growth on your family tree. 

If you are interested in learning more about communication tools that can support you in creating a consciously awakened relationship with your child, please email me at spiritfirstcoaching@gmail and head the email, Responsibility Communication Nutshell. A Nutshell is reminiscent of an old fashioned flashcard with the core summary points included.

The Gift of Human Design

By Karen Hasselo

An important element of sustaining resiliency in the face of your children's challenges is learning to understand how to capitalize on your own energy design. Human Design offers you an incredible shortcut to understanding your energy map. It's as though you have been handed the cliff notes for the novel of your life.

Human Design is an uncannily accurate personality assessment tool that offers you a visual representation of your energy system. Based upon your birth details, you receive a visual representation of your energy map, called a Body Graph. This body graph shows you a concrete way to understand your strengths, your potential weaknesses, your gifts and talents and your overarching purpose for incarnating on this planet at this time.

Human Design is the synthesis of Eastern and Western Astrology, the Kabbalah tree of life, the Hindu Chakra System and Quantum Physics. The sum of its five parts is imbued with a powerful synergy, greater than its distinct aspects viewed in isolation.

During a supernova explosion in Ibiza Spain in 1987, the foundation of the Human Design system was "downloaded" into a man with the spiritual name of Ra Uru Hu. Ra heard a voice over the course of eight days that instructed him to transcribe the tenets of Human Design. In addition, he was informed that Human Design was being shared with the world in large measure for the benefit of  children. This voice also related important information related to life on this planet and important changes that were afoot in our human evolution that would go into effect around the year 2027.

If you aren't sitting down, you might want to take a seat! In 1987, Ra was told about the "new children" who would soon flood the planet. Some of these children would be given the label of autism. He understood that an even smaller subset were those who would be considered "non-verbal," by our standard cultural definitions. All of the "new children" were here to help usher in sweeping changes for the betterment of humankind.

These beautiful children were here specifically to change the Design of Humanity by helping you learn to honor your feelings as part of decision-making.

These children were coming in as way-showers, teaching a new way of being on this planet; a way that elevates love and oneness as the foundation for everything. However, Ra was also told that the system needed to be shared with adults first, as they serve as the primary guides and supports for children.

It was a mere three years ago that I discovered the origin of this prophesy and I was completely blown away! Tears streamed down my face. I had already been guided to study Human Design and then I realized that my own son was part of this magnificent evolution.

One of the things that drew me to Human Design was the understanding that there are five different types of humans on the planet, including projectors, manifestors, generators, manifesting generators and reflectors. Each type has its own way of navigating in the world and manifesting desires. If you have ever felt frustrated or bitter after repeatedly practicing the tried and true strategies to manifest your dreams, without the promised results, there might be a simple reason why those methods aren't clicking for you!

According to Human Design, each of you has a different role to play, a different dominating emotional theme and a different approach or strategy that supports you in manifesting your desires on the physical plane.

You have all been conditioned to just go out and do things; to just go out and make things happen. When it comes to your kids, you may find yourself pushing harder and harder to secure certain results. Eventually, you may come to realize that your primary result has turned into persistent exhaustion, with very little else to show,  given all of your persistent efforts.

According to the teachings of Human Design, 92% of the human population is not designed to just go out and make it happen, via the Law of Attraction. Until you learn to harness your specific strategy to co-create your desires, you may just find yourself spinning your wheels!

Embedded in your chart are nine energy centers. These centers show you the highest potential of your specific energy patterns and helps you pinpoint specific emotional themes that are pertinent to your energy design. In Human Design, you discover which of your energy centers are defined or undefined/open.

With defined energy, you have a consistent way of moving through your life. You broadcast specific traits out into the world in a consistent manner and other people recognize you through your consistent way of showing up. 

Undefined or open energy in your chart can pose a bit more of a challenge. Openness offers you the potential to become wise about life's adventures. With open centers and open gates (an additional type of energy noted on the body graph), your tendency is to take in the energy of the people around you and amplify it. You can't escape becoming conditioned by that energy as you come to believe that it is you who is being dramatic, who is forcefully speaking to gain attention, who is acting on fleeting inspirations, who is pushing to prove yourself again and again, just to name some examples.  Human Design shows you how to begin to tease apart which energy belongs to you and which doesn't.

