my story

I am 57 years young and getting to this place in my life has been a long and winding road, some of it paved with pain. I have worn many different hats over the years, professionally I have worked as a photographer, graphic designer, furniture maker, and I am currently a glampground proprietor (a.k.a. professional putterer). I have dabbled in writing screenplays, been published in my local paper, and blogged for fun. I have lived and worked in countries all over the world such as Australia, the UK and Thailand. Most importantly though, I am a single mother of three 20-something’s, two ‘dandelion’ kids and one ‘orchid’ child (see Why Wildflowers? on the homepage for an explanation of this metaphor). 

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life melts down

Orchid children are also known as “super feelers”. Super feelers experience emotions—their own and others’—with greater depth and intensity. They are easily overwhelmed, need lots of downtime, absorb other people’s moods, and are super sensitive to criticism and perceived threats. Needless to say, super feelers can easily wilt with the demands of the delicate dance called Life. Sometimes a wilting orchid can be skillfully nurtured back to health, but sometimes it withers up and their life turns into a messy meltdown. The latter was my experience.

There is a Buddhist practice known as 'Be Grateful to Everyone’ which means that all situations teach us, but often it’s the toughest ones that teach us the best. My oldest son has put me through hell at times, but I honestly believe that anything I’ve learned in life that is worth knowing, I’ve acquired because of him. He is my spiritual teacher in disguise. 

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my 'heroic parent' journey

I didn't realize it at the time, but as my son drifted further away from my dreams for him he was actually inviting me on a hero's journey that mirrors all the stages of ambiguous grief. (To learn more about the Ambiguous Grief Journey of the Heroic Parent read my blog here).

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In comparative mythology (and the movies), the hero's journey is a blueprint for stories involving an ordinary person who is unwillingly drawn into an adventure, triumphs in a crisis by confronting their blind spots, and returns home to live a more fulfilling life. In real life the “adventure” is often internal, and “returning home” is a state of mind rather than a physical place.

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For heroic parents, our journey begins when ordinary parenting challenges become a thing of the past and we find ourselves in a world of extra difficult trials and tribulations such as failing out of school, suicide attempts, legal troubles, incarceration, promiscuity, hospitalizations, homelessness and addiction. My son has taken me down many of these undesirable forks in the road, and there have been times I have been on my knees praying to a God that I don’t really believe in to “show me the way” out of the darkness that these roads have led to. 

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Needless to say, heroic parents are dragged on this journey against our will, and the quest becomes to save our struggling child by futilely focusing on finding ways to “fix them” and get them back onto the path we envisioned for them. But if you lean into the Heroic Parent’s Journey, what we discover is that the magic elixir we’ve been seeking is growth through grief. 

what I've learned

According to the Buddha, sorrow and suffering arise from clinging to a specific outcome instead of accepting reality. On my own hero’s journey, regardless of the path I took for guidance—therapy, support groups, religion, books, words of advice from wise travel companions or pithy quotes—they all brought me back to the same destination: The Land of Letting Go.

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I learned that 'letting go' doesn't mean I stopped caring; it meant accepting that I couldn’t control my son or his choices. It meant honouring my son’s (often difficult) journey by giving him permission to control his own destiny. Letting go also involved acknowledging my own shortcomings and correcting them. As Viktor Frankl famously wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

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I learned that changing myself required taking a good, hard, honest look in the metaphorical mirror. Truthfully I don’t like looking at myself in the metaphorical mirror, or having to “dig deep” and “do the work”, because frankly, “doing the work” sucks. Big time. Given the choice I’d rather be zoning out in front of the TV making my way through 22 season’s of Grey’s Anatomy from beginning to end (yet again). 

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I learned that digging deep and doing the work is hard, and often painful, but it is also the most rewarding thing I have ever done. Because by embracing this “call to adventure” I discovered that the hero’s journey is also a spiritual one—it was an opportunity to heal what was broken inside of me and become a better version of myself. 

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I also learned that our orchid children don’t need fixing, they need understanding and acceptance. In my son’s case he also needs something to do.

I am here (for now)

After wandering down an unpredictable, wiggly, squiggly, winding road that has me currently living in the countryside running a glampground near South River, I have decided to put that on the market and move to the Collingwood area where I have deeper roots and my orchid son is currently living. 

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I can honestly say that I think we are through the worst, but after a lot of trial and failure (sic), I know that I cannot live with my son and maintain my own wellbeing. But I am first, and foremost, a mama bear, and whenever I ask him what he wants to do with his life, he says he wants to learn how to become a farmer. 

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But he’s going to need a great deal of support with that because he has not worked, or attended school, for seven long years now. He has lost his belief in himself, and he’d rather be homeless than go to a treatment program to find himself again (I know this from experience). Hence my dreaming up a compromise that I’m calling the Wildflower School of Life. 

what I know for sure

The Wildflower School of Life is a mash-up of the best aspects of the treatment programs I’ve researched, the WWOOFing model, and my own gut instincts about what my son needs to pull him out of the funk he is in. 

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These are four things that I know for sure: I am (and always have been) good at bringing people together and creating community. I love being a part of the recovery community. There is a real need for a program like this. Finally, I cannot do this alone. 

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I also know that when I look back on my life 10ish years from now, I won’t like myself much if I don’t at least give this idea my best shot. 

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So please join me in making this particular dream come true, because it is definitely going to take a village to get the Wildflower School of Life off the ground. Our orchid children are the best of us, but they need a very particular environment in order to thrive. We are part of a dynamic ecosystem that weaves us together,  so let’s be a part of cultivating a brighter future for us all.

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