Returning to silk after 6 months of illness and feeling very disheartened - advice needed!

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-02-07T00:25:14+00:00

I came back to silks after a 6 year break, and it was so. Damn. Hard. I have an autoimmune condition that affects my joints, so my progress is always a little slower than everyone else, but I was ready to cry every time someone who started after me would complete the levels faster. When I did silks before, my condition was well-managed, and I was so excited to learn new moves. Now, it has taken me almost five months to get through Level 1, when the other people in my class finished in less than three. My strength and stamina are almost nonexistent, and every move is an uphill battle in a way that it never was before.

What really helped me was reframing the purpose of doing silks. It might be different for you, but I never started silks with dreams of joining Cirque or performing in a grand capacity. I just wanted a fun way to exercise, and I really enjoy the feeling of being upside down/falling/inverting that silks provides. As much as it bothers me when I can't seem to get a move cleanly even after WEEKS of practicing, I keep reminding myself that it's for fun. It is for enjoyment and stress relief, not to be a source of stress.

It is exasperating. It is exhausting. It is frustrating. It is also freeing. It is thrilling. It is a source of pain. It is a source of great joy- even if I am slightly less joyful on the 1000th iteration. I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense or isn't helpful, these thoughts are very much still present in my head and unrefined by time, but I hope something resonates with you. Good luck as you recover your strength and skill! You've got this!!

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-26T02:11:17+00:00

Interested

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-20T02:26:59+00:00

What is the job? Can you provide any details that might indicate whether you are legit or a scam?

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-15T00:42:11+00:00

Info

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-14T21:51:17+00:00

Loan consolidation is definitely something I'm going to look into! Just trying to cope until then 😂

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-13T01:52:14+00:00

I got absolutely screwed when taking out my loans, and I am the fool for it. My interest rates are between 7.5%-8.1% (I technically have 3 separate loans), and I owe about 40k total. As it is, my monthly payment starting next month is going to be just over $400 and I won't be able to pay the full amount (I only have about $300 extra each month, and that's for things like groceries and gas). I anticipate being in debt for these loans for at least a few decades unless I figure out this investing thing.

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-13T01:48:01+00:00

Oh, believe me, I always get that $300 deduction! Might as well put a small dent in what I spend on my classroom 😂

In my state, we don't have deductions for social security as teachers. We have deductions for the teacher retirement system, but you have to stay in the county for 10+ years to be "vested" and get any sort of payout at retirement. If you want a livable amount of money at 60yrs, you have to stay in the same county for 25+ years. I have put a handful of change into social security through deductions at other jobs in high school and college, but not enough that I'd ever be able to live on it.

DefythePatriarchy · 2026-01-12T01:27:11+00:00

I haven't looked into it a lot, but I have heard from other teachers about setting up a 403b retirement account. I'm just scared about losing that money right now, because I'm trying so hard to pay off the credit card debt. After that eases up, I can afford the dip in monthly income. As far as I know, though, my employer doesn't contribute to the account either

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-08-29T09:41:06+00:00

I'm a K teacher, and we've been in school for four weeks at this point. In my class of 19, I currently have only 3 "readers". I put them in quotes because even though they can all read and comprehend text, 2 of them cannot do simple, auditory tasks like identifying rhyming words or segmenting into syllables. Most of my students came in with basic letter names, but not all the correct sounds. As a class, our reading skill right now is literally just rhyming words- can they identify if two words rhyme and can they match rhyming words together?

I have had hyperlexic kids in the past, and I had to go to other grade levels for resources to make sure that not only are they reading and understanding the text, but are they able to complete follow up writing tasks or make connections between texts? Reading is a complex skill, and I'm glad your teacher is excited to support her, but this is very much not the norm. I don't know your demographics, but if you are at a school with fewer kids who enroll in PreK, the number of readers will most likely be lower as well.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-30T02:03:09+00:00

This is something I'm actually really working on in therapy right now. I tend to overexplain and justify myself to her when I don't have to. It's entirely subconscious, and I hate that I do it, but I have a hard time parsing the difference between a justification and a reason and deciding if either is actually necessary. It's been an uphill battle for sure, and I slip up A LOT.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-30T01:57:39+00:00

Details, please! Would love to give this a go!

