Caregiving Stories Reprise
Wounded Sacred Dementia: Part Two
Dementia's derelict WinLose SocialWorker
suboptimizingly hesitates
when I tell her
I have not changed my mind
about not adopting Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
into my vulnerable home
with a seven-year-old AfricanAmerican boy
blind
and unable to defend himself,
or even run paraplegically away,
in the likely event of predative attack
by a jealous younger girl-child
who needs to be the ego-nurtured baby addict
of her household.
My older two AfricanAmerican sons
could defend their Nubian Princely selves,
and most certainly would,
after all,
they had experience living with Tyrant
who was older
and bigger
and louder.
The SocialWorker commits to giving me six months
unless someone else comes along
as WinWin qualified
and ready to commit
to bipolar alcoholism
for ZeroZone Soul life.
We both knew how unlikely
this would unfold
in our shared HereNow
4Dimensional RealTime
of ZeroSoul understorying TaoSpirit.
So we got Dementia's ears tubed,
all the better to hear our creolizing consonants with.
Her eyes WinWin opened
to communication's PositivEnergy integrities
all the better to watch us form our cooperative consonants.
Her brain pictures
all the better to predict her bipolar
ZeroSoul RightBrain emotional swings.
Her scalp de-ringwormed
all the better to fill her pretty head
with ribbgons
and butterfly berets
on her own tiny yang-braids.
Her now open eyes
wearing glasses
all the better to watch us WinWin smile back
and too often LoseLose frown,
to be incontinently honest,
holding our noses and heads
against each LoseLose other.
By the end of the first week
she no longer needed to take food to bed with her.
By the end of the first day
she taught me
When Dementia rises from her feeding chair
during a meal,
more of an athletic event,
a wrestling match really,
to jump Yang-up and Yin-down
and run around,
this does not mean she is done eating,
or feeding,
or whatever.
She has other
messier ways
to let me know
when she's All Done!!!!
Jumping during mealtime
is something about liking the food,
absorbing PositivEnergy nurture,
and needing to calm down
and express Yang-enthusiasm.
So I stop removing her food
until the pink plastic bowl is serenely empty.
Although she usually takes care of bowl removal
for me,
or against me--
not entirely sure she is sure.
I put out another bowl
if she asks for it
(no judgment)
and leave it out for her
to eat or feed on, again,
depending on your dipolar-bipolar perspective,
or to just check on from time to time
to be sure it remains there
and not yet LoseLose empty,
until she learns to trust me
to listen to her good food to eat
PositivEnergy messages
as much or little as she wants to share
whenever she wants.
All I require is a Please?
Not even ThankYou!
although that would be nice,
and PositivEnergy appreciated.
So, no need to hoard food
or bolt it down without chewing
or LoseLose throw it
before someone takes it away.
Eventually,
more like a slow groaning year,
Dementia's SocialWorker
threatens to remove her from my care
rather than leaving her with me
until she finds a more appropriate pre-adoptive placement.
Is this a WinWin promise
or a WinLose threat?
I offer to help her recruit an ego-ecotherapeutic adult
or two
without young vulnerable children
and pets,
and too awfully many sharp knives
and scissors
and voices,
who might agree to adopt
if I provide monthly respite.
But the Professional SocialWorker
in her infinitely divine
ZeroSum Win-Lose wisdom
does not want my help.
She refuses to look for a household without high risks
of further Dementia dings,
or to even disclose Fetal Alcohol labels
to prospects for WinWin adoption,
Or to even find an appropriate foster placement
in which Dementia could more successfully
more restoratively,
with further resilience and self-sustainability,
wait and heal and hope
for that just-right therapeutic parent(s).
I am now persuaded
that Dementia's best restorative justice and peace hope
is to be rescued from her demented SocialWorker
and, to be fair,
from a retributive lack of welfare committed system
designed to reward the heavily mortgaged SocialWorker
for punitive anti-BirthFamily decisions
not in Dementia's best
short-term
or long-term healthy interests.
My AfricanAmerican husband and older sons agreed,
given SocialWorker's issues,
fueled by denial of internal climate pathologies,
we should proceed toward WinWin committed adoption
and hope for our mutual therapeutic best,
and not worst,
somehow both care-giving and care-receiving democracy,
mutual creolizing acclimation
as a resilient Left and resonant Right
multiculturing household,
environment,
habitat,
home,
sort of a PositivEnergy networking nest.
I would have asked my youngest son
but would not have known how to ask,
nor how to misunderstand his non-verbal benign response.
So Dementia is still with us,
turning seventeen later this year,
our only post-millennial girl
living with five trans-millennial males,
deep listening with Dementia
teaching hard lessons:
Resilience is to LeftBrain cognitive dissonance
as RightBrain Resonance
is to affective disintegration,
as notnot PositivEnergy
WinWin democratic trust
is to NegativEnergy LoseLose autocratic anti-trust
in self or Professional SocialWorker other.
Resilience Left and Resonance Right
polypathic Yang and Polyphonic Yin
nurturing nutrients
for rich dense resonantly complex
WinWin attitudinal
and behavioral co-empathic systems.
Just as chaotically dissonant
WinLose angry
and LoseLose fearful ecopolitical systems
can grow wickedly complex interdependencies
unraveling GoldenRule cooperative
WinWin strategies
to sustain self-other perpetuating equanimity.
Resilient healthy gains
sustain
despite fading outdoor voice losses
of RightBrain therapeutic polyculturing resonance.
Dementia
has her own wild
outsideLeft--insideRight
polarizing resonance of voices
as deep and sacred
with each new outdoor RedSky dawn
as resilient resonant DNA-RNA Solidarity
Blues-inside imparts.
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