In this post I revisited National Adoption Month, sighting adoption as an option for children in foster care.
I was a disappointment, incorrigible, ungrateful, unappreciative, needy, defective, and generally hopeless, a throw away kid…written off and thrown away at 11.
What do I have to say about attachment? I am not an adoptee. Nor am I an adoptive parent. Me? I’m just a former foster child and the daughter of a former foster child/adoptee. I think I may have a thing or two to say about attachment.
Not one of these say thank you for:
Being there sometimes
For abandoning me when the only thing I need was a parent
For my 7 years in foster care
Visiting me when you didn’t have better things to do
Putting your wants before your children’s needs
Looking out for Number One
For making us number 2, 3, and 4
Occasionally sacrificing a little, as long as it was not too inconvenient, or make you too uncomfortable
Nope, not one of them…I know, I checked.
While we are all getting ready for this Mothers’ Day weekend and debate what makes one and who is a “real” mother, who we may or may not honor, what qualifies one as “The Bestest Mommy EVER!” Let us not forget that across this very country thousands of kids will wake up this Sunday in institutions and in the homes of strangers, and the recipients of their homemade mothers’ day cards and presents will be those temporary guardians or no one at all.
I am with Kristen on this one:
When it comes to issues of motherhood, there is one issue I care about: some kids don’t have one. All of these petty wars about the choices of capable, loving mothers is just a lot of white noise to me, Quite honestly, I’m often astonished at the non-essential parenting issues I see moms getting their panties in a wad about. Particularly when there are so many kids in this world not being parented at all.
I’ll whine about how, when we called our Christian agency about a healthy African American boy from LA county who was in need of a home, we were told that they had no prospective adoptive parents willing to accept a placement of a black child. NOT ONE.
I’ll get behind complaining about how the government renames orphans and calls them "wards of the state", and renames orphanages and calls them "group homes", and how we collectively turn a blind eye to the fact that we have hundreds of thousands of children waiting for families in the US.
Let’s stop quibbling about what competent mothers are choosing for their kids, and step it up for the kids that don’t have one.
Please go read the whole thing:Kristen Howerton Rage Against The Minivan
Where Is The Mommy War For The Motherless Child?
I read this personal narrative by Jesus Montes (16 years old) over at Cindy’s blog Saturday morning, over breakfast…and since Saturday, been at a loss for words.
Please go read it! I mean it PLEASE GO READ IT!
For 10 years Jesus has been able to wake up in the same bed every morning.
For 10 years Jesus has not been hungry.
For 10 years Jesus has been able to have a school, a community and an advocate.
10 years in the same place is huge, for those of us how have had to stuff everything we own into trash bags and move on time and time again…we know.
The fact is that there will always be kids like Jesus…Always.
And those kids we need to continue to speak up, for those kids we need to fight for openness and honesty, for those kids we need to tell our stories. We owe it to them.
And whether Jesus, grows up one day to be an outspoken happy grateful adoptee or a reformer, I hope we can all respect him, and his story…
Because there will always be kids like Jesus…
Always.
I originally posted this comment over on I Was A Foster Kid and I decided to repost it here, because I think it is another example of how kids with trauma backgrounds view and see the would so differently from the adults who are attempting to help them.
Seriously good question LT. I also wonder if in many circumstances, if the immersion of a child in a religion that they do not have a history with…talk of good and bad, sin and sinners, heaven and hell, eternal damnation the “righteous” and so forth isn’t very scary for kids from trauma, whom at their core feel a deep unwavering sense of shame.
I had an experience when one of our staff packed us up took us to her church, they took us all aside, prayed over us, told us we had to be saved, and accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior and be baptized in his name or we and our souls would be damned for eternity. I was freaked the fnck out. And they were not gonna stop until we got dumped in the tank…so completely out of fear, and discomfort…I “accepted Jesus,” and was baptized in his name…so I got that covered. I loved that staff, still remember her very fondly [I believe she honestly meant well]…but that was some scary stuff for me. As a matter of fact that whole experience precipitated a huge back slide and the rest of the staff was pretty pissed about the whole thing. Seriously it was very traumatizing.
Anyhow, I think people who deal with kids from trauma have to remember that they do not process things the same way as they do. One person’s source comfort could be another’s source of terror.
Today I got to actually use my own computer for a minute to log on to FaceBook (as opposed to my phone), and what do you know but the fact that it was Wayne’s 60th birthday was displayed up there with my notifications. I clicked over to his profile to peck out a quick “happy birthday” on this wall, as we are all so accustomed to do these days.
And the moment my curser started to blink in that little box, the tears started to flow.
What do you say when happy birthday in 420 characters or less could never do it justice?
