Tattoo You

Ok...me.

That's right, once again I have stepped into my own personal quicksand and emotional bear trap.
I was joking with a girlfriend that I need to tattoo this on my forehead, so I'll see it every single time I brush my teeth:

It's not about me.

Right here.  That's where it needs to go...

Yuh...see, because, it always so is, I make it so (Just like Jean Luc Picard! But not so elegantly. Not near....).  And, yeah, by posting I'm continuing the cycle..I know I know...you see how I get stuck?!
But I need to remember it, chant it, memorize, do homeschool copy work:

it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me it's not about me its not about me its not about me its not about me...

Anyhow, you get the idea.  One of my favorite mama trauma bloggers had a post all too similar up like this, except hers really wasn't about her, it was about someone else who was terrific and a link to their post.  I am sure I've stolen it in some lesser form out of my tortured memory today....See, still, not good.  Go read her blog tho, if you want insight or profundity or just a breather from some of the tough time in parenting land....

Because, no, it's not about me.  So if it's not....why can't I step out of it all, parent more SIMPLY, take the breather that the concept offers...and stop the hard and hurt of it all on the bad days? Parent the behavior and not the emotions.
Why can't I just let go?
Simple huh?
Apparently...not so much.

Tattoos....looking better all the time.

When rain is just wet

This travel blog photo's source is TravelPod page: Gob smacked in Lalibella

 I have written before about "marking the good," especially when you are parenting a kid from hard places and with attachment issues; heck anytime, really.  If you are parenting teens or tweens or many or special ones, ya better try to remember to mark the good.

One of my heroes and blog friend Lisa has recently had a few posts about what has worked and the positive changes.  Go there and be encouraged!  It got me thinking, and reminded me to look again (Yes, we moms have to remind ourselves to do that some days.  Ok, me.) for those positive changes instead of merely looking at the crowded to-do list.   Therefore, as spring is upon us (hooray!), I want to mark a good that is ever so timely:

Rain.

Yup, it's raining again.  Not snow, anymore, thank goodness.  Spring is upon us. Which means we have entered the rainy season; which in my neck of the woods means downpours and crashing storms, tornadoes, hail, straight line winds, and just a whole lotta water.
It's been awhile since we've had a bunch of rain, and I kinda....forgot.
I forgot about how Marta reacts to rain.
I think I mighta just boxed the whole thing up and set it away in denial.
Because for this particular girl, rain is a big trigger.
It is a trigger to a whole trauma cascade reaction.

Rain in Addis. Rachel Landman, Under African Skies blog

Last rainy season, Marti had only been home a little over six months, ok, eight to be precise (yes, I was counting....).  We had experienced a few rainstorms the first few months she was home, and they always put her into a sad mood and she became very out of sorts and anxious, often angry.
But last spring, as we entered the rainy season, we hit a whole new level.  Marta has loss from cars in the rain, her father.  This is a loss, huge of course, that perhaps wasn't fully grieved, I don't know.  But the onset of rain here made it all come gushing forth in it's own short-looped torrent.
Every time it rained last spring, without fail, it also rained a talking loop that continued for the duration of the storm.  This was a very hard downward spiral for her, and all we/I could do was listen.  Again. And again.  And say small comforting words or sounds, be there, and listen some more.  The need seems to be to say it, out loud, to be heard. I don't know how many times, or how many times were or are needed.  But, the need was relentless and unleashed with the rain. Much the same way as the rain fell, so did this torrent of words and sad. 
We had rainstorms and sad storms.

And now it is raining again.
But, and this is huge: it seems her clouds are clearing.
She has spoken of "Ethiopia, rain, very bad, hard, car die."
But, she also has spoken, more, of "Rain nice. No snow. Flowers good. School ok."

It seems her sad storms are healing a bit.
Because, so far, this spring, rain is just wet.
Rain is not a trigger to spiral cascade of unbearable grief.
The memories surely arise, how can they not?
But I rejoice to see this and pause to give her a big grin and hug.
Because this year, now, she can laugh that her puppy HATES to go out in the rain and shivers and shakes and balks.  She scolds her pup and rubs her off with a towel, laughing.
We can talk about hair and rain and oh my goodness crazy mess.
She mentioned cars and the rain, once so far.  But then moved on after a hug.
Because now, maybe my girl can see too, progress.
Rain doesn't have to be scary or freezing sadness. 
Maybe it is now ok for her to feel it: rain is just wet.

So I'm finding the galoshes, and marking the good.

Turn-Keys: Prayer

I've written a number of posts on turn-keys in adoption. {Enough of them that if you want to go back and check them out (and please do!)  it's probably easiest to do a search on the phrase "turn key." }
Here is another one that I've been thinking about for awhile but have hesitated to post because many of you will scoff or immediately click away.  It's not out of character for me and for this little blog but it's not always a popular subject.  But, regardless, it's integral to me, this blog, and this post.

So, here goes:
This turn-key is about prayer.
If you are parenting a kid from hard places, or an older child new-ish to your family, or yes of course, any of your kids.....prayer is simply key.  A turn-key.  Perhaps THE turn-key.
But it's not nearly so pat or simple as you might presume.

