How the Kayden Joy Fund Helped One Mom Overcome Fear

My name is Mandy Martinez (Class 284), and I have been living every mother’s nightmare. Every mother’s greatest fear is that something bad will happen to her child; well I was living that fear and had been for years. My son was born with hypo-plastic left heart syndrome and has been in and out of the hospital for most of the 9 years of his life.  He has had numerous heart and lung surgeries. Before coming into the training, I told myself that I was handling his condition very well, but in reality, I wasn’t.

Every time Jonah would go into the hospital I would emotionally numb myself because it was so extremely painful for me to see him suffering.  I always told myself that I was just being strong for his sake, but in reality, I was numbing myself because it was almost unbearable to watch him suffer so much. When I wasn’t emotionless, I would cry myself to sleep at night thinking about Jonah’s suffering.

Slowly and unbeknownst to me, I was building a wall around my heart to protect myself from the eventuality that one day Jonah would go into that hospital and not come back out.  That is a pain that no mother should have to experience.  I was not able to give or receive unconditional love to anyone because I was so scared of the possibility of losing Jonah.  Because of that wall and my inability to adequately love, my husband and best friend of 20 years left me.  I was completely devastated.  I fell into an abyss and that is when my sister encouraged me to attend Pathways.

With the help of the Kayden Joy Fund, I went to Pathways, and the training saved me.  It gave me the tools I needed to tear down the wall from around my heart.  I realized how irrational my fear of losing Jonah was and learned to live for today, not tomorrow.  Before the training, I would look at Jonah see him as my son with a heart condition; now I see a beautiful 9-year-old boy with a passion for life and a strength that I envy.  I also realized I can never prepare myself for the loss of Jonah, but I CAN enjoy every minute that I have with him.

As far as my marriage is concerned, I have come to realize that I wasn’t the only one that was numb.  In the beginning when Jonah was first born, my husband I were able to lean on each other for support.  But as time passed, Jonah’s disability took its toll on both of us, and neither one of us could see it happening. We no longer leaned on each other for support; we just didn’t know how.  It saddens me that my husband walked away without fighting for us, but he was not, and still is not, ready to admit to himself that he shut down as well. I can’t do anything about that. While I have had some stumbling blocks in dealing with the end of the relationship, I do know that I saved myself. I have opened my heart to a life full of unconditional love and joy, and that is the greatest thing that I could ever give myself and my children.

To the people who have donated and will donate to the Kayden Joy Fund, from the bottom of my heart to the bottom of yours, THANK YOU!  Your generosity has allowed me to have a whole new perspective on life and love.  There are so many parents out there with kids who have disabilities and they don’t have the adequate resources to learn how to properly handle those disabilities.  So please continue to donate, this fund could do for someone else what it has done for me.

It’s worth it. Do you know how I know? Today, Jonah came home from school and told me that in honor of Thanksgiving the class was instructed to write down one thing for which they were thankful. Jonah wrote “life.” Thank you.