Priorities, “triage,” and setting up the “base camp”
For any successful team to operate, there must be an agreed-upon set of rules and priorities. And Ed and I were a team. So, during this “adult” phase, we had five priorities:
- Survival
- Our marriage
- Our son
- Heal into a strong, healthy life
- Break the family cycle and protect the kids from Dad
Nothing else mattered. Not career. Not money. In our house, the iron-clad rule that reigned supreme for these years was:
Kids’ needs first.
Their survival, their wellbeing, their safety.
Yes, my past may have been strewn with wreckage that still needed fixing if I were going to be an effective wife, parent, and human being.
Yes, we had marital issues that were threatening to break us. So if we were going to make it, those had to be dealt with.
Yes, there was so much that I still needed to learn from the past and the present to catch up to everyone else.
Yes, I had unresolved trauma from my past that was locked away, so deeply buried that I didn’t even know it existed.
And yes, Ed and I did not want to create future problems because we did not address the ones from the past or the present.
The dilemma? With only so many hours in a day, what issue(s) should be tackled first? Between jobs and life needs, there was no way to do them all at once.
The answer was triage. Each moment was a constantly rotating set of decisions as to which priority to address first. And always, if it was immediately necessary for our son’s welfare, that issue came first. It was the best we could do.
So some days it was working on a personal issue, another day it was a marital one, and in between, it was learning the life skills to navigate better. We would take care of the latest, most pressing need first. Then catch the others later.
But the important thing we agreed upon was that there WOULD be a later for those deferred issues, even if later might be years. For my buried trauma, that later would be a couple of decades. And I think in a lot of ways, that was for the best, and my “buried trauma” knew that. Before I would be able to face any of that, I needed to “secure the home front first,” protect our kids from Dad, and develop tools and skills along the way. So those deepest of wounds knew it wasn’t time, and stayed silent.
For now, the first necessity was getting us to North Carolina for the hope of a better, less stressful life. And like any new adventure, first you get there and set up your base camp, then you explore…
Tags: family, life, love, mental-health, writing
Soul Mosaic 
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