Caterina Scorsone‘s outlook about parenting completely changed when she found out her younger childPaloma Michaela, now 2, had been diagnosed withDown syndrome.
Speaking on theMotherlypodcast‘s Thursday episode, theGrey’s Anatomyactress, 37, explained that when she first became a mother to daughterEliza, now 6½, she had a completely different “concept of what motherhood was.”
“What I unconsciously thought about my job as a mother was that I was supposed to equip herto survive in a competitive world,” Scorsone shared, explaining that she was initially sent “into a tailspin” when she realized Paloma (whom she calls Pippa) “was going to have some physical differences and some cognitive differences.”
But one day, things just clicked.
“This simple voice came to me where I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do — oh, I’m supposed to keep her safe and I’m supposed to make her feel loved,’ ” she said. “And suddenly myunderstanding of my job as a mothercompletely distilled and opened.”
The actress went on to share that this epiphany moment also had the added bonus of making her re-examine her relationship with her older child.
“I saw how I was loving my first daughter, Eliza, for her qualities,” Scorsone shared. “I loved Eliza so much because she was so clever, and she was so beautiful and she was so funny … but all those things were external qualities.”
Caterina Scorsone/Instagram
“I had to confront that thought experiment of ‘I don’t know if [Pippa is] going to be clever, I don’t know if she’s going to be funny’ —which, of course, she is, and nowthat I know more about Down syndrome, I’m like, ‘Oh, what a stupid thought I had,’ ” she said. “But I didn’t know, and it forced me to realize that I was loving my other daughter and everyone, including myself, for absolutely the wrong reason. I was loving people for their external qualities and not for their essence.”
“It shows you that, ‘Okay, this is a totally different journey, but there’s something mystically special about this journey,’ ” she said. “You can embrace it in a way that is like, ‘Wow, one in 700 people get to experience this and I’m one of them.’ ”
Another source of support that helped her change the way she looked at her daughter’s diagnosis came from a phone call withAmy Brenneman, her formerPrivate Practicecostar.
“She and her husband Brad have a beautiful daughter named Charlotte who has a chromosomal variation, so I called her and brought all of my scared feelings to her and wept with her and grieved with her,” Scorsone shared. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do this. How do I do this?’ And she was like, ‘This is how you do it — you do it just like you would do with any other child. You learn who they areand you learn what they need.’ ”
As for the bond between her two daughters, Scorsone revealed that they have a “really typical sibling relationship.”
“Pippahas two teeth on thebottom and four molars. She does not have a full mouth of teeth yet and it’s because literally everything in her development is happening slower because of the enzymatic things that are going on with her extra chromes,” she shared. “She’s developing slower, but she’s still developing. She’s stillhitting all of the milestones, it’sjust happening at a different rate.”
Caterina Scorsone’s daughter Paloma.Caterina Scorsone/Instagram
And now that they’re older, the girls are finding sweet new ways to interact with one another. “They’re starting to have a fun dynamic,” the actress raved. “Eliza really likes to playHarry Potterwith her and Pippa plays the role of Hedwig, and she can definitely say ‘Hoo Hoo’ and Eliza thinks that’s hilarious.”
In terms of what advice she would give to parents facing new diagnoses for their children, Scorsone said that first it’s important to “create a safe space for them to feel all of the feelings that they’re having.”
“I definitely don’t say, ‘Oh you’re so lucky,’ because they have to grieve a perception that has been fed to them culturally our whole lives,” she shared. “When I feel like they’re ready for it, you say things like, ‘You hit the jackpot’ and ‘Oh my gosh, you get chosen for this experience, this is unbelievable andyour world is going to open upin ways you could not have imagined.’ ”
“People said that to me at the beginning … and now I get to pay it forward,” Scorsone added.
source: people.com
