The Lost Years- Secondary Trauma

Mike and I are sitting here watching TV tonight and 20/20 comes on.  They're talking about a case from 2011, the case of missing college student Lauren Spierer.  They stated it was one of the most well known missing person cases of all time.  I consider myself someone who keeps up with current events, sometimes I even get pulled into stories and (admittedly) obsess over them.  But this one, it didn't ring a bell...at all.  I asked Mike, "Do you remember this?". He didn't either.  Then we realized the year...2011.

Mike lovingly refers to the years of 2010 and 2011 as our own personal 'Nam, because there are long periods of time, many significant events, that neither one of us remember.  We have blocked them out I suppose, similar (although obviously incomparable) to what a soldier, post war, may experience.  They were indeed the most trying years of our lives so far. 

These were the first years we had the twins home.

Here's a perfect example of our lapse in memory.  In 2012 I said I wanted to go to Columbus for my birthday to go to the science museum and the famous Columbus Zoo.  About halfway through our day at the zoo we came upon the polar bear exhibit.  Something seemed familiar, there was a playground at the entrance of the exhibit that I could have sworn I had pictures of the girls playing on before.  I asked the zoo employee if the Cleveland Zoo had a similar exhibit and he told me no, that the Columbus Zoo was the only one in the state that had polar bears, let alone that very same playground.  I'm sure he thought I had forgotten to take my meds that morning or something!

Here we are in 2012:

 
We finished our day at the zoo, both of us trying to remember when we would have brought them to Columbus before then.  We were able to rule out that we had taken them the previous summer so that only left the summer of 2010...right after we brought them home.  We wouldn't have been that crazy!!  There's no way!!  We were so broke!!  How would we have even afforded it?  Where would we have stayed??  To this day we can't answer those questions folks, but I do have photo evidence that we were at the Columbus Zoo the summer of 2010.

Here is the infamous polar bear playground photo (apparently my sole memory from this visit)...

Parents of kids from trauma will attest to this, but there is such a thing as secondary trauma, and most of us who are parenting trauma kiddos would fit the bill for this diagnosis.  We get PTSD from our kids' PTSD.  It's a vicious cycle.  You can read more about this here. This article states it best:

 "Because these behaviors serve as a way for their child to communicate and express how their trauma has affected them, parents are, thus, being exposed, on a regular basis, to their child’s trauma.  Parents who are experiencing secondary trauma may: feel anxious, tense, easily overwhelmed, and have sleep difficulties; re-experience their child’s aggressive, suicidal, or self-harming behaviors or details of their child’s trauma; feel as if they have changed and are not themselves anymore; or wish to escape or avoid their child or their child’s behaviors."

Those first two years with the twins were so wrought with trauma that our brains had blocked so much of it out completely!

We spent most of our days doing behavior modification.  Our girls were so filled with rage, coupled with the fact that they didn't speak English so they couldn't communicate their feelings, even if they were capable at 4 years old of putting it into words.  They would scream, kick, hit, spit and bite.  We spent a good amount of their waking hours teaching them the basics of how to behave, using holds that would assist them in calming themselves and their bodies.  We would find out later that they both have what's called Sensory Processing Disorder (very common in children from trauma) so the pressure of the holds would physically help them calm down.  (Now we have weighted blankets).

I am so thankful that I took so many pictures those first two years so that they can fill in the major gaps in my memory and so that the girls have a beautiful pictorial representation of all of the fun we did have those first two years.  They made SO MUCH PROGRESS in those years that it was unbelievable.  I do remember those hopeless days when we thought we'd never get to the point that they could function in a school environment, never go to a friend's house to play and never be calm enough that our cats would come out of hiding around them!  If you are in that place, the abyss of the unknowns about your child, please know there is always hope!  They will improve and so will you.  You will learn to be their best advocate and you will learn how to parent them, even if it was different than you thought you'd parent.  God will give you the strength if you ask for it.  I still have to ask Him for help, strength, patience, grace and love for my kids on a daily basis.  Most importantly YOU ARE NOT ALONE and YOU ARE NOT CRAZY!!

It's pretty amazing what our brains do in order to cope with things.  It makes me wonder if other parents have these experiences.  One of my best friends had a baby that had a very rough first year of life.  He struggled with acid reflux so badly that this child cried CONSTANTLY.  Perhaps she experiences some lapses in time due to that traumatic year.  If you have a story about a period of your life that your brain blocked out, leave it in the comments!  It will help me not feel so crazy!!  Ha!

A Very Different Kind of "Back to School" Post

My heart is overflowing with joy.  As I sit here the past two days on Facebook reading everyone's complaints and woes, I am struck at our country's lack of perspective and gratitude.  How spoiled and self-righteous are we as a nation when we complain about our "first world problems" whilst people around the world fight for their right to simply live.

