I’m a knitter. I love to knit. I take my knitting with me everywhere, and it’s become my trademark. I belong to an online knitting community that happens to have message boards for everything under the sun, not just knitting. Recently, I found a wonderfully supportive group of women who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and who have welcomed me with open arms as I try to understand the challenges facing my daughter.

In talking to them over the last few days, I’ve realized how important it is to have a support system that “gets” you. I have faith-based support from all our friends and family at church. I have adoption support though people I know who have adopted, and those I know in the helping professions who deal with adoption. So, finding support from those who have PTSD, has been immeasurably helpful in giving me insight into a world I don’t understand, and making sense of thoughts previously foreign to me.
There are many ways to find both online and offline support:

Search engines: Type the term you are seeking support around, into your favorite search engine (Google, Alta Vista, whatever…). See what comes up and explore your findings.


Online bulletin boards and groups: Yahoo Groups, iVillage, and many other sites, including the ones at our sister site at Adoption.com (forums.adoption.com). Popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace also have "affinity groups."

Social services: Talk to your child’s therapist, social worker or other provider of services for support group recommendations.

The amount of love and support flowing from this new group I’ve found is amazing. People have given me their contact information, and basically said to call whenever I need to. Others write me e-mails privately off of the message board to let me know I’m not alone. Others have children with PTSD, as I do, and we commiserate about the challenges and celebrate the small victories.

I remember a quote from my days as a child care provider: “The quality of life for the child is inextricably linked to that of the caregiver.” In other words, to use another adage, “If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!” Similar to when you are instructed by the airline attendant to put your own mask on first, you can’t help others if you aren’t in a position to help because of your own “stuff” – mental, physical, emotional or otherwise.

Photo credit: Stock Xchng