“I Love Mommy’s Slobber!” And You Can Love Yours.

Yes, my sweet boy actually said this to me.

And yes, this week I’m talking about drool. And not just drool, but coming to love (or at least accept) the drool.

Still with me?

I was getting my son dressed one morning when the typical string of saliva fell from my mouth. My boy melted my heart with his response.

I then paused and thought, I must have become comfortable with this aspect of living with CP that took me so hard to accept if my little boy can respond to mommy’s drool this way.

I tend to drool when my body forgets to swallow. This ever happen to you? This tends to happen when I am either tired, in a hurry, too busy talking to remember to swallow, or sometimes, for no reason at all, like the morning I was dressing my son.

To be completely honest, I struggled for years with the embarrassment and shame associated with this facet of my body. Being a teen and young adult who occasionally drooled, I chastised myself for doing so, even when I knew it was a consequence of motor difficulty and management.

I would tell myself I was a grown woman and I just should not be doing that anymore. I was ignoring the fact that I am a grown woman with cerebral palsy, and these things just happen at times.

When I was in my teens, the reaction of my peers was not exactly encouraging to acceptance of my drooling. In high school, the boys would laugh at me, and in college I had a friend (who’s still a good friend of mine) say “Ewww!” almost any time I drooled.

Responses such as these were not helpful in accepting this reality of my life. Even when others have given a supportive response to my drooling, I have felt the shame. One of my more embarrassing moments was one morning when my roommate asked me if she should wear this certain dress to work and I leaned over it to take a closer look and drooled all over it. I was much too embarrassed to even admit that I was, but she handled the incident very gracefully.

What’s crucial to remember, though, is that such a simple act as drooling should never be given the power to curtail one’s magnificence. Very few things or people in life should have that kind of power.

Like all aspects of beauty, it took time for me to realize that the true problem was not in my drooling. It was the perpetuated and unspoken rule that drooling diminished one’s beauty. It is one of those societal myths that I took on, to have it brought to light and transformed.

The fact that I might be at the beginning of a sentence, open my mouth, and have a string of saliva come out does not in any way detract from my loveliness and beauty. As with my speech, my walk, and my fine motor coordination, drooling is part of the individual characteristics that actually create my overall beauty.

If you drool or have someone in your life who does, here are three helpful ways to accept the slobber (as we affectionately call it in my house):

1. ”Oops, there I go again.” And keep preceding with what you’re doing. Grab a tissue, if needed, but don’t make a big deal about it because it’s not.
2. “Anything need watering around here?” And wink, never forget the power of humor.
3. Don’t say anything. Continue on, reminding yourself that drooling is part of what makes you uniquely you.