On Wednesday we, as a family, watched a documentary on Netflix called "On the Way to School".  It follows the lives of four different children in four different countries and documents their journey to school every day.  None of the kids in the film walked less than an hour each way to school daily.  One child had to watch out for elephant stampedes, while another pushed their brother, who was in a wheelchair, through very rugged terrain for over an hour.  Yet we complain.  After the film I was struck when the first words out of Charlotte's mouth was "When are we sending the money to send my sisters to school?".  Little did she know that I had been working on this very task over the past few days with our friend Workineh in Ethiopia.

I want to preface this post with the fact that Mike and I are no saints.  This story is of God and only possible through God.  We are simply following God's call on our lives.  He is the one making all of this possible, so please join us in praising Him and not us.

As many of you already know we hired an investigator back in May and were able to locate both birth mothers of our girls.  You can read ore about that story here.  We knew the twins had two sisters, one is now 7 and the other is 12.  In the interest of their privacy I will refer to them as K and N.  Once we found them I had a strong desire to make sure these girls were in a good school.  Since May I have been working with Workineh (our investigator turned friend) as well as our Ethiopian friend here in the states to determine what the best way to go about this would be.  Mike and I wanted to make sure we weren't trying to swoop in and be all "white savior" about the way we wanted to help.

This summer, while visiting family in Ohio, we were able to call the twins' birthmother, Abinet, ON THE PHONE!!!!  Our friend, and Godsend, Amsale in Ohio had her phone number from when the investigator told us that Abinet did have a phone.  Amsale happened to be in Ethiopia visiting her family in May when Workineh found Abinet, so she was able to talk with her on the phone 2 times while she was there.  We were sitting up in a bedroom in Amsale's house.  Our main goal of the phone call was to let Abinet know how we would like to help and find out what kind of school she would like the girls to go to. 

An interesting side note is the twins' response to our phone call to Abinet.  One girl wanted to stand in the room to just listen, but did not want to say anything.  The other wanted nothing to do with the call.  I mention this to emphasize that these are BIG and COMPLICATED feelings that they are sorting through.  They each sleep with a scarf tied around their waist that Amsale brought back for them from Ethiopia that she told them was from Abinet.  They love their first mother, but yet, there's so many feelings!  Mike and I are very intentional about letting them lead as far as how much, and what, involvement they want in this whole process. 

In Ethiopia a boarding school is the most prestigious school.  In my gut, I didn't think she would want to send them to a boarding school.  She already had to part with two of her kids due to terrible circumstances and I felt that she wouldn't want the other two out of her house.  I was correct.  She was so moved by our offer and asked why we wanted to help her.  All of us were crying.  We told her, through Amsale's translation, that she is now a part of our family and we help our family.  We conveyed to her how much we loved her and her other daughters and how we wish to come to visit her in three years.  At one point in the phone call she said "God made these girls (the twins) for you."  My response was "No, he made them for you, but we are so blessed to help."

She chose the school she wanted and let Workineh know how much tuition, the entrance fee, uniforms and school supplies would be.  The total for BOTH girls was...$310 for the entire year.  We are blessed with an incredible group of friends and family who all waned to participate in helping our new family members, which allowed us to send some extra money for school clothes, shoes, etc.

I sent the money to Workineh through Western Union on Wednesday and he traveled to their town on Thursday.  He sent me some pictures.  God is so good guys!

 Here are K & N modeling their new school clothes, shoes and backpacks.

 These are some of their new school books.

 This is the fabric that has been taken to a tailor to be made into their school uniforms.  School starts on September 18th.

 N, Abninet and K showing the photo album I made back in May for them of pictures of the twins from the entire time they've been with us.  Workineh delivered it to them on this trip.  

Here are the girls standing outside the school compound.

I need to express to you that through this entire process we have been very transparent and open with the twins.  They know everything, every detail we discovered about their birthfamily.  Some of it wasn't ideal, obviously.  This has brought the twins so much healing and helped them bond with us on a whole other level.  Their trust in us has grown exponentially.  They see our love for them shown through our love for their first family.  It helps that they no longer need to worry about what ever happened to their first family, especially their sisters.  We will always keep in touch and make sure they're ok, as much as is possible.

In no way has this discovery made me feel any "less" their mother.  I have not felt threatened in any way.  I feel closer to them knowing their history.  It has made me love their first family like they're my own.  It has opened my eyes and broken my heart for what breaks God's.  It has brought me closer to God.  He has been in every small detail of this whole experience.  I pray for Abinet everyday.  I wear a bracelet that says "enat" {mother in Amharic} to remind me to pray for her.  

