A Time To Mourn.

My Dad in an email shared with me how he feels we his children have overcome our grief and mourning more quickly.

I wonder if he is correct in his thinking have I recovered quickly? Daily I face moments when I realize my mom is not here to tell this or that story too. It hits me like an arrow to my heart, I'm saddened by my loss.  Dad hates that term loss; yet for me it perfectly describes my feelings. It's a loss for me. Mom is not lost, and I'm not lost in the sense of "I have lost my way," but I am being deprived of my relationship with her and that is loss.

I was annoyed with Amy Carmichael when I read she insisted on the funeral marches in India be happy occasions full of joy. I could see her point to be a witness to those around her but in what way did that help her and her compatriots mourn the loss of their friend?

How can I sit down and say "But Dad it is a loss..."  I'm not starting that discussion, because I don't see him in that place. It's better to just listen and let him express his emotions. Funny how so many of my thoughts are so very different, sometimes even opposite of his. Maybe I'm finally learning tact? Oh wait I'm posting it on a blog so maybe not.  

When I'm driving and it hits me, I can't take the time to cry it out. I thought I would be able to take time to grieve at my friends house which I did but it was a small window.  I have children, I have responsibilities that draw me into the world, that pull me out of my grief. My friend was in such a great need of help that I just threw myself into as much work of helping as I could and like in the line of that great Jane Austen movie Persuasion,  "How can I be melancholy? When you have come to visit?" I hope I got that right. So much to talk about; 5 years of catching up to do and plenty of weeds to pull.

Of course my choosing to work instead of cry could be denial and it will hit me when I least expect it. I do know mom was not a "daily" part of my life before. I would hoard up things to tell her in our marathon phone calls. We lived 1300 miles away.  Yet I knew if I needed her advice or a recipe I could call her. It is that aspect of our relationship I miss.

There are other parts that I don't miss, at one point in my life I sat down and wrote myself a list of do's and don'ts for my relationship with mom. It really helped me set up healthy boundaries with her and I grew as a person. I would love to talk about that and walk through that aspect of my life, but not with my father. He doesn't see it in the same way that I do, nor do I expect him to. He will always hold a parental point of view. So I suppose to him I look like I'm over it.  In some ways I am and in others I'm not, I still get ambushed by my emotions.

I have lived with grief for so long. It is something I think people miss when one shares about infertility. When you go to adopt a child they make you take a long hard look at your grief, because if it's ignored it can cause so many issues in the adoptive family.  Maybe that is why I don't show it as much. Grief over all the children I never got to hold in my arms, the kick I never felt in my belly, has been a long term companion, yet it has been practically ignored by those around me. For me infertility equates tremendous loss, the death of all of my children by reading a paper with test results on it.  I would get funny looks if I burst into tears over my infertility. I mean come on, "you can just adopt", Or "God has a better plan for your life." "You are supposed to be married but without the encumbrances of children." The things people said you would not believe. My grief became very private shared with only a trusted few.

After mom's death I tried once to explain how I felt to dad,  about how infertility and grief is linked, and my experiences with the process of loss. He pretty much shut me down immediately, in no way can I compare the loss of children I have never known to his life with mom. So I guess he is right I can't know the depth of his love for her and sadly he cannot know the depth of my grief for my un-conceived children.

His pain is so real and raw and my pain is a re-healing wound.  I have felt this pain before, I know I can live with it, and because God is faithful, I know I will still have joy. If it bleeds I will let it, but at this point I'm not picking at the scab.

Can you hear the anguish in my voice?

This is my response to a plea for prayer for disrupted adoptions. Which I agree we do need to pray for these terrible situations where the these wonderful children get "returned" and wounded even more deeply. My heart breaks for them.

Many adoptive parents get a bad bad bad case of "It won't happen to me." Or " I Have been a parent I don't need your training."  When given training or books to read, or new ideas to accept, they balk because "Adoption Should NOT be this HARD!" Which I have said many many times.
A child is placed and after its "official" the child difficulties grow exponentially.

I'm just going to tell it like it is, overall the church in America is judgemental and un-supportive. When faced with a adoptive parent in crises they judge or drift away.  When an adoptive parent tries all the "tried an true" methods of acceptable parenting... they don't work. When they reach out for help, they are viewed  as odd, over protective, or to harsh, and weird. We are often rejected not only by the outside world but also by friends and family. Thank God above not my family.  As the support for their family, their person, their faith crumbles about them... they feel like total and abject failures, and they look like failures from the outside too!   They are failing and they have no idea why!

 The more they try to love or correct the child the harder it gets. Social workers are limited, they are often overwhelmed with other cases and leave adoptive parents hanging in the wind. Your done, your on your own, once the child is placed and officially adopted the support for the family is often just no longer available. Not to mention the shame factor in all of this. Think about how much gumption it takes to reach out and seek help in the first place. Sacrificing pride and having to say this is a mess and I need help. When you often hear... "What you have problems?? but I thought the child should be grateful to have a family!" 

