When Caregivers Need Healing

“This has happened before,” she tells herself. “It’s nowhere near as bad as before, and it will pass.”Robbie Pinter’s 21-year-old son, Nicholas, is upset again. He yells. He obsesses about something that can’t be changed. Even good news may throw him off.

Dr. Robbie Pinter and her
son, Nicholas.

So Dr. Pinter breathes deeply, as she was taught, focusing on each intake and release. She talks herself through the crisis, reminding herself that this is how Nicholas copes with his autism and bipolar disorder.

Meditation Can Provide Perspective to Parents of Children with Special Needs

From Huffington Post's Eden Kozlowski, Founder and CEO of Just Be Meditation.

I am the mother of a child with special needs. My daughter is 11 and was born with her brain's prefrontal lobe not fully developed. The condition is called pachygyria. If you Google it (which is the first thing I did when we were given our official diagnosis), you will be presented with a stifling litany of sites professing the medical challenges and potentially dire possibilities.

The current reality for my daughter: She is physically agile but has fairly extensive learning delays and mood highs/lows... and, at this point, we are seizure-free.

Now, on the other side of my life, I am a long-term practitioner and teacher of meditation and mindfulness. With all of the challenges presented with my daughter, I can honestly say that this practice has been my saving grace. I've had periods of anger and deep frustration but never to the point of sheer depression or hopelessness. Every time I felt like I was at a point of no return, it always pulled me forward with new direction, hope and perspective.