I sleep better at night knowing I am doing all I can to help them.  It has brought our whole family here, and friends, together for such an amazing reason.  Our family has made us feel so loved, and again it shows the twins that they can trust all of us.  I sleep better knowing that this woman halfway around the world knows she's not forgotten.  She knows her babies are loved and cherished.  She knows that God has heard her prayers and is using us to help answer some of them.  That is an incredible honor.

The Twins' Adoption Story (part one)

In the fall of 2009 I felt very angry with God, in fact I was giving him the  silent treatment. After abruptly losing my job, we had a sudden death in the family and then my dear friend Geeta lost her battle with breast cancer.

I proceeded to spend the next few months wallowing in self pity.  Finally one day I felt my friend Geeta with me. I felt her saying to me “Get off of your butt and stop being sad. It’s time to make your own happiness!” Before she passed away we had had many conversations about international adoption since she and her husband had adopted from Guatemala. So I just keep feeling her nagging me to start looking into it. I had the time, so I researched different agencies and countries and made a nice organized spreadsheet.

I presented all of this to Mike who was definitely on board, but concerned. You see, it definitely did NOT make any sense for us to do this now. I had lost my job (still on unemployment) and he was serving tables at the Olive Garden trying to finish up his PhD. We lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment with not a whole lot of extra income at the end of the month, let alone extra thousands of dollars lying around to be able to afford this! We knew we wanted to adopt eventually because we both have some serious genetic health issues on both sides of our families that we didn’t want to risk passing onto our children. But now? My brain knew it didn’t make sense but my heart wasn’t listening!

Not long after I began my research I got a call from my cousin Kimberly.  We had become closer since the sudden passing of her mother.  She offered me a full time job working for her!  Looking back I see that as soon as I was blindly following God's call for my life, he was providing for our needs.

After Christmas we really began finalizing our choices as far as agency and country. We chose our agency because it was the same one that Geeta had gone through and we chose Ethiopia because the kids were healthy, they were being hyped as not having attachment issues (HA!), and they were beautiful! It was a new program so there was less red tape and less of a wait time.

Now came the issue of financing this. We starting some fundraisers that yielded small profits but realized we were going to have to come up with a better plan. I am blessed enough to have very generous and well off grandparents, so we wrote up a business plan of how we would pay them back and presented it to them. This was a very big chunk of change we were asking to borrow but luckily for us they said yes and we were on our way!

We started our homestudy in mid-February 2010. When our social worker came out to our home, one of the many times, she asked about the possibility of us adopting 2 children. After talking it over we decided that we never wanted only one child so why not go ahead and get 2 at the same time, preferably biological siblings! We figured at least if they are going to look nothing like us, they can at least look like each other! So we got approved for 2 children and when we said we didn’t want to request a gender, we were informed that we would probably get 2 boys then, because most people have been requesting girls. At this information my husband, who grew up with no sisters, says “Wouldn’t it be cool if we got twin girls!”. I said “No! You have no idea the kind of drama that would come along with that! Two prom dresses, two weddings, and let’s not forget the hormones!!”

There were a few road blocks that we ran into during our homestudy process.  For one, when we were married I chose to change my middle name to my maiden name.  I was told at the Social Security office that I could do that and was not informed that any other legal action needed to be taken.  Well, it turns out that I needed to go to probate court to officially change it legally.  Due to strange rules I was going to have to wait an entire year before I'd be allowed to go to probate court for this which was going to set us back an entire year!  My doctors were also NOT fond of me going to a third world country in Africa since I was on so many immune-suppressant medications.  There were some vaccines that were recommended that were live viruses, which I was told I was not allowed to have because of the meds I was taking.  Many tears were shed over these seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

During this process our agency connected us with another family who was local and also adopting from Ethiopia through the same agency. We became Facebook friends and had sent a couple of emails back and forth. When they made their trip in late March to pick up their children, I found myself glued to my computer! I just kept looking at their pictures. I was amazed with the scenery, and the culture and of course, the children. I showed her pictures to everyone I knew. When my
mom saw the pictures of the children this family was bringing home, she gasped and said “Oh Sarah, can’t you just have them? They’re beautiful!!”. My response, of course, was that I was pretty sure it didn’t work like that!

We were moving into my grandparents former house that spring.  On April 30th everything changed. All of our things were in boxes as we were moving the following day. Our phone rang at about 8pm. Our adoption agency was on the other end, asking us how we would feel about adopting twin 4 year old girls. We were in shock! Our homestudy wasn't even finished yet! When we ask when, her response is just “soon, very soon”!  We asked them to give us the night to pray about it.
From their description of the girls’ ages I knew it was the same 2 little girls I had been looking at pictures of over the last 2 weeks. So we logged onto our computer and looked at their pictures again…and wept. These were our daughters!!