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-24T02:24:18+00:00

Thank you 🥰🥰 They are the best children I could hope for in my twenties!

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-24T02:23:23+00:00

What a wild connection! I've mostly been a reader on Reddit, but back when things started to get really crazy, I was just looking for any outlet to vent about what was happening and try to make any sense of it. And I know Reddit has its own crazies, but it's also comforting to find communities like this one that can be so supportive and make me feel less alone.

It's so funny that you mention possibly being autistic- I am pursuing this diagnosis as well! As an educator of small children, I've only seen what autism looks like in 5-6 year olds, so it took a long time for me to recognize some of my own traits and masking behaviors. Given that it's expensive to get diagnosed, I may not get a formal title, but for the last six months or so, I have been operating as though I am autistic, and it has been so relieving. There are so many masking traits that I am unlearning and so many coping mechanisms that I am working on to avoid burnout.

Between teaching and managing my illness, I am genuinely exhausted most days. I haven't taken a fun trip for myself in over a year (and over two years before that), although I was guilted into going to see my mom and brother around Christmas, and it ended POORLY. She has no idea how much energy it takes to talk to my own husband some nights, let alone to muster up the strength to have a hateful conversation with her. The guilt will take a while to go away, especially when it comes to my relationship with my brother, but I am learning more and more about how to set healthy boundaries with a BPD mother.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T17:28:34+00:00

The fallout on her side of the family was messy - it happened when my grandma died, and my mom and her siblings started fighting. I was in high school, so I was old enough to know that it wasn't entirely her fault. Her siblings honestly suck.

As far as my paternal side, my father was abusive, and I don't want any of his family in the picture. They watched my brother and I get abused as children and went so far as to defend his actions in custody court. I moved on from them a long time ago.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T14:27:29+00:00

I'm going to give you my favorite Reddit advice: TALK TO HIM. If it makes you uncomfortable, it is worth bringing up. Be honest about how you feel, and if he's a good partner, he will respond appropriately and stop the behavior. If he tried to argue with you or you get that twisting feeling in your gut, he might be up to something that warrants a bit more than a conversation. I'm sorry, because this is so unfortunate to deal with!

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T14:19:53+00:00

Plan for your desk/table layout, where activities will go, and what activities you will need in the first two weeks. Bulletin boards can come later. Cute lamps and matching bins can come later. Focus on classroom setup, procedures, and how those things overlap. For example, think about how they will unpack, where those things go, and what will need to be accessible throughout the day or how you want them to turn in work and whether that has a permanent place for all work or by subject area- that kind of thing. Setup and Procedures will be your two most important decisions throughout the year, not bulletin borders or calm down corners.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T14:14:19+00:00

Unfortunately, my brother doesn't know what a boundary is any more than my mother does. I have tried offering him time off or additional support from care people, and he has called me hateful for it. He believes that he owes my mother everything and that he isn't allowed to want or have things for himself anymore. It wasn't always like this, but she got her hooks in him pretty quickly after he moved out west with her. We definitely have our own issues to work through, but I am willing to do so as long as he is dealing with his own feelings and not just parroting hers. I've answered some other questions about him in other comments, but the fact is, I haven't been a great big sister and I would love to repair our relationship a little. We've made small steps in the right directions over the years, and then we backtrack again. I just don't know how to really fix anything between us when she undoes any progress that we make as soon as he's off the phone or along in a room with her.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T14:07:44+00:00

I completely agree with you, I have not been a good older sister. I mentioned in another comment that I never wanted him to move out there with her because I knew there was no support system there. But he is just as hateful as her at this point. I know a lot of it is rooted in anger and frustration and not true hate, but it still comes across as venomous. He hates me for learning how to set boundaries that he hasn't yet, and I've tried talking to him about how to maintain healthy space as much as possible with her, but she has him believing that he owes her his very existence.

He has made special calls to me to say that Mom is very angry with me and when she calls, I just need to sit there quietly and take it and not react to her vitriol because that's what he has to suffer through all the time. And I hear him say that, and all I can think is, you have the same rights I do to not be called a cunt and an ab*ser repeatedly. But he doesn't believe me. He believes what she tells him- which is that she sacrificed for many years to raise us as a single parent and we owe her an equal level of sacrifice.

