Friday, March 19, 2010

Guilty

We went to our HTCs First Step conference a couple of weeks ago.  One of the activities was a round table discussion of our personal experiences with hemophilia including family histories, how we found out that our children were affected/effected (I can never remember that one) with this disease, treatment paths we might be choosing, etc.  What I learned from this is that I am a bad, bad person. A bad, bad, guilt free person.

Apparently, as the mother, I am supposed to feel some kind of remorse that I messed up my kids genes.  Sorry son, but I am too busy working on building a respectable list of  therapists to address the damage that I'm pretty sure I'm doing by allowing your brother to dress you up in a Yoda hat so that I can have a funny picture to put on the blog to feel bad about one more thing.

I'm not saying that the women out there that feel guilty about this x-linked disease (like a couple of my sisters) are wrong.  I don't get to tell anyone else how they should feel, but I figure, I don't blame myself for my daughter's complete inability to do multiplication (what the heck did they invent calculators for I say) or for my son's affinity for weaponry (just a heads up - don't sit in front of us in church unless you want your family to become a target for an imaginary flame shooter), and I'm not going to blame myself for something that (unlike those first two things) I can't do a thing about.

If there comes a day though when my son needs someone to blame, I'll look him right in the eye and tell him what I need to tell him... "you got that from your father."

3 comments:

  1. Great post, e.! I may not have a child with hemophilia, but I think this post will help me let go of a lot of the guilt I feel about other, less life-affecting things. ; )

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  2. Good for you! I really admire your stance!

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  3. So many reasons to feel guilty -- so little time:)

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