Read part two for the rest of the story!

Mother Knows Best...

Well, I have finally caved.  Mom, you win, I'm waving the white flag of surrender.  Today I purchased real grown up anti-aging facial products.  Yes, mom, of course I bought the Target knock off brand!  Do you think I'm made of money?!

My mother has been preaching to me about proper skin care since I was in high school.  I've always been pretty arrogant about my skin.  I never had to go through any breakouts in high school and if I did get the stray pimple, my beloved freckles were standing guard ready to camouflage it.  I have never been one to wear a lot (if any) make up, so I've never seen the point of washing my face before bed...I KNOW I KNOW!  It's like a cardinal sin of womanhood, I get it.

Over the years I've considered diving in and paying more attention to my skin.  I even made it a New Year's Resolution in 2014, but we all know how those turn out.  It didn't last more than 2 weeks.  I bought the fancy expensive organic stuff at the home party thinking THAT would get me to do it.  Nope.  I just used it in the mornings in the shower, even though I was told at aforementioned party that if I slept with a dirty face that I'd turn into a monster (or something to that effect).

My overconfidence is not helped by the fact that my mother and grandmother have AMAZING skin and do not look anywhere close to their ages.  They've always been like that, so I've got good skin genes.  Plus, I'm still basically 16 in my mind so I've got plenty of time to worry about that. (no?) Then you add on a chronic health condition and raising three young kiddos from hard places and suddenly good skin care isn't even in the realm of priorities.

After this last major surgery, and horrific endless recovery, I could see the stress of it on my face.  What?  It can't be!  My 16 year old skin has finally started to crack under the pressure.  I finally admitted to myself that the only reason that my Me-me and my mom have such great skin is because they've been regimented about taking care of it for decades.

If you know me at all you may have picked up on the fact that I could give a crap about what other people think of me (to a fault according to my mother ;) ) and I'm not one to care much what I look like.  I've left the house before looking like a mess on many occasions because I just don't even think to check the mirror before walking out.  My motivation you see is not vanity, it lies with my dear mother.  You think she hounds me about this skin care thing now?  Wait until I'm 40 or 60!  Since my Me-me has lived so long I know my mother will too and her filter and self control about nagging me on such issues will only get worse.  I can hear her now, "You know, if you had listened to me in your 30s and started using that Olay stuff I told you about your skin wouldn't looks so....rough."  Or, "Honey, you really ought to have something done about those wrinkles, they're really aging you."  She will forever haunt me about it ya'll!!

So, mark this down as a win for both of us I guess.  I'm sure I'll thank her when I'm 60, and people don't think I'm too old to have 12 Ethiopian kids...LOL!  Love you Mom!

The Loss of an Unlikely Best Friend

Two days ago our neighbor died suddenly of a heart attack.  He was 67.  He was also one of my children's very best friends.  They would rather go to his house to hang out than to try and play with any of the neighborhood kids.

I have known Jim since I was 6 years old and lived in this house with my grandparents.  His kids were a little older than I was, but their family has always been in my life since then.  As it turns out, my husband has always known their family as well since they were very involved in Boy Scouts.  It has been such a privilege for my kids to get to know them as well.

Looking at Jim you wouldn't guess that small children would want to hang out with him.  He was gruff, always had a cigarette in his mouth, his hands were always worn and filthy from the project he was working on at the time and he was physically a large man.  My kids ADORED him.  Anytime they'd go over to his house on their bikes they would have a million questions about what he was working on.  He always answered their questions, sometimes teaching them how to do it themselves. If the girls needed anything on their bike fixed, they wouldn't even bother telling Mike or I about it, they would just go straight over to Jim's house for him to fix it.  Bikes were one of his many areas of expertise.  My kids went so far as to knock on their door to see if Jim was home if he wasn't outside.  I had to explain to them that they needed to give Jim and Joyce their space and that they could only "play" with them if they were already outside.  Jim has a pool and he and Joyce are always inviting the girls over to swim anytime they want to.

When the twins first came to our family, and had limited English, the neighbor's names were in the first 100 words the girls obtained.  The best part was that they combined their names and called them JimsJoyce.  It was so sweet and now upon reflection, quite appropriate.  What a blessing to have such a beautiful example of a loving couple who, after 44 years of marriage, were still best friends and loved being together.  Jim was also a beautiful lesson for my girls that you cannot judge someone based on what they look like.