​Once you understand the workings of your design, you begin to make peace with certain aspects of yourself that your ego has judged as broken or damaged. Once you understand your child's design, you begin to see him or her with much greater clarity and compassion. You no longer find yourself looking through the lens of pathology because you've learned to reframe your child's tendencies as valuable assets. 

According to Human Design, abundance, love, health and joy are your natural states of being. Humans are designed to live in democratic and egalitarian communities where decisions are made with careful thought and intention. Your children are here to point the way and you hare here to help them do so.

If you are interested in receiving a free complementary copy of your Human Design Body Graph or your child's Human Design Body Graph, please reach out to me at spiritfirstcoaching@gmail and entitle the email Human Design Chart. I will need your birth date, time of birth and place of birth to calculate your chart. ​

I am not convinced that "simple loss" exists.  However, for those of you who are parenting children with autism, your experience of loss can feel like a never-ending bottomless pit of sorrow that is continually reactivated. Expected milestones, holidays, family rituals, and simple everyday activities can trigger your tandem losses and your feelings of isolation. Even a simple outing to the grocery store can evoke feelings of pain around your decimated parenting dreams.

In 2009, researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that mothers parenting teens with autism had stress levels that were comparable to combat veterans. While you are in the midst of crisis management, you may find it quite challenging to process and release your feelings of sorrow. I know that I did. You may find yourself living in survival mode and your ego may push you to minimize or discount your own self-care needs. Who has time to practice emotional first-aide when you are required to push a boulder up a mountain every single day?

Dr. Pauline Boss coined the term ambiguous loss to describe the unrelenting and frozen grief that many of you live with as a backdrop to your parenting journey. Your child is physically present, but his or her development has careened wildly off course. Ambiguous loss is a devastating kind of loss because almost everything surrounding the loss remains confusing, unclear and indeterminate.

Ambiguous loss potentially shatters your belief in a fair, orderly and manageable world where mastery is possible. Your new normal is here in all its multicolored glory. As you perceive missing aspects to your child, while having a child who is physically present, you may feel helpless, numb, depressed, disturbed by distressing dreams, guilt-ridden and bombarded with conflict in your intimate relationships. Parenting a child with autism can result in polarized views. You and your co-parent may fall into the trap of spewing absolutes and black and white positions with passionate conviction! 

If you find yourself living with some of the symptoms of ambiguous loss, know that it is not because you possess a character flaw. These symptoms are embedded in everyone's experience of ambiguous loss.

There is no such thing as closure when you are coping with ambiguous loss. You find yourself investing in hope, only to plummet back down to hopelessness, again and again. Over time, as a form of self-protection, your ego may prompt you to no longer participate in that cycle. 

You may also be stunned to discover that the former people who you easily counted on have gradually disengaged and sauntered away. You may have left your career path, lost your outlets for socialization and are now in the middle of a questioning phase. You question your capacity to properly meet the needs of your other neurotypical children and you wonder who you are becoming when you stare into the mirror? ​

​Principles to Navigate Through Ambiguous Loss

Ambiguous loss shakes life to its foundation.

Ambiguous loss leads you to question almost everything you once more assuredly knew to be true.

This dismantling process is not a punishment. It's a potential opportunity for a growth cycle and sometimes the Divine is nudging you to take your life in a completely different direction.

This process can feel terrifying. It can feel as though you are floundering weightless in space without any recognizable anchors.

Be patient and compassionate toward yourself as you navigate through your child's various developmental stages.

As hard as it is to believe, from the spiritual perspective, there are no mistakes in a perfectly designed and evolving Universe. Make peace with the fact that you are exactly where you are meant to be, doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing for your highest good and the highest good of your family, even when it doesn't look and feel that way from a human perspective.