I think prayer works as a super skeleton turn-key in that it unlocks that attachment in both directions.  Read that again.  Prayer helps the bonding and attachment and healing, in both, or all directions.
No surprise that, eh?

I prayed novenas to bring our Marta home.
I prayed novenas after Marta was home to help us grow through those difficult first months.
I prayed the rosary, every day, for over a year, to help bring Marta home - to help her heal from her TB, to help us have the faith and courage to go get her.
I prayed the rosary most days, but not all, after she got home; and am back at it now, more diligently again.
Others, friends and family, have and do pray the rosary then and now, on behalf of our girl, and me.
I don't of this praying of mine to say I'm all that. Because I'm so not, if anything it reflects how low I can go, and how great my need is. Ever.
But I put this out there to say that ALL of these prayers, and the intentional action of doing them, have carried us to this Now.
I can't even begin to imagine trying to undertake this without all that prayer, those rosaries, those novenas, the Mass.
{I should also insert my a declaration of my endless bottomless gratitude for all of you who have prayed on our behalf, you know who you are, and oh, my, thank you and please don't stop!} 

But another important angle in all this is Marta's part in those prayers.
We have had to teach Marta how to pray, these prayers.
Well, we haven't had to teach her, but she wanted to be taught.
Even before she had/has the language sufficient to say the prayers in full, still, she understood immediately that this was prayer that she could do with us.  It was similar enough to some of her Ethiopian Orthodox prayers that she could feel a bit of familiarity.
The Mass worked the same way for her.
Marta, from the first day we met her in Addis, has asked us to go to church, to Mass, to pray.

She asks to pray rosaries with me, with us, even though she still doesn't have all the words down yet.  She asks to go to Mass, every chance she can get (Which is really every day, Mass is a daily event in the Catholic Church, thanks be to God).   She doesn't get to go EVERY day, but she goes every day we can get her there, of her own volition.
Because she sees that we value this, she can hold onto one of the deep values from her life before us.  She can even grow it into deeper faith and understanding, of faith, of family, of what it means to love....and that's just pure gift to us all.

More, when  you pray for someone for a year, or every single day...you cannot help but attach to them, to some degree.  The point of prayer is not that WE transform God's mind, rather it's that the praying transforms our hearts.

 Prayer, praying, and especially praying together, however rudimentary, transforms each of us little by little into a closer image of God.  And as God is love, that is precisely what we need in this hard road of older child adoption and attaching and healing from hard places.
I need to transform my stony heart into God's heart, big enough to love someone, all ones, who cannot love me back, not really.
She needs to learn to open her heart to love and trust this new family, letting God himself in more and more by love.

Praying brings us to common ground.
It's no longer our big old established family and her small tiny new hurting self; it's each of us, opening our heart's to love.
Prayer is the key to that door.
It's a familiar, well worn key....but it's a golden turn-key.
Because that familiarity, that common ground of praying as a family, WITH her, FOR her but with her, has been a huge, gigantic, encompassing tool for her to find her way to us and us to her.

As prayer should, when it's at it's very best, it brings us home.

Turn-keys: Christmas Edition

The christmas key {find it here}, who knew? Cool huh?

So, it's still Christmas.  Which means we are still celebrating, but we are still also working on sidestepping triggers and trying to craft a happy successful holiday.  Today many of my kids head back to school (just over half of them) and I'm reviewing our holiday break.
So I think it's time for an updated turn key post - holiday style.
For another link in a similar vein, go here, to the always wonderful and insightful Thankful Mom.  She inspires me always, and is a good online buddy.  I know we'd chat for days over coffee if only we lived closer!

Anyhow, so this Christmas we had a much better holiday than last year.  Which kind of blows my mind.  Because last  year was so very hard.  It was full of drama and trauma drama triggers and grief and rage and crying and all such things.  We should have expected it, I suppose.  But somehow, even as you are treading water in the new deep end of parenting with kids who have special needs and hard backgrounds...you (or I did) think that the  "magic of Christmas" will carry you through.  Um, not so much.  Instead, what happens is your discombobulated, hypervigilant, disregulated child(ren) only become more so.

All that is to say, this year, we went searching and thinking in advance for some keys to avoid some of those pitfalls.  We are getting slowly smarter, in that we don't expect hopes and wishes to carry us over bumpy ground.  This year we opened up our toolboxes and tried to think in advance.  We lowered our expectations and prayed like mad.  And guess what? We have had a much more successful Christmas holiday! I'm not saying it was perfect, because I'm not crazy or stupid.  But I'm saying, it was better.  I'm saying that we even had some real progress, for which I am terribly grateful.  We all are.  I'm saying, Christmas was full of some subtle but very big gifts.