As I said before, Jim passed away 2 days ago.  When I told the girls the news, I could tell that they couldn't really process it.  They seemed to kind of sluff it off.  Their reaction was a bit concerning to me.  I knew how much they cared about him.  Charlotte and I went to visit his wife today and for Charlotte, seeing how her heart was so broken really made it more real.  Caroline couldn't bring herself to even go over.

At bedtime tonight the twins took turns coming downstairs telling me they couldn't sleep.  I got annoyed.  I just wanted to sit and spend some time with Mike.  I went upstairs to tuck them each back in and Caroline came clean.  She couldn't sleep because she was sad about Jim and it was reminding her of when Brutus died.  She broke down.  I held her as she cried.  I reminded her of how much Jim loved Brutus, a fact I had forgotten until tonight.  When Brutus was a kitten, Jim would come over just to see him and it was quite a site to see such a big, tough guy holding such a tiny little kitten.  I remember how heartbroken he was when he found out about what happened to Brutus.  I'm sure he is snuggling with that ornery little kitten up in heaven!  I then came downstairs to dig through the dozens of boxes packed for our impending move trying to find the stuffed moose we named Brutus so Caroline could snuggle with him.  Of course Brutus the Moose was in one of the very first boxes we packed and was therefore on the BOTTOM of the pile!  It took me 30 minutes and I was sweating by the time I dug that thing out, but if than dang moose was going to help her sleep, then you better believe I was going to find it.  That's true love people!!

I then went into Charlotte's room to re-tuck her into bed.  By this time it's 10:30pm...they went to bed at 8:45pm.  I asked her if she was ok and she told me she was sad about Jim.  I held her as we both cried for the next 15 minutes.  She misses him.  After we cried I reminded her of his love for Brutus and we were able to smile remembering how funny it looked when he held that tiny kitten and how he would bring Brutus back home after the many times he would make a daring escape out of any open door so he could have an adventure.

None of us want our children to experience pain of any kind, but in real life any relationship has its risks of resulting in pain.  I wouldn't change their relationship with Jim just to spare them of this pain.  Their relationship with this man was such a blessing.  They learned so many life lessons knowing and loving him.  Having a relationship with God helps makes these times more bearable because we know we will all see Jim again one day in heaven.  I know he will be up there watching over my girls in the same way he'll be watching over his own grandchildren.

Eight--the Elusive Milestone Achieved!

We adopted our twins when they were 4 years old.  We were the fourth caregivers they had had in their short lives.  They had been through abuse, neglect, abandonment, hunger, violence and fear that I can't even imagine...I don't even want to.  They were, understandably, a mess.  A HOT MESS.  Those who knew us best back then know that we rarely left the house for that first year.  We were in full on crisis mode all the time.

Every book we read, and every professional we talked to, told us that it would take at least 4 years until we could expect them to have the same issues that their peers have, age appropriate issues.  It would take them as many years as they lived away from us to learn to trust us and to feel secure.  Back then this news left us feeling so overwhelmed.  Another 4 years of THIS.  How in the world would we survive?  How would they survive?  I had a lot of conversations with God about how I think he had made a mistake.  I couldn't DO this.  It was TOO HARD!  There wasn't really a light at the end of the tunnel.

If you have parented a typical four year old, you may be thinking "What are you complaining about?  You don't even have to deal with the terrible twos, or the toddler years!".  Well, guess what?  Our children didn't have the opportunity to be mischievous toddlers.  At that age they were in survival mode.  They didn't have toys, or people to throw tantrums to.  They had no one.  So that meant that, even though they were 4 chronologically, they very distinctively went through the terrible twos/threes during the first 6 months of being with us.  Imagine your toddler, throwing fits, trying to be independent, but having NO WAY to communicate with them.  Yeah, that's where we were!

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad.  Despite the language barrier, we had dance parties, we played with each others hair, even Mike's, and we blew bubbles.  These things need no language.  They also picked up English at a warp speed.

But even an English speaking four year old doesn't have the words to express the anger, rage, sadness, grief and fear that these girls were experiencing.  This led to meltdowns that would last an hour sometimes.  Many times they would need to be restrained in order to keep them, and the rest of us, safe.  I never knew a preschooler could be so strong or so angry.  It was scary.

We decided to use this restraint time as an opportunity for bonding.  We were so physically close to them while we were holding them that we used this time to sing to them, express to them that everything was going to be ok, and to reassure them that NO MATTER WHAT they did, we were not going to get rid of them.  It's not that they thought we might give them away, they were certain of it, and they were determined that they were going to be the ones in charge of that.  They were going to be bad enough that we would quit on them.  They picked the wrong family.  We don't quit, we're too stubborn for that.

