Social Hurricane Does the Adulting Thing

Social Hurricane will be twenty-two next month.  She'd be the first to tell you she's a little behind the typical schedule as far as moving toward adulthood.

To be fair, she had a rough couple of years, largely due to the onset of massive full-bore bipolar disorder coupled with anxiety issues and a a pretty intense learning disability.  Some really poor decision making in the middle of all that could also be said to be a significant contributing factor.

Of course, getting hit by a car probably didn't help much.  There probably are other young women her age who've had two stays in psychiatric facilities, a couple of weeks in the hospital, and a few additional weeks in a physical therapy rehabilitation facility, but I'm pretty sure she's in the minority.  We've lost count of the number of emergency room visits, and don't get me started on doctor bills.

But I digress.  She's moving toward adulthood.  She's employed full time as a CNA, which is no mean accomplishment in and of itself.  She's trying to get the hang of paying taxes, budgeting, bills, and keeping up with her own prescriptions and doctor visits.  At some point in time she's determined to get her driver's licence, but the anxiety aggravates the dyslexia, and she hasn't had the best of showings yet.  (Did you know that driving on the wrong side of the road is apparently an automatic fail in North Carolina?)  She wants to go on for further schooling and training, which we applaud; she's thinking phlebotomy.  She's definitely on a good career path for her--she likes working with people and with her hands.

And, at some point in time, she wants to move out, to spread her wings and fly.

Frankly, we're a little nervous about that possibility.  To be honest, so far she hasn't inspired a lot of confidence.  But she's way beyond what she was a couple of years ago--let's see what the next little while brings.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Adulting

We have a twenty-three year old and a twenty-one year old living at home, but the situation is not at all permanent.

Basement Artist is a young adult woman and has grown up living with an extreme case of introversion, shyness, a permanently quiet voice from early damage, and fundamental insecurity.

Social Hurricane is a young adult woman dealing with anxiety issues, humongous dyslexia, and full-blown bipolar disorder.

They're both adulting.  I suppose there are people for whom adulting comes easily.  It never did for me, and it hasn't for my daughters.

They're both paying bills, holding down jobs, managing insurance and medical stuff and looking to the future.  BA is planning a wedding and then a move to Canada from North Carolina and SH is looking at further education and figuring out what she wants to do and where she wants to go when she flies the nest, which she's expecting will be within the year.

There's a lot of uncertainty, a few mistakes here and there, and an awful lot of "we're making this up as we go along."  We've had lots of long talks, and we've provided a lot of hints here and there.  But we can't do this for them.  I've love to have them blog about their own experiences, but so far, no luck.

But I wish them the best with it.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Young Ladies Doing the Adulting Thing

We have two young ladies living in our home.  Both of them have made great strides at this "adulting" thing in recent days.

They both have some challenges against them.  The younger, Social Hurricane, we've talked about a fair amount--anxiety and bipolar disorder and hallucinations.  She has a lot on her plate.

I'm not sure if we've ever talked about the elder daughter's fundamental insecurity issues.

Basement Artist was born three months early, and had a very rough year or so.  One hundred and two days in the hospital, four surgeries before she was eighteen months old.  It's left her with a permanently quiet voice and a spectacular scar on her side.  But we've also thought over the years that it's left her with chronic insecurity issues.  Developmental psychologists theorize that, in the very early days of life, a baby will either learn that the world is safe and can be trusted, or she will learn that the world is an unsafe place.

It's entirely possible (and I'm quite convinced of this personally) that BA's very rocky start has left her, deep in her psyche, feeling that the world is perilous and risky.  We've discussed this, and she pretty much agrees with me.

How this works out for her in practice is that she has to work, and work hard, to overcome a natural tendency toward fear.  Unless she deliberately compensates for it she defaults toward seeking the routine, the familiar, the deliberately unadventurous.  This has given her a great deal of trouble doing the "adulting" thing, because it's much easier to stick with the known than to venture out into the untried, especially because these days she's doing lots more things without a parent by her side.

To her considerable credit, she DOES work hard at compensating for it.  She seeks out new challenges, sallies forth into unfamiliar social situations, ventures into areas beyond the tried and true.  I salute her--it takes more courage for Basement Artist to apply for a job than it would take for me to face down a lion.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.

Basement Artist Makes a Plan

I don't know if I've mentioned that Basement Artist is engaged?  To a great guy from Montreal?

She is, and they've been together (long distance relationship) for a few years now, but officially engaged for less than a year.

We've been bugging them a little bit to set a date.  She's more of a procrastinator than her young man, but they've finally planned on sometime May or June of 2017.  We're comfortable with this, although we'll be wanting to talk specific dates soon.  A year is a comfortable window of time, enough to get everything done, not so much that we feel they're delaying indefinitely.

Plus when a girl from North Carolina wants to get married and move to Canada, better to do it in the spring; she'll have several months to get acclimated to the place before she has to deal with her first Canadian winter.

I'm excited for her.  Of course, I plan to cry like a baby when the ceremony is over and they're off on their new life together, but that's okay.  We don't own our children; we only keep them in stewardship for a while, and I'll have had her for twenty-four years before "God shall join them together."

I'm going to have to learn how to Skype.

But it's going to be a busy year.

Hope all's well out there, friends, and God bless.