When I had met Wayne I had already been institutionalized for a year, and I had missed most of my schooling the 2 years before that. He was a bright eyed idealistic hippie-ish grad student at the U of M. I mean he a tall and lanky, scruffy faces, shaggy hair Birkenstock wearing, tie-dye sporting, health food-eating true epitome Ann Arbor’s native son. He ran/taught our agency’s “In House School,” at the time a classroom setup in the basement of the house I lived in.
When kids would come into placement from any of the houses in our agency they would be assessed academically and an individual education plan would be made. A kid might be schooled “in house” all day, go to their resident’s public school or some combination of both.
I attended to local middle school/jr. high in the morning and walked home for the second half of my day, usually to find Wayne up-stairs on our living room couch eating a bowl or plate of leftover god-knows-what, that he had brought to for lunch from his co-op or commune, or whatever the heck that place he lived was. He’d eagerly offer us kids a bite,
wanna try it?
oh…err…um…nope…not…on…your…life…I…don’t…but, yeah… thanks bunches.
I hadn’t moved at all in math since fourth grade when we had to memorize our times tables and had to be able do them all however many in however many seconds on timed tests, I wouldn’t I couldn’t, doesn’t matter ‘cause I still can’t but was not going to be taught anything else until I did. To which Wayne just shrugged his shoulders and said something like,
Meh, life would probably be easier if you could, but whatever… here I got you this algebra I book from the high school, why don’t you not worry about memorizing those times tables and try this.
Well, I did, I got it and I was over the moon.
I had always been a SLOW reader…I mean SLOW. Reading took a lot of effort. I was humiliated time and time again each time a teacher called on me to read aloud to the class. I was extremely avoidant about reading for school …again, I was held back. Again, good old Wayne wasn’t having any of it. He got me text books and novels ABOVE grade level, because 1. That was where I had tested in comprehension and 2. If reading was going to be such an arduous task I may as well be engaged, interested and actually learning something for all the effort. Crazy I tell you!
I learned the love of the newspaper on the front porch of South Seventh House, in our lunch time class, called, “Current Events.” I think that might have been code for, hows-about-you-stop-talking-long-enough-so-i-can-eat-then-you-can-blather-on-and-on-about-something-I-may-actually-find-interesting-when-i-am-done-okay? Win, win.
Wayne made me write papers, or rather he sweetly suggested that I might maybe like to write papers and I am sure I rather sarcastically, assured him that I would rather not but I did anyway. I’d hand them back and he’d say,
Great paper, good content! Amazing, somehow you have managed to spell, “Because” four different ways in the same paper, and not one correctly. Girl, you got some skills…NOBODY else could pull that one off.
Wayne made me my own cozy little study area in that basement, away from the classroom. I had a desk and a bean bag chair next to the washer and dryer, not as a punishment, not because I was disruptive to the other kids. Nope, not as I remember it. He moved me, because the other kids were disturbing TO ME. Imagine that! I couldn’t focus or concentrate AND keep track of what everyone around me was doing.
He has move on, to much bigger and better things since his one room schoolhouse teaching days, (two if you count my laundry room). He has had the opportunity to test and evaluate and come up with Individualized Education Plans for many, many more kids. When I remember how he used to let all of us kids pile into the back of his pick-up to take us on field trips, to a game, the park, or out for ice-cream I realize not only how very long ago that was (can you imagine anyone doing that today?), but how very lucky those of who knew Wayne back when, and got him hands-on in the classroom were to have him to ourselves.
Wayne taught me:
Learning disabled dose not equal stupid.
Creative spelling is high art.
When one thing isn’t working, it is ok to try something else.
Learning is not linear, it happens in concentric circles.
The way it is usually done, isn’t the only way it can be done.
Struggle doesn’t feel like struggle when you have a good cheering section.
Never let what you don’t like keep you from doing the things you love.
And a whole host of other things that I could go on about all day and night…
Any way today is Wayne’s 60th birthday and all I did to celebrate was write this lousy blog post.
Every child deserve to have a Wayne. Did you have one?
I do not talk/write about my story for sympathy, or vengeance. I tell my story so that I may understand and so that others who wish to hear may gain some understanding as well.
When I had met Mr. Sunday, I was 22 or 23 years old. Finally the fireworks display that was the adolescent brain had subsided and I was pretty much left only having to wrestle with my leftover anxiety, depression and PTSD, from years of living in the foster care system. Yea me!
I had aged out of foster care, I had been homeless, lived the thug life, been quite the party girl, I had destroyed relationships, and many times I had come close to destroying myself. By that time I had hitchhiked across the country several times. Something would happen, I’d screw-up, whatever…I would just throw everything I could carry in a trash bag and I would get the hell out of Dodge, just like I had lived out so many times throughout my childhood. I didn’t know it then but I realize it now, “the adrenaline made me do it.” No kidding, that Fight or Flight thing is no, joke!
