My First Interview: Anissa at Hope4Peyton

My curiosity got the best of me. I signed up to participate in the interview challenge hosted by Citizen of The Month. Somehow I got sandwiched between two medical miracles - Overflowing Brain and Hope4 Peyton. Overflowing Brain will be interviewing me in the near future (she’s claiming the GRE as her excuse, the nerve!) and I had the pleasure of interviewing Anissa from Hope4Peyton.

Yes, that’s Anissa. She apparently has a thing for bees.

Without this challenge, I probably would have never found Anissa. I’m glad I did. After the month of anger and self-loathing I’ve had, it was really the kick in the arse I needed to see that I really have nothing to bitch about.

Here’s a little background on Anissa. She’s a SAHM of three kids living outside of Tampa, FL. Her youngest has Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Yep. That’s cancer, kids. Her husband lives and works a state away to keep them afloat. They’re beating the odds in more than one way.

She is my new hero.

Read on and you’ll see why.

Q: What made you respond to the challenge?

A: After reading a few of the other interviews, I found I was intrigued by people whose blogs I’d read, but this offered more insight into who they are. You never know what someone might find interesting about you, what sparks their love affair with your words. Plus, it’s always interesting to see what new things you might learn about yourself in the process.

Q: What’s been the weirdest search term that someone’s used to find your blog?

A: “Rachael Ham Temple” <—what IS that?

Q: What do you think has been the key to keeping your marriage sound in the wake of having a child with cancer not to mention living so far apart?

A: Might sound trite, but communication has been KEY. Whether it’s just being able to share the day or being able to very honestly say “I HATE you at this moment in time and I’d be ok if you fell off a cliff”, it’s awesome to know that we’re not afraid to lay it out there. I think too many people just clutch everything inside, afraid of being that vulnerable, afraid of not being forgiven for what they might say. We laugh a lot, we let ourselves get caught up in the ridiculous because that often gets us through the most difficult of situations. I think humor been a powerful therapy tool through my blog, I could always look over everything and find the funny in it, whether others would think it was funny….we needed to be able to laugh at it.

Q: What’s the best parenting advice you ever got?

A: Stop thinking there’s one right way to do it. We don’t even really have one right way to do it in our household, things that work with one child don’t with another. We parent on an individual basis, but trying to keep consistency. They are unique beings from the moment they pop out, we treat them as such.

Q: What’s the worst?

A: I think that people tend to think that since my daughter has cancer we should treat her with kid gloves. She has her moments that we know we have to accept different behavior than we normally would, we have to allow her to be a SICK CHILD with all the anger and frustration that it entails. But we also know that our greatest hope is that she’ll be healed, she won’t be a cancer child forever and we have to live with HER! The HER that we created if we don’t discipline, if we don’t make her be a civil human being. So, as hard as it was, we did force ourselves to call her out when she was being a tyrant in the house and in seeing other kids (ones in cancer treatment) who have become monsters, we know we made the right decision on that one.

Q: It sounds like your life is a constant emotional roller coaster, but you seem to be coping well. What really shakes your snowglobe? What turns you upside down and sends you spinning?

A: Wow, if you’d seen the blow up my husband and I had 2 days ago over the weed wacker, you might not be asking me that question! What shakes me up? It is always the worst when I try to pretend I have control over everything, which is totally in my nature and a hard trait to fight. The more I try to puppet-master everything, the more they go wrong and the harder the emotional fallout. Grief is crippling at times. I fight through it most of the time, but there are days (especially after the loss of a child’s life) that I am just paralyzed by the grief. I feel unable to deal with the most trivial issues and I take it out on everyone, those that deserve it the least. Then the guilt sets in. Oh, it’s a vicious cycle.

Q: When that happens, how do you cope?

A: I cry, a LOT. I write, even MORE. I find that being able to just have a word purge sometimes helps the healing processes inside me. If I get it out, it can start beng fixed. I never hesitate to ask for help or to find someone to talk to about it and I’m very lucky to have a lot of amazing friends and family who will hold me through my breakdowns.

Q: Enough of the heady, emotional stuff. With three kids, how do you and hubs handle being outnumbered by your kids? I mean, losing the man-on-man defensive would completely throw off our game.

We always duct tape one silent and shove them in the closet, bringing the numbers back in our favor. We cycle through the kids though, they all get equal time.

For real? It’s me with all three of them most of the time, so it’s a lot about me knowing what triggers their outbursts and what soothes them the best. We also let them make as many decisions as we possibly can, I have just found that for our crew, it helps to let them feel they have some control of what’s happening in their lives. Kids really don’t have a lot of options, they are ruled by so many governing bodies, but we work hard to make sure they know that their opinions count. That doesn’t mean we go with what they want, but we do let them know they have input.

Q: Have you ever written anything on your blog that you’ve regretted?

No, I’ve written in a moment of high anxiety or emotional strain and went back and worried that people would think I was giving up or being too pessimistic. However, those are my honest feelings and often there are people who comment to let me know that they’re too scared to voice those fears, they felt very alone in them. That makes me feel purposeful.

I do need to be more careful with what I let sit in my twitter widget overnight….OH MY!

Q: Finally, if you were giving advice to a new mommy blogger, what three things would you tell them to do/not do?

1. Don’t write things to purposefully hurt or embarrass
2. Don’t post pictures you don’t want your PTA to see
3. Be honest with who you are, what you believe and true to your family

******

See what I mean? Anissa rocks! Check her out on her blog on The One Voice Project, or on on Twitter.

~ by fearandparentinginlasvegas on August 2, 2008.