There were a few keys, turn-keys if you will, to the progress.
One of the keys is a given, it is time.  Simply put, she has been home now 17 months and she has one Christmas under her belt.  It was not all new.  That is huge.  For a hypervigilant kid, to know precisely what is going to happen, when and how is absolutely critical.  It pains me to think how hard last year was for her, knowing her intense need for routine and fear of change.  This year, however, we had something to build on, and that allowed her to relax somewhat and even enjoy bits of the holiday that repeated from last year.  This year she had ornaments that were repeats from last year, and it tickled her to put each of them on the tree....just like the other kids.

Another holiday key was again the scheduling in advance.  We laid out the schedule in advance, the days were clearly marked and spelled out, so she knew exactly what to expect and when.  We had to go over it again and again, but that is standard and so we did.  It helped.  And we piggybacked it on the key of time, reminding her that we did it this way, the same, last year.

We did a lot of direct assignment of tasks.  Giving her tasks that contributed and helped her feel both part of the preparation and also productive.  Sitting around bored is a killer.  Tasks are good, if well considered.

We did a lot of checking in.  Checking in with her as the day(s) went on, with a word of encouragement or praise and a quick hug and smile with connected eyes.  Such simple things, so easy to forget and so critical to the ongoing mood regulation.

Perhaps the biggest best key this year was Christmas specific: gifts.  She got to give every one in the family a gift.  Sounds like an "of course, doh" kind of thing, right?
Not at all.
Stupidly, last year we were all just so overwhelmed by all the changes that we kind of gave a pass to the kids on giving gifts to each other, individually.
I mean, when you have eight kids, that adds up to a huge logistical nightmare of trekking to stores and buying and wrapping and sorting and oh my goodness I start to swoon just typing about it.......
In fact, this year I advocated with my husband for the large-family classic mode of drawing a name between the sibs, one name/one present.  He wisely enough thought about it and said, "No, I think they should all give gifts to each other."  At which point I promptly got a massive migraine.  Then he (again, wisely...he may be many things, but he's not stupid) said, "And I'll take them, I'll be in charge of it."  At which point I promptly gave him a big smooch.
Anyhow, being able to go and pick out a small gift for each member of the family...wrap it, put it under the tree, and then watch it being opened...was just a hugely important thing to her.  No surprise I suppose, it is the joy of giving.  And it enabled her to really participate in Christmas, for the first time in a way that she understood.

So this year, Marta got to get presents but also give them.  And that, perhaps, was the greatest turn-key under our tree this year.  It was the one all fancy, above, that helped us all have a much more relaxed and happy Christmas.  It was a tool and a key, yes, but even more so, it was a gift to us all - literally and figuratively.  It was a key to healing, which is the greatest gift, once again, that any of us can be given.
Attachment only comes, truly, with time and healing and I will gather any and every key I can find to unlock it and bring it closer.  Those keys, they are gifts of gold to me.  They are gifts of family.

Merry Eve of Christmas for a Mom!

Well, we still have much of this holiday to come...
but this Christmas eve, this mom/me just got what might be my best Christmas present, below:

That note?  It is a huge giant step forward for my daughter, my newest one from hard places.
Seems like a typical kid love note.
Nope.
Tomorrow might be hard again.  I hope not.
But even so, I'm marking this.
Because this is big and tonight she was happy enough to write this and hand it to me with a huge grin, ducking her head as she came to hug and kiss me.
It might as well be gold.

It's good.
It's progress.
Which is, of course, the best present of all to us both.
Brought, of course, by a "little" child.....and I've been given the eyes to see and this is Christmas Joy.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Annnnd, Action!

Sounds like I've moved back to LA and am joining the throngs of movie director wannabe's, right?
Not so much. 

 {I fear if I did it would end up like a bizarro Luis Bunuel movie....}

This is a short bit on learning and living with kids; those from hard places and working on learning to live comfortably with new families in new places, but even those kids who are just in the normal hard places of teenager-hood or middle school... heck, really this works for any kid.

But this post isn't really about the kids at all.
It's about the mom, the me.
It's a long steep learning curve and a slippery one at that, for me.  I've been doing this parenting thing for over twenty-one years now...you might well presume I've got it down, pat.
Not so much.

Because I have some very bad habits and personality quirks, the kind that keep knocking  me back when I'm trying my darnedest to move forward.
This is one of the biggies.
I am a "reactor."
I am what we call around here a "high responder."
Yuh.  Me.
I bet you're surprised.
Ok, not so much, I know. 

This tendency of mine can be a very good thing when it's all about the high high's, the high fives, and the parties and the cheering successes.  It can be a very good thing when it's passion and caring and persevering with intensity, like when you are going to bat for your kid.
But it's not so good when you are responding, or reacting, to the other high responders in the house.
Because that is when you need to play against type, and you need to pull back and chill down, slow down.  And then, in that pause that you've just given yourself before you react without thinking, in response to whatever blowing....you get, you need, to act.

Action.
Deliberate, intentional action, is a much better choice, always, than reaction when you are talking about kids who have high responder natures, or buttons.
To act, instead of react, is key.
And if you're like me, you might, just maybe, tend to react in anticipation of the event.
Which of course makes it all doubly difficult.

