I do. But maybe what we all need to remember is just that simple. Maybe it’s not a fix, not by a long shot, but it’s a comfort just the same, and comfort can go a long way when you know someone loves you.”
Petrone knew that her son’s anxiety was something that she could not ignore. If she pretended it did not exist, then it might only get worse. Instead, she tried to give her son a tool that he could use to calm his anxieties when he was not in the presence of his devoted mother.
“Maybe it’s the way the seasons shift, a little at a time so slowly until it’s not slow at all anymore, and it’s become cold so fast that you swear you inhaled the warm air of early fall and you exhaled in a foggy smoke of breath into the holidays,” she wrote. “Or maybe it’s just that he’s been asking me every single morning since he started school in September: ‘Mommy, is today Christmas?’ and forever, I’d just laugh and say, oh no, baby, we have a ways to go, except now that’s not so true anymore, and the anticipation is so much I think he might spontaneously combust.”
Now, if you see a child with a heart drawn on their hand, you can recognize it thanks to Petrone’s viral Facebook post.
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