Anyway, there I was with my new fairly matured neurological wiring, because I somehow miraculously managed to survive through adolescence into young adulthood. I had met Mr. Sunday. Let me tell you, he was nothing I ever thought I wanted in a man or anyone. When you have had a traumatic childhood, spent half of your life living as a ward of the state, you get to live with 6, 12, 24 unique, interesting sometimes very troubled individuals…you get used to dealing with high octane and drama. Mr. Sunday is the antithesis of drama. I have no idea what possessed me to even stop to give him the time of day, because there was nothing familiar or that felt like my dysfunctional home about him whatsoever. Yet, being that there was nothing in common about us, being totally different from each other as any two people could seem to be, somehow we managed to feel at very much at home together.
Mr. Sunday is (was) the calmest person on the planet. He has manage to exist in a level of calm even many a hard core stoner would be envious of…naturally. I mean, steady Freddie, even keel, just Zen… All. The. Time. And here the poor schlep had the dumb luck of falling in love with a trauma-brain girl. My natural calm would register on the national threat warning system as a solid orange, and his would be off the charts at a cool blue at his most stressed.
“Mr. Sunday, Mr. Sunday! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
Mr. Sunday would peer up from is book or newspaper, look at the tiny chunk of sky. He would examine it, turn it over, examine it some more. He would give me a thoughtfully look and say,
“Yep, that sure looks piece of sky alright.”
Being a trauma-brain girl and all, I’d jump around and say,
“But Mr. Sunday that is a piece of SKY, IT FELL! We’re screwed!”
Thoughtfully Mr. Sunday would say again, “yep, that IS sky.”
Confused, still dancing around, I’d say,
“BUT Mr. Sunday, we have to DO something! The SKY IS FALLING. I am FREAKING –THE-FUCK-OUT HERE and I have all of this adrenaline and stuff, and it is telling me I have to DO SOMETHING before everything else come crashing down and the world turns to shit. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!”
Mr. Sunday would take a deep breathe, look me in the eye and say,
“Yep, that IS a PIECE of the SKY. I get it. IT DID FALL I see that. The chances of more of the sky falling, let alone in this exact spot are ASTRONOMICAL, I assure you. Feel free to jump and dance around if that is what you need to do, but I am going sit her and finish reading this, I’ll be right here when you are done.”
Let me tell you there is nothing that sucks the life out an adrenaline induced doomsday dance of escalation like not having a partner willing to join in. Pop, fizzle, pop.
It has taken years, I tell ya. YEARS! Mr. Sunday modeled calm, exuded patience. Through every test, and test I have, life has, he has loved me for who I am, trauma-brain and all. He stood true to himself and his reality that fear is an illusion, that nothing so bad; that it can’t be overcome will ever really happen. Slowly but slowly those mirror neurons I mentioned, in my amped-up trauma-brain have learned to reflect his calm non-trauma brain more and more. His mirror neurons have rejected and refused to mold to my whole the sky is falling trauma-drama-brain way of thinking, I was so freely sharing. And that is the biggest gift I have ever been given. It has taken a lot of time for me to get where I am today. I am still not perfect, I still get angry, I still occasionally lash out, I still feel compelled to act, and I still get triggered, I still have times I struggle. I am not nor will I ever be the same slave to adrenaline overload I used to be…not even close.
Let me say, I do realize that poor Mr. Sunday took a lot of shit…lots. It wasn’t fair that he was tested and tested and then tested some more. There were times when he was just so damn nice I was sure I would have to leave him, because obviously he was some bazaar-o freak of nature and I couldn’t stand it anymore. And beyond any shadow of a doubt, I know it couldn’t have been nearly as easy as he made it look.
In the end: Fear begets more fear. Calm begets calm. Peace begets peace. Love begets love.
If you love someone who is surviving trauma and you are having a hard time being that model of patience, that mirror of calm…don’t beat yourself up. Living with constant fearful instinct driven reactionary behavior is not fun. Maybe you are feeling fearful and reactionary yourself, struggling to BE the behavior you want to see. That wouldn’t be surprising, trauma is tough stuff, and us trauma survivors know how to put those who love us through the paces. Put your on your oxygen mask, grab a good book and be there when it is all said and done.
Check out the EFT teleconference for mothers Lisa from Life in a Grateful House put together…who knows maybe you find your inner Mr. Sunday or Lisa, or Claudia, or Christine or maybe even the inner you, you forgot you are.
If you are a fellow foster care alumni, adoptee, trauma survivor, child of an alcoholic/drug addict, whatever who is looking to relieve the stress of triggers check out this special EFT video, just for folks like us.