I am trying, mindfully, {no, really honey, I am} to try to not anticipate, to only act after the fact, and then only to what is actually happening (rather than react to my expansive imagination on the multitude of possibles). 
Sounds really good, doesn't it?
Not so easy though, all this deliberateness.
It's the anticipation of the blow and the immediate visceral reaction that is the hardest to stem, actually.  When I know something is gonna trigger a blowout or a domino reaction snit and attitude, my stomach immediately knots up and my breathing changes.  It's my own trigger.  But I am working on slowing, stopping, and setting the anticipation aside.  Because it's unfair, it's a disservice to whichever child is in mind.  And I am forcing myself to wait, trying trying.  (Another weak skill.) To just wait to see if the anticipated fallout um, falls out...and only then, ONLY then, start dealing with it.  And then, deal with it in an intentional way, not an expanded way, but an intentional action of empathy and logical consequences.

Again, sounds really great, lofty even, huh?
Not so much.
It's a total work in progress.
But progess it is.
And progress I'm seeing, baby baby steps.
Because ya know what? Sometimes, my expectations are left wanting.  That fallout...it doesn't happen, or it is smaller than I imagined.  Not always, but maybe it's getting more of a chance to be so.  Because I'm not escalating it myself in advance.  Ouch. But, I'll take that hit, the ouch, mea culpa....if it means that we can have less drama overall.  Even mine, maybe.

Action.
Not reaction. Not anticipatory reaction.  Just action.  Deliberate.  On time.
What a concept. Awfully challenging.  But, what a concept.

I am her

So I have a jumble of thoughts crowding and pushing around my brain. A tangle of them, if you will.  Which means, once again, I have to type them to sort them out.  But they seem to have some measure of need to be brought to light and examined, here, in this forum; my blog. Maybe so that others can help me understand them more clearly, I'm not sure.  But, here goes and fair warning.

With several of my kids, but especially with my newest to the tribe, it can be hard to connect.  For me.  That doesn't make me proud, in fact in humbles me, embarrases me and shames me; it brings me quite literally to my knees.
I desire to connect.
I desire to feel that squooshy goodness of warm loving feelings, and fierce mama love towards them.
But all too often, many days, it's kind of, um, missing.  And it's all too easy to blame the kid.
This kid. That kid.  Her.
And it's all to easy to say, "She's difficult.  She's so needy.  She's attention seeking, again. She's/he's whining.  She's angry, again, over nothing."  I know, awful, isn't it?? And it's all too easy to harrumph and sigh and throw a quick roll of eyes as I march over to meet the need, once again, resenting this imposition on my activity, my attention, my time.  Me me me.  Yeah, it's not only you who noticed...me.  It's all about me.  Sigh.
But, in a whole 'nother way, that - densely - I am only just being willing to admit: it really is all about me once again.  And not in a good way, if there can EVER be a good way to that (No, there can't.  So in an even worse way).

Ack, see a jumble.  Sorry.  Stay with me.
You see, I realize that all the things that make me most crazed about this girl in particular, ok, any and or all of my kids....are the things that are JUST. LIKE. ME.
Doh.
I know, there's that old adage: "The things you hate most in another person, are your own worst habits." Or something like that, but that's the gist.
Gah.  I hate that!
Truth hurts, eh?

Yeh, this truth hurts....especially when you are trying to bond and grow into love with a young kid from hard places and trauma responses and survival skills.  Those ingrained behaviors that  you think are so foreign to you and your neat tidy family....maybe aren't so much, maybe aren't so foreign after all.  Those annoying behaviors might be just more intensified and or frequented mimics of the very things that you do too, or ok, I do too.
Sigh.
Ouch.
But, think about it.  That might be.
I'm thinking about it.
It is.

I am  her.
I am the same girl who wants to crawl up into my husband's lap after a tough day, and doesn't always like to share that attention.
I am the same girl who wants to make sure someone, maybe lots of someones, know if I'm in a bad mood.  Or very tired.  Or angry.
I am the same girl who wants to make sure the dad sees her hurt leg, and looks at it, and preferably kisses it and hugs her.
I am the same girl who wants to lean against someone if her head hurts.
I am the same girl who gets frustrated and sometimes snitty if she is misunderstood.
I am the same girl who wants to have what she likes for dinner, and will kind of eat less if she doesn't.
I am the same girl who needs a lot of sleep and if I don't get it, might just get frazzled the next day and sigh and fuss and roll her eyes at reasonable requests.
I am the same girl who can cry when just so frazzled, when it's too much and she's past the point of coping.
I am the same girl who can be hypervigilant, because she wants to control....everything.
I am the same girl who wants desperately to be understood, and to understand, especially when she isn't.

I might not use my skills for manipulation (which, if I say so myself, are rather impressive), so much anymore; but I'm older and I don't really need those skills because I'm in charge and call most of the shots.
I might be able to withstand most discomfort now, but I'm older and have learned that most things pass.
I might be able to tolerate annoying sounds or people, for a little longer anyhow, because I have loved them from babyhood.
I might be able to trust because I know these people intimately; through and through over so many years (Heck, I can know what they will do many times before they do).

