Tag: Christmas

Receiving a Rock for Christmas: ACEs Parenting 101


“Mom, Your life and work are so inspiring. Your social media presence is a light for people on a day to day basis. Your podcasts are influencing in all the right ways. Your writings are beautiful works of love that all need to hear. Keep up all your hard work and the dividends will exponentially grow. Remember that love is everywhere and I will always support you, even from across the country from atop mountains. Love, John” 

John Wellbrock – letter to mom, Teri Wellbrock, Christmas 2018

I have been collecting hearts for a few years now. My friends will send me photos of hearts they find. I will post pics on social media of my heart finds. I even recently wrote an e-book, Stop Thinking . . . Just Love, filled with over six hundred heart photos. I have a collection of hearts on their own page on my website. And in my sacred writing space, I have a collection of special hearts given to me by loved ones, friends, and therapists.

Christmas 2018 I added a special Rocky Mountains heart to my treasure. My oldest son, John, my kindred spirit, my boy with a physicist’s mind and a poet’s heart, gave me the gift of a rock for Christmas.

Yep. A rock.

Plus, a letter. Written from his heart.

I have sometimes questioned my parenting skills. Am I doing this right? Did I coddle them too much, trying to compensate for my own painful childhood, filled with moments of terror and abandonment? Did I do too much for them? Overprotect them to a fault? Should I have let them fall and stumble more often? I wanted them safe. I wanted them to feel loved and protected and treasured. I wanted them to know they were wanted and their opinions mattered.

Or I’d ridicule myself for not being strong enough to fight for them. For emotionally abandoning them when I was lost and hurting. Those endless years I’d spent holed up in a dark room, smoking cigarettes, playing mindless computer games or seeking solace from strangers in AOL chat rooms, shooing my children away.

Learning to forgive myself, forgive my parents, and forgive my transgressors, altered my life. It’s not for everyone. But, that’s what worked for me. That’s my message to the world. Take it or leave it.

I reminded a friend the other day that no matter what decisions we make regarding our children, if we do so with love as our driving force, with intentions filled with hopeful promise, then, yes, we are doing it right.

Years ago, I told my children I was so very sorry for anything I had done to hurt them. I explained that none of it was ever done in malice. I accepted responsibility for my actions in hurting them. And they graciously offered the beautiful gift of forgiveness to me.

Yesterday, on Christmas morning, 2018, as my tears flowed, and I threw my arms around my now twenty-five-year-old baby boy, I knew in my heart . . . I did it right.

And as I kissed my eighty-three-year-old mother good-bye, as she left our home, my heart overflowing with joy at her having made it through our first family Christmas celebration EVER without drinking alcohol, I realized that she did it right, too.

She had abandoned me emotionally as a child while lost in her own pain and her self-medicating through Valium and booze. She had summoned my father to hit me when she wanted silence. Yet, I know on a soul level, she loved me. And some how, some way, that love permeated.

So here we are. Healing a once-festering wound. Enjoying our new normal, a relationship filled with phone calls and shopping and laughter and movie dates. Mother-daughter endeavors I had only dreamed of having and had envied in others.

I now realize my mom needed to heal her own pain. Did she hurt me in her flailing? Absolutely. Am I saying it was acceptable? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that parenting is a struggle . . . especially when we have lived adverse childhood experiences ourselves and are still working through our own healing process. Yet, love prevails. It really does.

Some may disagree with me. That’s fine. But, I like to look at the positives and focus on the hope. The hope of healing. The hope that permeates forgiveness. The hope that is love.

So, yes, here we are. Loving our children, my mom and me. We did it in our own ways. But, we did it right.

#nevergiveup

Angel Visit

Facebook post from December 25, 2016:

I have to share my annual sappy Christmas post! It’s become tradition. It has also become tradition for one or more of my family members to make me cry when opening gifts. This year did not disappoint. The award for “make Mom sob” goes to my oldest son, John Wellbrock. So, here’s the story:

When John was 2 months old, he suddenly developed an illness which made it difficult for him to breathe. He was admitted into Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center where he spent 10 days literally fighting for his life. His oxygen saturation was dropping into the low 90’s and at one point into the 80’s. He would cough and cough and cough and cough and NOTHING could stop it . . . except . . . when I would sing “Come Monday” by Jimmy Buffet to him. You see, when I was pregnant with John, Jimmy had just released his 4 disc album set “Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads” and his dad and I would blast it through the house for hours on end. This baby LOVED Jimmy Buffet from in utero! So, there I stood, over his crib, wires and tubes attached to his precious little body, my tired momma arms caressing his sweet little face as I sang him his favorite song. Over and over again. And he would catch his breath.

For 10 days this went on. I refused to leave his side. I told everyone who kept suggesting I go home and rest, “I don’t want him to ever open his eyes and not see his mommy standing there, praying for him and taking care of him”. The doctor told me he could die and I was not about to let that happen.

Call it exhaustion or be a believer, but on Thanksgiving night 1993, after I had nibbled at the plate of turkey and the fixings that my mom had delivered me, I sat in the rocking chair, watching my baby boy struggle to breathe. I drifted off to sleep, the light dim in the room, shining from the crack beneath the bathroom door. My eyes suddenly opened when I felt a presence in the room. A peacefulness enveloped my body as I silently watched a magnificent being of light stand at the foot of John’s metal hospital crib. This angel or heavenly being, just watched him. And he stopped coughing and studied. I knew in that moment that John was going to be okay as tears streamed down my face.

John was released soon after and had no long-lasting residual effects from his illness. They never did give us a definitive answer to what was making him ill. They labeled it an “echo virus” and said it was similar to Whooping Cough, but all of those cultures kept coming back negative.

Jump to Christmas 2016. My beautiful son, wrote me a poem about this time in our lives together. He made this gift . . . his words, his creation, our moment captured.

Forever I will remember that “Come Monday it’ll be alright . . for come Monday I’ll be holding you tight.”

Peace,

Teri