Im a MotherClucker (Chicken Mom)🐓

#chickens #chickenlife #motherclucker

I recently ventured into a new direction. I needed something to occupy my mind. It has wandered off too far and become completely lost. I have wanted chickens for a long time, but it wasnt until recently that my wife agreed that I needed them. So this began a project that was actually much bigger than I thought it would be. What I had imagined for my chickens was going to take a lot more work than what I thought, and my amazing wife stepped right up to the plate. We spent a good 6 weeks as the chicks grew in the brooder in side the house, creating a chicken coop palace that would be enclosed by a 8x12ft chicken run. It was the first time we had built anything like this, but my wife had experience, and I had a little too I guess. The finished product was exactly what I wanted, and oh my goodness was I in love with my new life as a chicken mom! All the while, it slightly helped my mental health improve, but not enough. I wasnt working much. My health hadnt been great and my chronic conditions seemed to be hammering me. Stress makes it worse, so that is like a merry-go-round on the daily, not sleeping enough also doesnt help, and I hadnt been sleeping much either. I had no energy, no joy, I was in pain, and I wanted to do nothing, but I did want to care for my chickens. As I sat watching them scratch the ground inside their chicken run one morning, I realized that I dont know what to do with myself if I am not taking care of someone or something. My entire adult life has been filled with the chaos of taking care of people. Not just patients because I am a nurse, but the long line of people I love and care about. First, Dylan's accident when he was 2 led to a lifetime of surgeries. 46 surgeries to be exact, the last being just last year at age 21. When he was 12 he was also diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and that was every day care of diet and blood sugars and insulin injections. I had a husband (now ex) that had leukemia at age 27 and underwent a bone marrow transplant, and I cared for him throughout his entire treatment. Then Spencer who at 4 years old was in the ICU after finding a huge tumor in his head. I almost lost him to burkitts lymphoma. All of this led me to a life of always being a nurse at work and at home; a life of never sitting, never resting, never sleeping, full of anxiety, depression, mania, and never a moment of no worry. Never a moment of what I think other people have had. I feel that I have only struggled. If I wasnt struggling to get to the hospital or doctor's appointment, then I was struggling with money or my marriage or finding myself underneath the pile of weight that life had thrown on top of me. Even today, I am still in the struggle to find out how to navigate through a life where I am not caring for someone or something, caring for anything, except for myself.

Wow. This turned out to not be about chickens at all.