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| Five clay figurines in assorted colors, representing emotions. |
Everyone who knows us knows this.
In fact, even people who only know us through this blog, on Facebook, or whatever know this.
Aside from the anniversary of Laston's death (on his oldest kid's 16th birthday, no less, poor Lee), there are a bunch of other August issues. There's the ramp-up to school, the not-working because I work for the schools & side gigs are tough to find this year and usually unbearable (for Seattleites) weather.
At least this year we do not (at the moment, anyway) have super extra crappy air quality from forest fires started by asshats declaring their newborn has a penis via blowing shit up in the woods.
Silver linings, I guess.
In past Augusts, my therapist has said it's perfectly okay to have hard days or even a hard month, as long as we're aware of it and not letting it consume us to the exclusion of all else. So we are doing our usual thing (though generally staying off the more contentious parts of the internet lest we let our grief and stress and basic argggghhhh consume us or hurt others), which for Lizzy (Abby is working) involves a lot of LEGO and arts & crafts and reading and video games.
She made some little clay figurines and painted them. They are intended to be representative of emotions (a la Inside Out, but slightly different ones; she initially designed these on paper for one of her pediatric grief counseling sessions about six and a half years ago. Anger is red and orange and spiky, Fear is green and "shaking like a leaf," and so on. The one for sadness is blue and sort of a very basic figure of someone with a bulbous nose and their hands in front of their chest, as though they were wringing their hands.
“It’s that stim you do when you’re sad Mom. Where your hands get closer and closer to your face the sadder you are.”
“I think it’s upset in general, not just sadness.”
“Well… you do it a lot in August.”
Oof.
She's not wrong.