So, this is all to say....it humbles me that the very one that I fuss about because I am slow to connect....she is me.  I am her.
I don't know whether this means I need to forgive myself for these traits, or her.  Or both of us.
Because I certainly want to be loved and believe I am lovable.
Isn't it only fair that she does and is too?

I can only guess that, once again, God gave me this child, this one, so that I can learn to love better.
And I pray, every day, to be able to love better, more truly, less selfishly.

God gives me extra lessons, because I am such a hard case, a slow learner, and my selfish heart needs to see the hard truth:  

I am not so loveable, so much of the time.
I am sure I make so many crazy, sorry Tom, kids.
But, if I claim that love....so can she.


Because I am her.
She is me.
She has the same stake, the same claim.
We gave it to her.
God gave it to her.
She deserves it as much as anyone, certainly as much as me.
I daresay more so.

Mark the good, belated redux

I've written before about "marking the good."
I think it's an important thing to do, and it's one I too often fail to do, either here in this forum or, truly, in my own chatter and mind.
It's oh so much too easy to only see or remember the bad, the hard, the challenge.
And, it's probably my inborn gripey moody nature to do so.

But I think it's worth trying to step over and beyond our complacent habits of being and doing...especially when it comes to being able to see the good that surrounds us.
Because, really, if we blink we might miss it.
Especially when you are talking about the good in older child adoption adjustment and/or kids with difficult needs or special needs and/or attachment and/or grief/trauma issues.
Just in that sentence alone, as you can see, the bad can easily sink the good.

So, I want to go on the record that over this last weekend of Thanksgiving holiday, we had some good. Some good to mark.
Some good to give hope - certainly to me, but also, maybe, to any other mom who is doing the day in day out work of adjusting and theraputic parenting and such.  This mom encourages me all the time in her blog, go see, she is of the same mind this week: mark the good, note the progress. I wish I lived closer to her and could hang out over coffee and shortbread cookies....

Anyhow, back to the good, noticing and marking...
These things weren't glaring or obvious trumpeted things.
As usual, they were subtle moments, or, more even, they were an absence of tough and a presence of um, kinda normal.
 Read that again, there was more time without drama.
There was a sort of calm coping. Or "undrama," if  you will.
Yes, I just made that word up, because somehow, it relates to the trauma drama that can be a pervasive silent ghostly but tangible enough cloudiness in a  house.  "Undrama" is the hoped for flip or even a passing by on a tricky weekend.

Anyhow, as I was saying, or want to say....this past weekend had much craziness built in to the festivities: guests, extra guests, boys home from college, no school, big cooking and house prep, schedules whacked out.

 (homey buffet, but it was the requested fav's of the college boys, so we ran with it...

because being HOME was the point of the weekend in many ways)

 I wrote about it here, and hoped that it some advance prep would help.
Well, it did!!
Not to say that everything was perfect or that this was the only reason, but overall, we had an ok, kinda normal level of behavior weekend.  Which, considering the potential, is amazing.
Amazing.
Now, we also worked hard on keeping coping methods in the forefront and this one child in particular on radar (though not solo on that radar, if you get my drift, there is managing multiple kids out the wazoo during weekends like this).

But here is what worked:
- staying tuned in to the 'weather' of mood and coping,
- redirecting her to a special given task of help if there was drifting into the dark mood,
- going for a walk - just her and dad and puppy to get some breathing time again (one of the trump cards that is usually a win and can almost always rescue a mood swing),
- checking in with a whisper and a hug and a "good job" with a wink,
- discussing in advance the nervous making parts,
- and allowing flight to a calmer safer quiet place (bedroom) if she was feeling overwhelmed.
Now, we don't use those words (flight, overwhelmed, etc) as we discuss and prep in advance, but we try to convey the feelings and actions to help in words she can understand.

 {As you can see, the presence of my Chris, her adored big bro, didn't hurt either.  Huge help.}

I put all these up there not to say, "Oh wow, we did great" but rather to say, "O wow, SHE did great!" These things made a difference.
The seventeen months' she's been home and safe have made a difference.
The seventeen months of working on these things have made a difference.
But these things, this weekend, they also made a difference.  It wasn't a heavenly light show with a choir kind of difference, but it was a weekend without a major screeching halt to deal with a trigger reaction.
And that, right there, is a bit of a a heavenly choir in my mind. 

So I want to mark the good. We had a good, great, exhausting, kinda normal Thanksgiving weekend.  And that is a world of good different from last year and it gives me hope for maybe, maybe, a better Christmas this year too.  It's progress.  I'll take it. 

{Two of M's other favorite people: dear sweet Leslie and her other adored big bro!}

I saw the good; I'm marking it.

Turn-key: Schedules (holiday edition)

I’ve written before a few times about the process of adjusting in adoption, especially with older child adoption.  I’ve talked about the idea of the turn key: one key that can turn the lock and you step right into a functioning enterprise (business, relationship, whatever).  As I stated before, adoption is NOTHING like that.  Ever. 

Yet, we, or I, fantasize about it all the time.