Another misconception is that if you adopt a four year old, or any older child, you get out of all of those sleepless nights.  WRONG!  Children from hard places tend to have serious issues with sleeping/dark.  One of our girls was terrified of the dark, while the other would have scary night terrors that would wake me from a dead sleep.

We were exhausted and the thought of keeping this up for the next FOUR YEARS was inconceivable!  Luckily for us, God threw us a bone and we were at a point of near normalcy about two and a half years in!  Near normalcy is all we are going to achieve as there are so many lasting effects of the crap they've been through, and well, our family is nowhere near what anyone would consider normal anyhow :)

So we made it, they are eight!  They are alive and we are alive!  Not only that but we were crazy brave enough to try this again.  God has used the last 4 years to draw both Mike and me so much closer to Him.  We saw how much we needed Him.  He revealed His plans for us so clearly that they could not be denied, and we learned to trust and follow Him.  It has been an amazingly wild ride and I can't wait to see where we are in another four years!

Holland vs. Italy: the tale of parenting a special needs child

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley

"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.
It's like this......When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
 After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland."

Mike and I went to the first night of a six week seminar for parents who have children with emotional, behavioral and/or mental illness issues.  It is put on by NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).  This story was the first thing that was shared.  It struck me in a way I didn't expect.

While listening to this, I heard it from the perspective of the first adoptive parents of children who have gone through a disruption.  They had an idea of what international adoption would look like, feel like and be like.  As it turned out, the true story is that it isn't all a "dream come true".  It's hard.  Parenting a child from a hard place is very hard.  It's exhausting with little to no pay off on your end as the parent.  I'm lucky that my children all have very minor attachment issues and are able to form a loving relationship with me, but a lot of adoptive parents are not so lucky.

The two disruption situations we have been through were vastly different.  The one commonality is that both families also had biological children in the home.  This is not something that I can relate to, since we chose not to have any bio kids in our family, but I have often wondered if adoptive parents who already have bio kids when they adopt expect the feelings they have for their bio kids to be exactly the same for their adopted child.  Maybe that's their Italy.  I'm not saying that that scenario isn't possible, but it has to be different.

A bio kid comes out of the womb knowing no one but you.  They need you, they learn unconditional love from you.  They are protected by you.  When you adopt a child, especially when it's not a newborn, you receive that child along with all of their trauma.  You have to do the work to bond to that child.  It is not automatic.  It's not easy.  You have to learn to love one another.  Our children spend a lot of intentional time on our laps, we fed them at the dinner table when they were 4 & 5 years old.  We look for any kind of interaction we can in order to mimic the kind of bonding that a newborn and a mother would share.

It takes a very long time, it doesn't always work and it can be heartbreaking.  If you have bio kids as well I can understand how this would put so much stress on your relationships with each of them as well as stress on the family as a whole.  This is why I can empathize with families who choose to disrupt.  Even though I do not understand it in most instances, I always try not to judge them.  That has to be one of the hardest decisions of someone's life.  I have to assume that they would only go forward with the disruption if they believed in their heart that it was in the best interest of the child.  This is where my faith in God comes in.  God has plans for all of our lives, and sometimes those plans are messy, but if we trust Him and listen to Him the end result will be a blessing that we could have ever imagined.

Maybe most people like Italy.  It's pretty there, the food is decadent, it's gorgeous and the weather is great.  I happen to love Holland.  I have always lived a bit off of the beaten path and had to be the one swimming upstream, against the current.  Most people can have Italy.  I'll hang out in Holland, where it may be messy, but it's a beautiful mess.

Praising God for a Splinter and Busted Knee

We have had 2 experiences in the last 2 weeks that have been true blessings in disguise.  

I’m sure you would be rejoicing and praising God for a trip to the ER and a splinter lodged in your child’s leg…right?  Stay with me here.

Only about a month after being home with us, Celia was at my mother in law’s house with us and thought it looked like fun to wrap her legs around Grammy’s wood banister and swing around.  This stunt resulted in a big splinter in her thigh.  The main problem with this was that she DID NOT trust us enough to let us remove it.  I was told that if we let her soak in a hot tub, put baking soda on it, (along with many other tips) it would work itself out.  I couldn’t afford to traumatize her in this crucial stage of our bonding, so against my better judgment, I left it in.

You have probably caught on by now that our lives are crazy.  Two weeks passed and I had forgotten about that splinter, she only brought it up after those 2 weeks had passed.  Now it hurt and the skin had healed over top of it.  CRAP!  I went online and searched for a solution that wouldn’t involve breaking the skin, but it wasn’t happening. 