Know that you are not alone as you struggle to accept the above tenet; that you are in fact part of a tsunami of mothers ushering children with autism through life. This responsibility is a "Divine Calling."  

If you are feeling hopeless and stuck, validate that any mother would feel the same way if she had lived through the exact set of circumstances that you have experienced. Just pause for a moment and breathe deeply. Speak to yourself compassionately as though you are your own best friend. 

Put the battering rod down and pick up the feather. There are no absolute ways to navigate through ambiguous loss, nor are there any right or wrong feelings. When you validate your experience of ambiguous loss with well-grounded truth, that truth will set you free.

When you validate your personal truth in a non-judgmental manner and the feelings attached to that truth, your ego will have nothing to deny, repress or minimize about your painful feelings. 

You will immediately feel freer and lighter.

For a copy of the Validation Exercise that outlines the exact steps to take, please email me at spiritfirstcoaching@gmail and head the email Validation Nutshell. 

Are you a special needs Mom who is fulfilling the role of a Human Doing? Do you find yourself...

• Rushing and racing from task to task, all in an effort to keep all the balls in the air
• Stressed and overwhelmed much of the time?
• Focused upon what you haven't done, instead of what you have done?
• Focused upon problems,  preventing calamities and securing specific outcomes.
• Caught up in fulfilling obligations, duties, requirements and expectations?
• Experiencing frenzied and scattered energy?
• Tossing and turning at night because you can't shut off your overactive brain?
• Telling yourself much of the time that more efforting is the answer?
• Thinking so much about the future that you miss special moments that are unfolding in the present?
• Working harder to  control other people's responses, other environments and even your child's response to his circumstance?

If you relate to the above Human Doing List, know that it is no longer necessary or advisable for your ego to push you into addictive maneuvers, while exhausting your mind, body and soul in the process.

As a special needs Mom, do you realistically have a lot to accomplish? Yes. Do you face decision fatigue? Yes. Do you feel the weight and import of the decisions you are facing on behalf of your child? Of course you do. Is the addiction to Human Doing the most ideal way to navigate motherhood? No, it isn't.

Because I've been a Special Needs Mom for almost 25 years, I've put in my miles paddling my canoe against the raging rapids of the river. That approach life my body beached on the sidelines with adrenal exhaustion and a host of chronic health challenges.

​Now I recognize that over the long haul, diving into unnecessary self-sacrifice is not the answer. In order to fully support your children so that they may flourish, consider identifying more as a Human Being.

• Are you grounded and present in your life?

• Do you meditate daily, even if for a few short minutes, in order to quiet the 50,000 fear-based thoughts that are potentially running through your mind?

• Do you consciously activate the Law of Manifestation, which underpins the creation process; Being, Doing and Having. The Doing and the Having are a natural outgrowth of the Being.

• Do you value yourself just because you are a drop in the ocean of humanity?

• Have you resigned from earning love, validation and grace?

• Do you honor your mother intuition as your most reliable GPS?

• Do you approach your parenting odyssey by assigning your own unique meaning to your experiences?

• Do you believe that you live in a loving Universe that continually conspires to make your and your child's dreams come true?

• Do you show up for yourself on a consistent basis by valuing your own wants, needs, and desires?

In order to connect with your true and unique essence, give yourself permission to slow down. Notice the daily synchronicities and bountiful blessings that are right in front of you.

Take your blinders off and truly and deeply appreciate yourself first and foremost... knowing that you are valuable just because you exist.

You are not required to earn anything from anyone.

Now take a moment to see the child in front of you, minus their struggles. Look with your heart and you will see a powerfully Divine child -- one who has chosen to walk beside you for the evolution of both of your souls.

Now exhale and know that all is well. 

As Louise Hay said, "Everything I need to know is revealed to me. Everything I need comes to me. All is well in my life."

Reach out to me at spiritfirstcoaching@gmail.com for your Top Ten Tips For Empowered Moms.

Beth Berry recently wrote a blog entitled, "Dear Mothers: We Can't Keep Pretending This Is Working For Us." Ms. Berry actually climbs out on a limb and declares that modern day American mothers  are oppressed! 

