Black and White

Yesterday I posted about my sad moments with Cora.  Right now I’m in a sad place for non-Cora-related reasons and that mindset seems to be spreading the melancholy around, tingeing everything a little bit blue.

I guess the reason I’m writing this is to acknowledge that I’m finding myself hovering somewhere between joy and sadness more often than not.

In all honesty, most of the time I tend to be on the sunny side.  I feel that overall I adjusted pretty well to the turns my life took when Cora was born, and I know that she has made me happy beyond belief.
But there are still moments when it’s harder to feel that way.  Moments when my worries, my concerns, and my own insecurities take over briefly.

And I think it’s important to express that.  There are people who feel that blogs about Down syndrome often focus on the good too much and fail to express the bad that simply must exist too.  There are probably a few reasons for that.  I think that it’s truly because most of the people that have been blessed with a person with Ds in their lives do find their lives enriched and improved by it.

And since a portion of our society seems to think that there is no way that could be true, we want to express it to the world.  We want the world to see what we see.  We want to be able to change a few minds and let them in on our little secrets.  I think that for many of us, the good so outweighs the bad that the goodness is what you see in our words and our photos.

But there is fear and sadness sometimes too, of course.  Some people are concerned about posting that side of things, for fear that an expectant parent looking to make a life or death decision could be swayed by our words.

I think it’s important that we express both sides.  I think it’s important so that the world sees our own humanity, and that of our children.  If we can express the sadness, then our joy seems more believable.

The concern for me is that I don’t want to be purely seen as black or white.  I know that our society tends to pit absolutes against one another to define our world, to describe it and label it and put it in a tidy little box.  Happy or sad.  It’s so much harder to define that space in between, where most of us really live.

And that’s where the beauty really lies for me.  In that space in between.  Hovering between joy and between sadness, in that space in between, where we live and breathe, play and learn, stress and worry, love and adore, and hopefully keep learning.