 I had to weigh my options.  The only time we had taken her to the doctor she was terrified.  It was clear that a visit to the doctor’s office was some kind of a trigger for her, so that was out.  I couldn’t risk her fears of the doctor’s office being verified.  I put on my big girl panties, sat her on the kitchen table, put some orajel on the spot and went to work.  Mike sat next to her on one side with her sisters both on the other side.  Not once did we have to hold her down, she trusted me!  I kept taking breaks and kissing her and trying to calm her fears and tears with my words.  I finally made progress and pulled out the biggest splinter I had ever seen in my life!  

 

We all celebrated by eating ice cream (cause let’s be honest, ice cream makes everything better).  I was on a high that she LET me do that!  She didn’t even squirm.  When she said stop, I stopped.  When she was scared she held Mike’s hand.  Her sisters used words of encouragement and rubbed her back.  We not only got that huge splinter out, but we bonded through it!  It was beautiful!

Fast forward 2 weeks.  Apparently Caroline decided that it was time for her to get some one on one time (just kidding) so she bit it while playing tag and jacked up her knee pretty good.  I am one of those “just brush it off” kind of moms, but even I had to admit that it was bad.  So we packed up the healthy, grain free dinner that was nearly finished being prepared, went through the drive through at McDonald’s and headed to the ER.

The other 2 went to their Grammy’s house, so it was just Caroline and me, and I must admit, we had fun.  Yes, you heard that right, we had fun at the ER.  She enjoyed being in a wheelchair.  She got to watch Sam & Kat on Nickelodeon, which she isn’t allowed to watch at home on account of it being the most annoying show on television.  Plus we both agreed that she probably had the cutest doctor in the hospital.  

 

All was good though, the x-ray showed no break.  It was just a bad bruise.  This was only 2 days ago now and since then she has had a couple of episodes where she was in quite a bit of pain.  I’m still not sure if she’s in that much pain or if she has realized that she can get my full and undivided attention, but I have to assume the former.  She is learning that she is my priority, that if something is wrong with her I will drop everything to take care of her.  It has been a wonderful bonding experience for both of us.

When you have children from hard places, children who have been through a kind of hell that you or I could never imagine, the most important, and difficult, value to obtain is trust.  It takes years to undo the harm that other people have done to their young psyches.  It is for this reason I am grateful that God provides us opportunities like these to earn our children’s trust.  If you are an adoptive mama, look for opportunities to use unfortunate or unpleasant situations as a chance to bond.  Silver lining.

Trauma is a Tricky Thing...

“After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.” ― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha 

Charlotte had a counseling appointment scheduled this past Friday.  I called and asked if I could bring Caroline instead.  She hadn't been in a month, because she was doing so well, but she had really started acting out and I knew she needed to talk to Dr. Cynthia. 

When we got there I explained all of the changes that have occurred over the past 3 weeks in our family and how I really think this has affected Caroline.  From what I had observed I could only conclude that she was feeling left out, like she wasn't the "star" of the show anymore, and she was withdrawing.  Caroline has always had an affinity for playing the victim card.  It just came naturally to her after all she's been through in her young  life.  So she went back for an hour to talk.

When they came out the Dr. says "It has nothing to do with her new sister."  "Then what is going on with her?" I asked, surprised.  "It's about Brutus."

Let's rewind about 6 months for those of you who did not have the opportunity to meet our special Brutus and do not know the tragedy of how he left us.  Brutus was a kitten that was discovered with his litter in our church dumpster one Sunday morning after church.  The pastor had just done a message about James 1:27 (Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.) and making room for one more.  Although we already had 3 feline friends in our home, Mike, the rational one, said "let's take him home." 

He was only 3 weeks old and not old enough to be away from his mother, so we bottle fed him for a couple of weeks.  He spent most of his days those first few weeks living in a pack and play in my bedroom.  The twins, who had only been with us less than a year, adored this cat.  They helped take care of him and it was very therapeutic for teaching them empathy.  Brutus was a very special cat.  He let the girls do whatever they wanted with him.  He truly thought he was a human infant.  At that time I was doing in home daycare so Brutus would sleep in the bouncy seat or the swing, and hop up in the high chair for snack time.  He would let the girls push him around in their little shopping cart or the baby doll stroller.

He also loved going outside.  I have always had only indoor cats, but this cat would literally BOLT out the door whenever someone even opened it a crack.  For months we would all chase him, catch him and bring him inside.  Eventually though we realized that he would always come back and paw at the door when he wanted in.  So we let him have his outdoor adventures.