I wish I had a turn-key to adoption adjustment, really, really I do.

But I’m starting to get used to the idea that, I don’t, no one does.

As you embark on the process of an adoption, any adoption at all, those fantasies are rampant. 

Sure they get a little dull and bogged down by the cumbersome invasive excruciatingly slow process of adoption:  homestudies, background checks, financial and medical letters, references, duplicated certified stamped filed and stamped some more.

But even so, once you are through all that and you actually have the new family member, the child, home in the house…that’s when it all just gels, right? You’ve turned the key and stepped across the threshold to a brand new life!

Well, sort of anyhow.

This process of adjusting once you have a new child is what has me still and continually obsessing thoughtfully pondering about what makes it work and what doesn’t.

But this post, this series of posts, is about what has worked – for us.  I couldn’t begin to expand it further than our own wacky family; that would be wrong.  Because this is all only my own two pence.  But if I find something that consistently makes a difference, I want to throw it out there in case it might help smooth any path for anyone else.  Those stubbed toes on this sometimes-rocky path of adoption adjustment – they hurt!

So, with that long prelude, we come to this post. 

This post is about an important key to the adjustment in our house: schedules. 

Especially during the holiday season, schedules are critical.

They are a turn-key to unlocking a feeling of control and safety during a very uncertain time in a new family member’s life. 

They are, and I can’t say this quite strongly enough, a safety net. 

We have a big calendar on our fridge; one of the ones with large empty squares, plenty of room to write appointments, games, events.  Yes, it gets cluttered, especially as the month goes on.  Big family... Many in the house largely ignore it.  It is vital to me, to juggle everything.  The only person who looks at it as closely as me (actually, she examines it daily) is Marta.  It is a critical tool for her to keep her clued in to the daily routines.  Those predictable events are a safety net for her.  They provide a feeling of control and safety in a world that is not fully understood yet – not culturally, not with language, not with nuance or tradition.  

But this week, even that big monthly calendar isn’t cutting it.  This weekend was rocky; nervous anticipation of the holiday this week brought up bad behaviors and acting out.  Finally Sunday afternoon we were able to have a conversation about the nervousness of this week ahead: house-guests, shifting schedules, no school.  

 I decided to make Marta her own daily schedule, and asked her to help me.  We sat down with scratch paper (this doesn't have to be a fancy thing) and we blocked out each day, so she could see what would happen.  This helps her to anticipate the things that are the same, and to prepare for the shifts and things that are different.  It provides something for her to hold onto, again, it is a safety net.  

Imagine, if you will, how it might be if you didn't really know how things were going to work the next week, just that it would be quite different from the routine you've begun to know and understand....how would that make you feel? Now add on a lack of familiarity with the culture or the holiday traditions and the lack of language to learn it by talking about it.  Now add on a background of trauma and hurt,which brings up reactions that surprise everyone, even yourself,  and see if you don't get a bit stressed out.  I know I would.  I am stressed out a bit in anticipation of it and I am the Mom of the house!  

 So, we made the daily schedules.  One for each day this week.  We taped them up the the wall in the center hub of the house, the kitchen.  

She knows roughly (Not minute to minute, that would be TOO tight of a schedule and then  you would have fallout from that schedule not being met...this is a blocked out schedule) what is happening when this whole week.  She has already referred to it many times.

And I am hoping.
I am hoping this will help my daughter cope.

I am hoping this will help  my daughter move out of stress response into a softer place.

I am hoping this will help my daughter relax just enough to really be able to BE with the family and enjoy a bit more of this holiday.

I'm not expecting miracles.

But I'm hoping for another little babystep forward.

I'm hoping to turn the key and open the door to family and home, a new family and new home, just a little wider.  

So this is our turn-key of this week: schedules.  

Use this tool, this key, to help a hypervigilant child be able to see what is ahead and anticipate it.  Because that is empowering, that knowledge means safety.

And giving any child a sense of safety is one of the best keys in your pocket.  

Dancing with the Holidays: Attachment version

Matisse. I love his painting.

We are one week away from Thanksgiving, and the advent of um, Advent, and Christmas, and New Year’s; the whole Holiday Season.

We are looking down the barrel of fun of parties and guests and rich food and too much sugar and long talks and late nights and shiny presents and long Mass and extra cooking and cleaning and shopping and on and on.

That’s fun, right?

Well…yes, for the most part.

But even for many of us, it is so easy to get overwhelmed by it all.

How many calls, books, blogs, articles do we see read hear to SIMPLIFY the season?

I’m all for it, really I am.

Because if I can get overwhelmed, and I am a high energy multitasking mom who’s second nature is to live life on overdrive, keep it full to the brim, do something for pity’s sake….then how much easier is it for a kid? How easy is it for a kid from another world to get overwhelmed…especially if she or he is from some hard background or past events, and is still trying to assimilate into a large noisy culture, country, family?

Well, it’s not only easy; it’s part of what you, by which I mean, I, should be anticipating.

It’s practically part of the season; it’s the Holiday Dance.