Finding a therapist that can help and see the issues from the perspective of "This is a traumatized child", NOT "This a parenting/family issue" is also extremely difficult.  Especially when the parents may not even realize that Trauma is what is truly the underlying issue. So even those that seek therapy just dig the hole deeper the more they try to help the worse it gets.

Can you hear the anguish in my voice? I have been in those places where life is so hard, nothing works. I have cried out for help and heard crickets from the church, and watched my friends drift away or become uncomfortable.  My family on the other hand was super supportive and kept telling me to stick with it, find an answer, keep pursuing the best for your family. I remember Karen S. coming to me in a day of need because God told her to. That support gave me hope and the desire to continue.  But what about families that hear "That child is pulling apart your family." "The child is the problem." "What have you gotten yourself into?" "I could never do what you are doing, I have no idea how you manage. I would have given up." "Don't you worry about the safety of your other/birth children." "Why are your bothering?" "Maybe they should be in an institution, since you can't handle them." Or my personal favorite "You know how hard this adoption stuff is and your doing it again?"   And yes some of these have been spoken to me directly, some have been spoken to dear friends of mine.

Having found Tapestry, Karen Purvis, TBRI Parenting and learned way more than I ever wanted to learn about sensory processing and the brain. We found hope and began to succeed, to connect with our "trauma" child. To see her heal and grow and thrive. Thank the Lord for supportive family, GFA, and the friends who listened and supported instead of running away because the situation looked awful.
Lately each week I'm with a set of like minded adoptive parents that...

•  Realize the tool box for disciplining a adoptive child is much much smaller than a birth child.  
• A group that realizes "normal" family life for your birth family is not "normal" in our adoptive family. 
• A group that realizes that what looks like defiance and rebellion may be a sensory issue creating a fear response. 
• A group that realizes a child's trauma and history may defines that child's reaction in any interaction. If you fail to remember it or are unaware of it chaos ensues. 

Having this support helps me stick with techniques that look like I'm rewarding bad behavior, and thus am I judged... When in reality I'm having compassion on my child or just feeding a need that causes the fear (and the bad behavior) to disappear. Personally I'd rather be judged by the world/church on my weird odd parenting and have a kidlet that connects to me. Than loose my child when they turn 18 because I cared more about how the world sees me, than I did about my relationship with my child.

Lets also think for a moment and realize it is more than just the parents, the traumatized children, or the system. Your reaction as the body of Christ does matter.  Take some time to pray also for:

• Families in crises, parents and children that are swamped, overwhelmed, hurting.  
• Parents that do not want to return their dream, their child but are so lost and hurt they see no other option for their life. 
• Children who have been disrupted and have lost hope. 
• Pray for those parents who are hanging on, as their world crumbles and support drifts away. 
• The OT, PT, Speech Therapists and Pediatricians that spot and identify sensory processing issues and help these children to heal. 
• For Karyn Purvis and David Cross as they chart the course of these new techniques that work!! 
• Pray for parents sticking it out, that they can bring their children to a place of felt safety and true healing. 

Looking Back to Move Forward.

This weeks TBRI homework was watching an awesome DVD on attachment. As per usual it's another fantastic video on how we can help ourselves, help our children.  Sadly it involves looking inward and sorting through your junk history.   I took heart when the author of The Whole Brained Child talked about how when we choose to process our memories step back and really examine them. As opposed to wallowing in them. 

When we process our "stuff, baggage, history" we actually change the nuro pathways in our brain! I wonder if that is why after a while if we deal with our grief the grief becomes less.  For example, when my grandma died last October if I thought about her I would burst into tears. This went on for weeks, but I blogged, I talked to my friends, I remembered her with my family. All those activities allowed me to identify my feelings in a healthy way, with people who I trusted and loved.  Each time I walked through that grief it got less raw, less painful, less overwhelming.  I bet that was the incredible amazing brain God gave me pruning and messing with my nuro pathways to move me from grief to acceptance.

These last few weeks I've been able to really look back at my attachment style, sort through my history and see wow I don't think I have ever really dealt with "not putting away the hose".  I can see I have horrible guilt buried deep down I have not processed. Just so you know "not putting away that hose" sent some one to the hospital and plastic surgery was needed. I know I have been granted forgiveness for that act, but I never put in the work to process it. Just thinking about it brings so much emotion to the surface. I realize I need to process this, think about it rationally pick it a part and remind myself. I am forgiven and I have been forgiven for a very long time. Knowing that each time I go through that memory those feelings that the horribleness will start to dissipate and I can truly own that forgiveness that was granted. Just think; writing this blog helped me prune a few of those raw synapses that I need to process through.

Its never fun to dig down and examine ourselves in fact Karyn Purvis and David Cross both said this is hard work, It's not going to be fun, but it will make you a better parent, it will release things inside of you that is holding you back from a great relationship with your child and people around you.