 
One day this past summer Brutus went out for his daily playtime.  We were all outside playing, I picked him up, snuggled him a little and let him back down to play.  He would follow the kids around outside and play with them.  We were out in the front yard when I heard Caroline scream a scream I had never heard before, and to this day it is burned into my memory.  He ran out into the street and was hit by a car, right in front of Caroline.  If that hadn't been bad enough, she went into the street...picked up his body...and carried up to the house screaming.  He was gone.  She had his blood all over her.  I took him from her and set him down in the grass.  I got her inside, washed her up and the three of us sat on the laundry room floor for an hour and cried.  I held them and just kept saying how sorry I was that this had happened to them.  I had lost my fair share of pets over my lifetime, but NEVER like this.

This cat was Caroline's best friend.  She was traumatized.  When we went to see her counselor she said that it was not developmentally appropriate for her to be able to go and pick him up like that.  Most adults (including myself) couldn't even have done that.  She said that just shows how much trauma she has already experienced in her little life.

I kept asking myself, why would God have this happen?  Why her? What were we to learn from this? Hadn't she been through enough?  From talking with both of the twins about their experiences in Ethiopia, it was apparent that she bore the brunt of the abuse in the orphanage, so why traumatize her all over again? To make it 10 times worse, she was convinced that his death was her fault, and I understood as I was feeling the same way.  Why didn't I put him inside when I was holding him?  It broke my heart.

Then someone from church pointed out to me that now she can experience trauma in a manner that is safe and healthy.  She can experience being surrounded by loving and supportive people who will help her heal from this.  This time she can learn how to cope.  So, we coped, as best we knew how.

She was a wreck for a couple of months.  We went to counseling, had visits from therapy dogs and adjusted her meds, all seemed to help.  We hadn't had any issues until...we got out the Christmas decorations.  There was Brutus' stocking.  That old wound broke wide open.  Being an internalizer I had no idea how much it was affecting her and how much she was still beating herself up over it.

I now realized that just because I have healed from the loss of Brutus, she had not.  We will need to keep revisiting this issue over and over again.  I won't always be able to predict what's going to trigger this trauma.  We have had a couple of nights since then where I have just held her as she sobs about her kitty.  We pray, hard.  I ask that God wrap His arms around this child and let her feel His peace.  I ask Him to help her trust His plans for her, especially when they don't make sense.  I ask Him to give Mike and me the patience and compassion to get her through this.

I have been fortunate enough in my privileged life not to have experienced anything even remotely like what this little child has been through already at the age of 7.  I have learned so much about trauma.  It's a tricky thing.  I don't know what will trigger it or when. I don't know if her heart will ever fully heal from these wounds.  All I know is that she hurts and there's not a whole lot I can do about it except love her and hope that's enough.

A Secondary Blessing...Josh

So by now you are all familiar with the insane blessing we have received in the last 2 weeks in our new daughter Celia.  What you may not have heard about is the secondary blessing that has come from our family listening to God, and his name is Josh.

This journey all began when Mike and I saw Josh's picture on a Facebook page of an adoption agency that specialized in resolving adoption disruptions.  I found their page about a year ago and have been following all of their posts since then of children who were looking for a new placement.  Josh's picture came across my computer on Sept. 10th, 2013.  He was 5 years old, Ethiopian, and his family was choosing to disrupt his adoption.  I looked at Mike and said "Well, we say that this is what we are looking for.  It's literally in our laps, so what are we going to do about it?".  I emailed his social worker that night to get more information.  We emailed back and forth a few times and I got more information with each message.  We were ready to begin our homestudy and move forward with pursuing him...until I suddenly got a feeling in the pit of my stomach that he wasn't our son.

I felt so guilty about feeling this way.  If we didn't move forward with him, then who would?  He had some issues that we had dealt with before, we could handle this, but it would scare off most (sane) people.

 I decided to share his story on our regional FB page for families with Ethiopian children in the hopes that I could maybe help find him a family (I knew this was a LONG SHOT).  Within hours of me posting this I got a call from my friend Jamie.  "Tell me about disruptions." she said.  She had experience in international adoption and parenting kids from hard places, but not in disruption.  We talked for a very long time.  As it turned out, Jamie and her husband had already began the process for adopting a child internationally through the VERY SAME AGENCY that was handling Josh's case!!  GOD IS GOOD!!  This meant they had already paid their agency fees and already had a homestudy completed with them!

They moved forward with his adoption and put their plans of adopting internationally on hold for the time being.  They brought Josh home the same week we brought Celia home!  We even had out first social worker visit through the courts on the same night!

Josh is the one with his tongue sticking out ;)

Our family prayed hard for this little guy, every night.  I know now why I had that feeling in my gut.  He wasn't my son...he was Jamie's.  My favorite part of this story (selfishly) is that our family will now be able to get to know this boy, we will be at the same Christmas parties, the same summer picnic year after year.

I am honored at how God used allowed our family to play a small role in their family's story.