Designer Dana Buchman on Raising a Daughter with LD (transcript) - Página 5

NCLD: Your book gives the impression that Charlotte's learning disabilities ultimately brought your family closer together, though at times it seems there were serious strains. What were some of the biggest areas of stress in terms of family dynamics between the four of you?

DB: It was sort of a pervasive strain, an undertone that was always there. We're a very close-knit family, though, and we're very much homebodies. I think that was one of the main things that helped us get through it. When I'm not traveling, we have family dinner four nights a week. But there was a sort of unspoken strain between Tom and me, and I think we missed a lot of opportunities to get closer. We didn't talk about the feelings we had around the stresses of raising children. I never talked about how overwhelmed I felt juggling a job and two daughters. I would just sit up straight and say, “I'm fine.”

Down deep, I felt that if I did start talking about my feelings, I'd open up the floodgates to a lot of vulnerability, and I'm not good at admitting weakness or vulnerability. It was a false world view, of course. I've since learned that when you open up, there it is and so what? You don't feel so alone and you don't feel so overwhelmed.

Writing the book has also helped that process tremendously. It's really been a catalyst. Tom and I can look at each other now, as I've started to admit things to myself, and tell Tom about the things I've felt and he'll say to me, “Oh, I've felt that too,” and then the walls of silence just tumble down. We look back now and we're surprised at how little we really let our feelings out over all those years, how little we'd actually talked about feeling anxious or afraid or vulnerable.

It's also been surprising for me to realize that so much of my personal growth as an adult has come from Charlotte. The turning point came when I was 47 -- I had a panic attack, my first and only. I couldn't breathe, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack and it was all from the strain of holding up this false world of perfection I had made. That's when I started seeing a therapist myself and trying to look at things as they actually were – looking at things realistically and honestly, rather than through that “She has it all” screen. That panic attack was the tap on the shoulder that told me something was very wrong.

I got help and examined everything. I became a different person. At work, for example, I used to be driven; nothing escaped my scrutiny. Attention to detail might be one way to describe it; total control freak is another way. I got by on four or five hours of sleep a night, would work like crazy all day, then rush home to take care of the girls, get up in the middle of the night and maybe work a couple of hours more. I looked at all that and realized I had to learn how to delegate, how to back off and let people do their jobs. That was HUGE for me. But I finally had to realize that the “old me” was making people nuts.

What I've finally learned through this journey is acceptance. I've always loved Charlotte in spite of her learning differences, but now I've learned to love her along with her learning differences. I regret that it took so long to get here, but that was the journey. And in learning to accept her and her differences, I've learned to accept my own. I was afraid that if anyone saw that I wasn't perfect they'd think I was a horrible person. Or in the case of my husband, that he'd leave. Or in the case of my business, that I'd go bankrupt.

Charlotte taught me that I don't have to live with that, with a perfectionist mentality. She couldn't hide her vulnerabilities, so she learned to be comfortable with them. She learned to ride the flows of frustration and disappointment, and she taught me that I can accept my own failures and vulnerabilities, too. She taught me that she doesn't have to be an A student all the time and neither do I.

NCLD: If you could say anything to the parent of a child who has just been identified as having LD, what would you say?

DB: First of all, it's not the end of the world. Get help and recognize that it will also have an impact on you, your spouse, other siblings and the entire family dynamic. And make sure you enjoy everything your LD child has to offer -- be conscious of all of that child's non-LD aspects. Be aware that you're going to make mistakes, that all you can do is the best you can at the time. [My book] is all about that and the thousands of things that I'd probably do differently.

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