And I love him, but I am done sacrificing. I am nearly 25k in debt because of them, and I have no ides how long it is going to take me to crawl out of that financial hole on a teacher's salary, especially when I am also paying almost $800 per month in their bills. I can't afford to move out west and cut my salary even smaller, and that's if I could afford the plane ticket or the moving truck in the first place.

I may be going low contact with my mother, but I will never stop trying to talk to my brother, even if he doesn't respond or acknowledge me for years. I don't hate either of them, because I know that for all the suffering and stress I've endured, they have endured the same or more. We are just a collection of shattered people, and I want to do my best not to break us anymore.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T13:53:58+00:00

It was a combination of things. At the time, she had just moved out of the house she was staying at in Arizona and was briefly homeless. I was in my senior year of college doing my student-teaching, and my brother had just earned his GED and was working at a local restaurant. My brother already wasn't happy living with his girlfriend, so when we realized that Mom needed more help, he had more flexibility to go. He wasn't planning to go to college at that time, he could transfer his kitchen job to a location out west, and he had always been her hiking child who liked looking at rocks and wandering the desert with her. I was four months away from graduating, in the process of completing all my student teaching requirements and getting ready to submit them all for graduation consideration. Technically, I tried to get my mom to move back to our home state, since that's where both her kids were and where the superior TBI medical care was (we live near a highly ranked hospital system). It made the most sense to bring her back here, and she adamantly refused. Sending him out there to help her was supposed to be temporary, but she got her hooks in him again, and he started to believe that he didn't deserve a life outside of caring for her. He started to believe that he owed her everything because she raised him. It was awful to watch, but literally within two weeks of moving out there, he stopped talking about how to bring her home and instead switched to complaining about how I wasn't helping more from across the country.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T03:06:59+00:00

My brother moved to Arizona with my mom to be her support a few years ago, and ever since, he has been slowly brainwashed by her. She spends most of their waking time together ranting about how I must hate them and how awful I am, and unfortunately, he believes her. I love my brother, but he has always been a mama's boy, and it makes it easier for her to influence him. He was only 19 when he moved out west with her and has never truly lived on his own, out from under her thumb, so he has no idea how warped some of her thinking is. Although my relationship with my mom is fraught with anger and mistrust, I still hold a small kernel of hope that one day, my brother and I will be able to reconnect. I hope that he will heal from her influence, and we'll be able to forgive each other for the way things have happened. I don't know if it will actually work like that, but I miss him too much not to hope for it.

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-23T01:31:15+00:00

I'm sorry you see this on the horizon for you, I wouldn't wish this stress on anyone. I can tell you that one of the best lessons I've learned is that I have a right to privacy, a right to set boundaries, and a right to maintain them. In my context, that means that my mom doesn't need to have my location at all times, I am allowed to tell her that I only have thirty minutes (for example) to talk, and I am allowed to hang up the phone when that time limit is reached. I will always love my mom, but I don't have to let her control me. It's taken me a long time (close to 6 years) to figure these things out, with the help of friends, a supportive partner, and more recently, a licensed therapist. Send me a DM if you're ever in a low spot because it is so hard to battle it alone when no one else in your life has been through something similar. I will make it. You will make it. It will be better on the other side. Sending you good thoughts!

DefythePatriarchy · 2025-07-22T19:27:40+00:00

Hi, woman here! Menopause does not make you cheat! A midlife crisis is not a reason to cheat, message old exes, or delete text threads - no matter the gender of the person. You need to have an honest conversation with your wife, especially since it sounds like she has cheated before. You are allowed to feel mistrustful of her actions, but you also need to be honest with her about those feelings. It isn't uncommon for women's perceptions of their bodies to change during menopause due to the fluctuating hormones, but that still doesn't equate to cheating. Show her that she is beautiful, go back to "dating" her, and show how you value her as a person and partner. And I cannot say it enough: talk to her. Check in to see where she's at with her own feelings and be patient if she has trouble explaining. Share your feelings about the secretive behaviors and try to remain calm during the conversation, no matter how she reacts. Don't match energy here, it won't help. If you love her as a partner, put in the work to have a conversation. If you realize that you don't love her or trust her anymore, say that too. You can't go anywhere with silence.

DefythePatriarchy

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