Edvard Munch

And I don’t mean that in a snarky or mean way, I mean it in the “accept it because it’s gonna happen so prep for it and not let it trip you up" kind of way. Because I think if we, ok I, actually anticipate it, then I can approach those feelings in a much more productive, dare I say, “therapeutic” way?

I know from last year and from living with my newest daughter for sixteen months that any change in the daily routine, no matter how small, throws her. Those routines, no matter how mundane, are her safety net. Her developmental delays aggravate that fact; however they are not the sole source of her seasonal distress. It is the adjustment, the attachment, and the fact that all that takes a really long time. It takes years and years. We are really just baby steps into it all, just learning how to anticipate each other's steps and turns. Seems like we should be well fitted partners by now. But we are not. Even though it feels often like it should be all figured out and settled by now. But it’s not. It won’t be. It can’t be.

The holiday season takes the dance that we do - and are learning together - every day, and it spins it around in a disco ball kind of frenzy. It makes us all dizzy and while that can be fun and exciting for some of my kids and some days, mostly it makes my daughter either spin out of sorts or out of control or simply shut down from the too much of it all.

So our very careful crafting of the holiday season needs to figure out how to bring in those well loved traditions of the season and the faith and our family, to teach those steps to our new daughter, simply. Sometimes she just doesn’t wanna dance.
She doesn’t wanna see the new steps or shining lights.
She is still in process of grieving the old dances, or still too fearful to let go of her sense of self control and trust us enough to reach out and help us lead her into the new holiday dance and traditions and family ways.

So, I guess that’s where I want to start; with talking about standing on the edge of the dance floor, trying to coax my daughter (who doesn’t really like to dance, yet) out onto the floor. She can hold onto my hand, and her dad’s. We will try hard to anticipate the steps to this dance. We will simplify them.

Matisse, again. "The Dance." A favorite.

We will, I will, try to remember to brace and embrace her through the dance of this holiday season so that we can all come to enjoy the season and it’s richness in full. And maybe one of these years, when we are looking down the barrel of the holiday seasonal hoopla, we can all anticipate it with glee and deep smiles instead of fear and fretting.

Maybe I will be able to as well, if I can remember that I'm dancing not just with the holidays but with my daughter. And a one, and a two.....

Meeting: Adoption adjustment

There is a scene in a movie that I can't get out of my head.
The movie is "What dreams May Come."
Many absolutely despise this movie, and as a Catholic there is clearly questionable theology throughout....but even so, I liked the movie. It was a visual feast, from the oil paintings of the wife to the Bosch-like horrific visions of hell. But those things aren't what keeps sticking in my head lately.

It's the hell scene.
Now, disregard the dicey theology here. Go the essence of it: the meetup.

Robin Williams goes to hell to find his wife.
He GOES to hell and when she is incapable of seeing him, mired in her own pain and unable look up and out of herself (which IS hell)...then he sits there.
He sits with her.
He can't talk with her, really, she can't hear him.
He can't just bodily lift her up and move her out of this place.
He meets her where she is.
Read that again:
He meets her where she is.

And it's the meeting her where she is that gives her the rung to hold onto, him, and to look up, to blink to awareness of what's real, for just a moment.

Now, hang with me here.
(And again, I realize that many think this is the worst movie of all time. I get it, be that as it may, this scene has been rattling in my brain - thus blog post).
You moms and folks who are trying to live with a kid from hard places...
You moms and families who are working through an older child adoption, especially teenage...
You moms who have kids who have trauma backgrounds and/or various special needs....
Think about that.
Because we all know that "meeting up" is one of the only ways to help.
We have to meet them where they are...at that moment.
Often, more than often, it's a mini slice o' hell.

And we have to go there too.
Because they can't get out of there on their own.
Kids who have attachment issues, trauma triggers, who can't regulate their triggered emotions and reactions...they can't just get out of that personal hell.
We have to go to them.
Which means, we have to go to them, and often go through hell to do it, and yup, sit there a spell with them.
Because they are just kids, or teens even, but kids.

And that can sound so very lofty.
We think, at the start, and say with a trill, "Yes, darling, I will go to hell and back for you!"
But, um, ya know...going to hell and back?
Well it is, um, HELL.
It's exhausting and makes you (ok, me) want to cry and say "Forget it, I'm done."
I have family and friends sometimes say "Can't you just tell 'em to toughen up? I mean, cmon!!"
Now as a mom of eight, my standard M.O. is not too much coddling-- if kids are crying and such and I know that bone is not poking through skin and a hospital rush isn't imminent, I say "You're fine, you'll be ok."
Thus, my other kids, pals, and family might well expect me to fall into that mode.
However, this is different, exhaustingly so.......I sigh and say, "Well, I wish I could. But nope. Can't."
Because even though sometimes I try to selfishly avoid and tiptoe around whatever acting out or somatic fallout or whatever is playing out.....if it's a trigger response (and not just moody teen)...then you can't ignore it, you can't go around it, or over it, (isn't there a kiddy song like that??) you have to go through it.
You have go to it, meet it, and go through it...with them.
Again, sounds all noble, right?
Um, not.
It's usually messy and causes fallout with the other kids and even between the parental unit types, even for yourself.
Because it's hell.
But unless you go sit there and BE with them, somehow, it's not gonna get better.
It might get worse.

