As open as I am about our life, my life as a single mom to 39 children, it’s amazing what I still have to keep to myself as it is either too painful or too unresolved at the moment.

Sometimes it has taken me years to get past an episode and be able to talk about it unemotionally. The feedback I have received since I’ve been blogging encourages me to keep it real, as so many of y’all are also going through some very tough times with your children.

I have long spells when our life is fairly peaceful, soccer season usually keeps us too busy to do much else, and my children play soccer both in the fall and in the spring. They swim all summer and we have a little down time in the winter, but generally we’re then tending to everything that was put to the side during warm weather.

It’s been a little tough lately to sit and write although I try hard and do so as it helps me cope with everything, gives me a better perspective about our issues, and provides me with the documentation that I seem to find us needing more and more lately.

I have some incredibly good kids, well behaved and fun to be with, remarkably free of issues that should have stemmed from their very traumatic early years. I don’t write much about them but I should. They should receive as much attention, if not more, than my troubled children. They are the ones that I naturally gravitate towards as some of the very tough, violent or challenging kids work so hard at pushing me away. Or at trying to push me away, I don’t leave easily.

My son at the Outdoor Therapeutic Wilderness Program is succeeding rapidly. He’ll probably return to live with us once again and we’ll butt heads, but it’ll be different. More of the parent-teenage rebellion stuff with less of his earlier anger as he’s slowly learned that Mama doesn’t quit.

My bipolar son in jail is likely to have a slower learning ability. I pray that he’ll learn to manage his behaviors. Somehow, someway, having witnessed so many miracles here eventually, I still maintain my Pollyanna high hopes for him as well. It could happen.