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Selene · caregiver spouse support

@nightshiftwife

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🕯️ Caregiver spouse of a partner with severe mental illness
🧸 Toddler mom
🌙 The gravity holding us
👇 I'm building us a room. Join the waitlist.

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This is impossible.

Tomorrow he leaves, and I don't know if he is ever coming back.

By Monday, my son and I will be on our own.

For my son's sake, I hope his dad heals. I hope he mourns his life and accepts himself with love. I hope he leans into creating capacity to show up, at least emotionally, for his family.
We will always be a family.

I believe Love always sends us an undoing when we need to grow. I did everything "right", even (especially) when it wasn't aligned with who I am. That was sacrifice, that was self control. I appeased and controlled and my body revolted and I went to doctors and took medicine. None of it was Love's way.
And this is how Love sets us free.

I choose Love for my family. No patterns, no performing.
Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love. by @nightshiftwife

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9 days ago

#kindachic to still be here.

You're not alone.

#mentalillness
#caregiverspouse
#toddlermom
#singlemom
#chronicillness by @nightshiftwife

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2 months ago

It's okay to be in survival mode.

It's not a problem to fix or an issue to optimize. It's not a bad place. It's not a waste of time.

I've seen allllllllll the stuff about "what happens to your brain in survival mode" and "5 ways survival mode is keeping you stuck" (as if we don't already know).

You don't need another walkthrough of Maslow's hierarchy, you need some real processing.

It's so hard to feel out of control and losing capacity by the minute. It's so hard knowing you are missing out on things because you just.... can't. Feeling stuck can feel like suffocation and panic, and added on top of the situation that brought on the survival mode, it can feel impossible to bear. That's all very real.

The panic deserves comfort.
The suffocation deserves deep breaths.
The capacity deserves a slower pace.

The real shift happens when we can embrace survival mode for what it is: our bodies' way of saying "I can't."

Life keeps life'in, but the more we find little ways to show up for ourselves and tell our nervous systems "I believe you," the more we can move through the process. by @nightshiftwife

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2 months ago

Hi. I'm Selene. 🌙

I'm what's known as a caregiver spouse to a partner with severe mental illness.
I'm also a toddler mom, employee, and have my own chronic illness(es).

I'm starting this quietly, under a name that isn't quite mine, because this story isn't only mine to tell. It belongs to someone I love more than anything, and he's not ready to share with the world with our names attached.

Here's the net net: a couple years ago, he got a diagnosis that changed everything. Since then, our family has been dragged on a roller coaster we never wanted. Everything is affected: How every day works. How a whole marriage works. What you let yourself imagine for the future.

I'm the "well" one (in quotes, because not really, but someone's gotta be. You get it). The one holding the calendar and the executive decisions and the final say and all of us together. If you're the "well" one too, you already know how heavy and invisible that can feel.

I'm starting this account for a few reasons:

- to document my experience because I need somewhere to put it or I'll lose my mind
- to find others living some version of this and build a platform for us to gather, so we can be together in it and build connections that hold us up
- to document my journey to build an income that pays off my partner's student loans, affords treatment options, and gives him peace of mind that we're taken care of and okay. It's f-ing expensive to be sick.
- to share what I'm learning as I'm learning it: the resources, the systems, the small things that actually help

If any of this is your life: welcome. Pull up a chair. You're not alone in the dark.

— Selene 🌙 Close-up of a small translucent glow-in-the-dark toy dinosaur standing in the dark potting soil of a grey planter, next to a thick green shoot rising from the dirt, surrounded by bits of bark and moss, lit by soft window light. by @nightshiftwife

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2 months ago