She asserts that the expectations for mothers have gone beyond exceedingly high and have crossed over into unreachable and unrealistic.  She notes that mothers themselves are complicit in this scheme because we have decided to invest in the noble struggle in order to preserve our identity as "good mothers."

And Mrs. Berry isn't even focused upon special needs mothering. In today's world, more often than not, you are expected to take the sole lead in caring for your child with special needs in your home.  You are sometimes the only voice speaking on your child's behalf. You are placed in the position to roll up your sleeves throughout all the developmental phases and do the extensive research related to your child's needs, as well as organizing and systematizing that information, coordinating and overseeing that the needed resources are in place, while ensuring that the revolving door of professionals who serve your son or daughter are actually following through on meeting the set objectives. Talk about r-e-s-p-o-n-s-i-b-l-i-t-y! 

As a backdrop to those commitments, you often find yourself alone, isolated, and misunderstood, without adequate supports, irrespective of how much effort is expended, while continually under the glare and scrutiny of other people second-guessing your choices. You've likely even fallen into the trap of second-guessing and doubting your own mothering choices. You've also likely considered the idea that you just might be required to fulfill your parenting role until you take your final breath.

There are so many factors you can't exercise complete control over, including...

• Your child's condition.
• Your spouse or your former spouse.
• Your child's educational environment
• Your child's healthcare system.
• How your child responds to interventions and learning opportunities.
• Other people in your child's circle.
• Your child's qualification for benefits and services.

There is truly only one thing that you do have control over... the way in which you show up for yourself, your child and your other relationships.

You face a number of very real constraints. Nevertheless, remember, you are a powerful creator who can forge your own path, amidst those larger constraints.

Here are some questions to ask yourself...

• Am I setting healthy boundaries to protect my emotional needs, my health, my resiliency and my time?
• Am I making myself a priority in my own life?
• Am I treating myself with a feather or a battering rod?
• At important choice points, are my needs part of the equation?
• Am I honoring my feelings by allowing myself to feel all of them and release them?
• Is toxic guilt running my life?
• Have I forgiven myself for any so-called missteps along the way?
• Is self-care built into my daily routine or is it an afterthought scheduled on an intermittent basis?
• Am I well rested?
• Am I putting adequate nutrient dense fuel into my body?
• Am I engaged in gentle exercise?
• Am I consciously choosing empowered thoughts?
• Am I practicing gratitude?
• Am I quieting my mind?
• Am I committed to seeing key healthcare professionals that are dedicated to my needs?
• Am I fighting with life or am I entering into life's flow?
• Am I still engaged with life or has my life narrowed down to one all-consuming thing -- fulfilling my caregiving duties?

Only you hold the power to take back the reins of your own life.  Believe it or not, your children don't want you to try to meet their needs by entering into physical, emotional, intellectual or spiritual deficit. Your children want a vibrant, healthy, joyful mother! 

In the early years after my son's diagnosis with autism, I neglected to exercise the power of choice that was available to me.  At  my worst, I found myself incapacitated and grounded to an arrow bed in my living room for months on end. I had raced "past go" numerous times on the game board of life, had pulled the jail card and found myself confined with chronic illness and adrenal insufficiency.  It was up to me to change the habits that were creating unhealthy self-sacrifice so that I could finally draw the "get out of jail" card.  

Fighting with life and carrying the world on your shoulders is never the answer. If you are anything like me and you find yourself caught in this prison of your own making, it's time for you to retire the mantle of mother martyrdom. 

The truth is that you are indeed carrying more on your plate than mothers of typically developing children. However, you hold the power to decide what serves you in your life and what no longer serves you.  In order to preserve your precious life force energy for the long haul and gift yourself a life worth living, it's vital that you begin today by participating in an honest inventory to see where you have needlessly scattered your energy and how you can call it back. It's never too late to gain awareness and pivot by setting up new patterns that honor your vitally important calling as your child's companion and guide in life.

For more tips on how to become an Empowered Special Needs Mom, visit spiritfirstcoaching.com