So. Ya gotta go.
Meet them.
Wherever they are.

Maybe then, they will blink a bit and be able look up and to breathe a bit.
And then maybe you can both step out of hell, back into the "heaven in our hands"..... back into family.

Flying Triggers

Catchy post title, eh? Sounds kinda "Kung Fu" or "martial arts slow motion special effects": "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragons" no?



Maybe it is in it's own bizarro way - in that this post is about how or IF you can bend backwards and or jump over the flying sharpened knives of flying triggers.
But this post is also about how flying itself is a trigger for our newest daughter.
Maybe I shoulda titled the post: "Crouching Mama, Hidden Triggers."

Confused?
Hang on, explanation follows:

So, we've just come back from a once in a lifetime kinda crazed huge family vacation.
By which I mean, we are a huge family, it was a huge vacation, it is always kinda crazed.....full of rollercoaster highs and lows as well as some peaceful lazy times in the Tuscan sun.

All of this, the highs the lows the crazy loud messy spectacle of our family in general, was kind of expected....we knew to a large degree what we were getting into.  I mean, look at  us! It's not hard to figure out and we've lived with us long enough to know most of the land mines, even the recurring big ones.

Except a few key ones.
The Triggers.

And as these key triggers, or this one key trigger, might be something that could give some insight into others in a similar boat (or, erm..plane...).... I'm posting.

It took us until the end of our trip to figure it out.  Ok, me.  And honestly, I think it was a little bit of Mercy (yeah, capital M) showered down on desperate me (Thanks be to God) that it even clicked.

But, finally, something did click during another bout of inexplicable weepy meltdown and acting out by Marta....and I realized: she's scared.  Not sick, as claimed. Not sad, as claimed.  Not angry. Scared.  Not just scared, even.
Terrified.
And thus her terror had triggered a cascade of trauma response: fussing, mean, weeping, grimacing, freezing out, complaining, dragging, coughing, getting sick in various ways... I'm not talking about weeks or days of this. This plays out over the course of a morning, or afternoon.

A swift collapse of a fragile house of cards.

That's a trauma response.
Very easy to slot it into the generic kid slot of: kid behaving badly.
But that would be a mistake.
One that I've made often enough.

But in older child, hurt child, adoption...you cannot forget that you are dealing with a kid who has more hurt than  you can know, more fear triggers than you can realize.
It's so easy to forget that.
And get aggravated at manipulation or another round of acting out (Yeah, see, no wonder mom awards here....).
And often it can be just those mundane but annoying things.
But then there are the times, which look identical, that the behavior has another layer or many.
And those times are the ones you need to sift through, to brace them through.
To hold on and weather it, even if it's not fun....and just be there, with them so they can ride out that fear.
And get to the other side.
And maybe, next time...maybe, have a slightly lower fear trigger response.
Maybe.

Anyhow.  This particular trigger response was due to the whole travel passport thing.  As you might remember, our Marta wasn't allowed to travel in a timely manner, due to the change in regulations regarding TB cultures.  Not only that, she had been told that we were coming to see her and then we didn't.  And even now, that is still something that imprinted on her - despite explanations - that we didn't show.  (Thank you very much, CDC and Homeland Security).  Thus, nowadays, if we fly, she gets very very nervous.  It manifests as illness, grief, anger....all the "fun" stuff.  If a passport is involved? Even if it's a BLUE USA passport???? A kind of terror.  Truly, irrationally.

Yeah, I blame that whole nasty delay of ours.  I suspect if she hadn't had such a hard time getting home, she wouldn't be so terrified of the process of it.  But she did. And she is.  And it makes flying hard.  Exhausting for all, but most especially for her.  Tom and I {He is MUCH better than I at doing this} have to leap over the flying triggers, reach through the tears and wiping nose and tense hunched shoulders and pull her back - hang on tight to her to let her know, somehow, that she will come with us.  No matter what.

But trust is a long time coming - true trust.
So, in the meantime, we jump and bend and twist to get past the daggers of terror.  Not as gracefully as the folks in the clip above.  Not very gracefully at all.  Clumsily, stumbling, we muddle along.  Hoping for a bit of improvement next time, and a memory that "it can be easy" to replace the seared memory of it being impossible.

This is older child adoption.  The part that isn't talked about too much: the stumbling gymnastics of trying to read the body and behavior language of a child who comes with history.  It is a constant work in progress, sometimes beautiful even in the leaping...sometimes a slow waiting game for that trust and understanding to be laid down.

But here is the hope:  when Marta finally landed on our last leg of the flight home, she hurried off our little plane and stopped in the terminal. I was catching up with Gabey and saw her fling her arms out wide, and say, in a big voice with  big grin, with big relief "I LOVE America!"

So we landed with a happy relieved laugh for us all.  Home again.  Whew.