Where do we go from here?

“Mrs. Marshall your child has ptsd. And it’s more likely than not caused from secondary exposure to some of your husband’s untreated ptsd symptoms.“

  Woof. The weight of those words just hit my entire core like a ton of bricks. My stomach was in the bottom of my pelvic floor in .2 seconds.

    How did I not shelter him enough from Danial’s outbursts? Did something happen while I wasn’t at the house? I didn’t even realize this was a thing. How could I miss this?! But he is just a perfectionist this couldn’t be ptsd.

  That moment in the pediatric therapist office will forever haunt me. Everything I had ever done as a mother and a wife started replaying in my mind trying to search for answers of something I missed. Every time I left town for work, every evening that I left the kids with him to go get dinner with friends, all of it. Desperately searching for a single moment in time that would explain why I am sitting in a pediatric therapist office grappling with the reality that my oldest son now has ptsd. Not because he endured a single major trauma, but because my husband went untreated for the entirety of our marriage up until 6 months ago. 10 years of small moments that his little brain couldn’t understand.

I cannot begin to explain the depths of grief and guilt my body generated after hearing the diagnosis.  My child was suffering an invisible battle and had been suffering for years that he couldn’t tell me what was going on or what was happening because he simply didn’t have the words to tell me.

All because of my husband’s refusal for years to go get treatment for his ptsd from his time in the army.

In this moment I had a choice to make. I could choose to hold resentment and blame towards Danial for refusing to get treatment even though I had begged him for YEARS. Our marriage was barely a shell during those years and the last 6 months we had made so much progress and positive movement in therapy. What would happen to the progress that we did make with Danial in his treatment? As Landan’s mother would I be failing Landan for not holding that blame against Danial? I felt like I had every right as Landan’s mother to be angry and to want to hold accountability for the source of my child suffering. However, if I chose that path, it would come at a massive cost. Our marriage would see be over. Our family would absolutely be shattered and venture down the point of no return. But if I chose the other path to try to not hold resentment and blame, that would mean that I would have to release the fury and grief that I had in this moment forever. I would have to dedicate myself to helping both of them navigate through their journey and this journey is LONG and Hard. So what do I choose?