Framing

How much does our fram­ing of events change how they affect us?

If you define an event as trau­mat­ic, then you’re trau­ma­tized by it. Now yes, I’m the first to say that some things are def­i­nite­ly trau­mat­ic. There’s no way to reframe a rape, the death of a child, or betray­al by some­one you trusted.

How­ev­er, there are some things that affect us very dif­fer­ent­ly if we change how we per­ceive them. I’ve known this for quite a while, real­iz­ing that some peo­ple turn a minor issue like run­ning out of ice at a par­ty into dra­ma. But I was­n’t real­ly apply­ing it to my life as well as I could.

My liv­ing room is cur­rent­ly cov­ered with lit­tle­fire­fae’s belong­ings that were in the stor­age space under the stairs. There are more that need to be brought up. We’re going through and sort­ing the stuff into cat­e­gories so that she can actu­al­ly use things like her art sup­plies and sewing stuff, putting those things into bet­ter con­tain­ers near her draw­ing table and sewing machine. We’re get­ting out the warm weath­er clothes and pack­ing away the cold weath­er ones. By the time we’re done, the plan is to have all of her belong­ings stored in her own clos­et. Nicely.

Hon­est­ly, I’ve been sit­ting here resent­ing the mess, resent­ing the work, resent­ing the events that led to its neces­si­ty. She is 11 years old and should be per­fect­ly capa­ble of sort­ing and tak­ing care of her own belong­ings. Grrr!

But then I thought, “Well, we’re mov­ing in a few months. Doing this now means it’s going to be much eas­i­er to make that move, because we’ll have already weed­ed through one per­son­’s stuff.” Since we did­n’t do this kind of thing before we moved three years ago, we end­ed up mov­ing a lot of crap that we should have sim­ply tossed, and noth­ing was packed very efficiently.

We’ll also be bet­ter able to get to the stuff that’s still in the com­mon stor­age area, which has been a prob­lem of late.

Things she no longer wants or needs (by her definition—this isn’t being imposed by us), like out­grown cloth­ing, will be tak­en to the Fos­ter Fam­i­ly Resource Cen­ter or oth­er­wise passed on to those who do want and need them.

She will be able to real­ly get to her belong­ings eas­i­ly and quick­ly so that she can use them to cre­ate beau­ty rather than spend­ing time look­ing for them or ask­ing for new items because she just can’t find the ones she has. (Note: This child has enough art sup­plies to open a store. Seri­ous­ly. Please, please, please—if at any time you buy a gift for lit­tle­fire­fae, she does­n’t need them! Attrac­tive ways to store for art sup­plies, though—those are needed!)

Now I feel bet­ter about the whole thing. I feel lighter, and I’m not near­ly as grumpy.

I’m think­ing about oth­er things that have me stressed, and turn­ing them around to find new angles. 

Yes, I resent hav­ing a chron­ic ill­ness. It has, how­ev­er, helped me to learn to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter, to take care of myself bet­ter, and to ask for help. 

The cus­tody situation—well, yes, going to court sucks. I don’t like hav­ing some­one else choos­ing the tim­ing. But it need­ed to be done. The cur­rent cus­tody agree­ment has­n’t ever worked well for us. sam­bear’s divorce lawyer has to be one of the world’s worst, and the entire divorce agree­ment is ludi­crous. What­ev­er hap­pens, we’ll have a legal sit­u­a­tion that bet­ter reflects the real­i­ty of our lives, and it will be a relief to have it that way.

Hope­ful­ly, I can find oth­er ways to look at oth­er issues, as well.