It's already been a week. A week since you fell asleep. Now you're with grandpa and mom... We hope at least you're with all your loved ones who went before you! Because we don't know what happens when we die... if you just disappear or if you live on...

It's mostly just empty here. We have a hard time feeling emotions, dissociating a lot and trying to grasp that you're gone too now. Everything happened so terribly fast... You, grandpa and mom, some of the nicest people we've ever gotten to know.

It's hard to deal with losses if you're "normal" but when you have DID it takes even more. Not everyone understands that you're gone, not everyone knows it yet but I'm doing my best to try to make sure everyone knows. I can't understand it myself... how is Ella, for example, supposed to understand...

Death also makes me reflect on our own mortality. So many times we have been so terribly close to not being there anymore... I don't want to do that to those close to me, especially not my son. It's scary that the brain can distort everything so that ending feels like an option... Right now it's calm, I'm not the one who thinks that way but those inside who do, scare me.

Yesterday we were at the funeral home planning your funeral. I hope it will be nice!

❤️ Grandma, grandpa and mom ❤️

Yesterday, June 17 -26 my grandmother passed away. She took her last breaths as I sat there holding hers. Love you forever angel moemoe

Life is so crazy messy... mostly messy inside actually but also outside. A lot has happened and I'm both tired and stressed. But I've had the honor of babysitting my best friend's kids for a while and it's super cozy.

Once again I'm thinking about shutting down our social media, but not everyone wants to because most people think it gives them a lot to share life with everything it entails. It's mostly just me who hesitates and thinks it feels dangerous. Yesterday I had to remove a post that was written when someone inside was angry at how the driver of the ride-hailing service drove. Angry at the drivers in general because unfortunately many of them drive very badly. The language and choice of words in the post were anything but good though... But he drove at times over 145km/h, I think he was up to 148km/h at most. But I reported him so hopefully he'll at least get a warning. I know we should tell the driver but usually we don't dare then and there, especially since we don't know the driver who is also usually a man. Unknown men are unpleasant.

Right now I'm at my grandmother's but I'm going home today. The weather has been sunny, cloudy, rainy and windy. So quite ambivalent weather right now. I'm reading a book called: Sensory pathways to healing from trauma. It's incredibly interesting. I'll write about it here when I've finished reading it but I think it's great. It goes into great detail about how the brain works and why you get PTSD, cPTSD and DID, for example, and how trauma causes the thinking brain to be blocked.

I'm planning on going to grandma's again soon anyway. The summer is fantastic out here on the islands. We are still dissociative very often and it feels hard, especially it feels hard to get stuck in a dissociation as this makes us so incredibly vulnerable.

All the best to you!

// Maray

It's been a long time since we wrote here on the blog, so it's time to start writing again.

Today we have read a little bit of the book: Sensory pathways to healing from trauma. Now we only have 1½ chapters left. It feels good to read about the brain's plasticity and the ability to relearn, but it is also so exciting about how the brain works and why we react the way we do.

Last Friday we watched or rather listened to Anja Söderberg's defense of her doctoral thesis. It's about Dissociative Identity Disorder and inpatient care. So good! Finally someone who says out loud that inpatient care is terrible at trauma and especially dissociation. I haven't read her research yet but it's at the top of the list after Sensory pathways...

We have long said that inpatient care has large knowledge gaps about trauma and dissociation. And we say that based on our own experiences, how we have been treated and treated over the years. In the book Sensory pathways... they talk about the importance of predictability, clarity and calm in being able to recover from trauma. Something you rarely see on a psychiatric inpatient ward. In my book, She Falls Heavy, I try to convey the chaos that has been in care. It is so important to get the right diagnosis and with it the right help.

Why is it so terribly difficult to feel good enough as a parent? We often feel like the worst mother in the world... It's so incredibly difficult to balance parenting with mental illness. It's hard to be a parent normally, but it often feels impossible when you're also sick... Then it feels like it becomes extra vulnerable because my son doesn't live with me. He's fantastic and extremely independent, which is good in many ways, but we struggle with the feeling of being inadequate and superfluous. I'm sure all mothers feel that way at some point... It's hard to be a teenage mother... Then it's hard because we haven't really gotten to be a mother for social services, with too short contact times, etc. Now it's better, but otherwise we've had to be a mother more in the background and children don't understand that. We've had to sign papers and stuff, but meeting our child enough to build a really good relationship has been worse. Meeting for 3-4 hours every three weeks is contrived and far from natural and that's what we got while he was growing up. Now he's so big that he wants to fend for himself (which is fantastic) but then I feel completely redundant. Although now we get to hang out more naturally but it's only on his terms and never on mine. God how whiny it sounds but the feeling of inadequacy is eating away at me and with it the longing for my son. Don't get me wrong, we have a great relationship based on the circumstances. I just want him to be happy and that he (despite his messy upbringing) wants his mother in the picture...