The Devil's Holiday? (A history of Halloween)

Halloween is the devil's holiday! That's what we were told by the Christian church we attended when our son, Nic, was three years old. At that point in my life I didn't question the pronouncement, I simply stopped enjoying Halloween and did harvest themes instead.

I remember my father making a face and shaking his head in disgust when we told him we wouldn't be doing the Halloween thing because the church said it was wrong. He clearly disagreed with our decision not to allow Nic to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating.

It was a hard decision to make. I had always loved Halloween. In fact, back in my high school days, Youth for Christ/Campus Life used to do a big fund raising project called "Scream in the Dark" that was a haunted house par excellence! I loved dressing up in spooky or gruesome costumes and working different rooms in the house. It was so much fun!

That said, I didn't want to be doing "the Devil's work" or celebrating something unholy and neither did my husband. The church said it was wrong and we had both been taught to be obey our church leadership.

We floated in and out of Halloween celebrations over the years, depending upon the teaching of our church leadership. Some taught that Halloween glorified Satan and eschewed any form of harvest festival as "pagan." Others didn't officially celebrate Halloween but held harvest festivals instead. Some felt that Halloween was "wrong." Others felt it was simply too frightening for children.

The funny thing is, when it comes to gruesome costumes and all of that, we say that we don't want to frighten our children with it, but we think nothing of bringing them into church where there are pictures of a bloody and broken Jesus, hanging on a cross. I remember crying as a child, looking through stained glass windows at pictures of Jesus in anguish, wearing a crown of thorns with blood dripping down his face, side pierced by a sword. It frightened me far more than any Halloween costume or haunted house ever did; I know those things were PRETEND.

We also teach songs to children in church about being "washed in the blood of Jesus" and we tell them that their wrongdoing will lead them to lakes of eternal fire and pain. "Frightening" is an understatement. Are we contradictory or what?

But back to Halloween: Is it the Devil's holiday? Why is it promoted as such amongst certain religious groups? Let's take a look at the history of Halloween and see if it sheds any light on the subject.

Halloween is rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. According to History.com (2008), "Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter."

In celebration, the ancient Celts, like the people of the Old Testament, burnt crops and animals as sacrifices to their gods. The Old Testament and Celtic rituals appear to be fairly parallel, albeit Celts reserved these sacrifices for a specific holiday of Samhain.

When the Romans conquered the Celts in 43 A.D.they blended their celebrations of Feralia and Pomona, honoring the dead and the goddess of fruit and trees, with the Celtic celebration of Samhain.

According to History.com (2008), "In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas."

Modern Halloween was born from the evolution and blend of culture. I see nothing evil about it. In fact, I love Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays. I love the celebration of harvest, the mourning of the loss of summer, the surrender to falling leaves and crisp nights turned freezing cold, the promise of Thanksgiving and Christmas to come.

I'm no longer willing to blindly follow the church or any other institution or person. Far too many of us hold hard and fast beliefs without even comprehending WHY we believe as we do. We base our convictions on what we've been told is good or bad, right or wrong. Like most of the holidays we celebrate in America, Halloween is a blend of pagan and religious history. We can make it mean whatever we want!

Halloween has no religious significance in our family; it's a celebration of the change of seasons and an excuse to have fun. Today, we will celebrate Halloween by visiting a pumpkin patch and watching the kids tumble through hay and corn mazes. Later, we'll carve pumpkins, eat pizza, then watch Harry Potter movies with the kids. When they go to bed, hubby and I will watch a scary movie! I look forward to it!

Happy Halloween! Happy Harvest!

References:

History.com. (2008). Ancient Origins of Halloween. Retrieved October 31, 2009 from, http://www.history.com/content/halloween/real-story-of-halloween

©Just Kate, 2009

In the Light of Yesterday

When we meet someone new, the person is "born" in our sight in that very moment. We learn about their past experiences over time and incorporate that into our view of them, but it's easy to forget people come with baggage.

It's especially easy to forget the "baggage" when one blends an adopted, foster or step family. When we brought our first adopted daughter home at the age of four, I put on her bedroom wall a photo collage of our family, pets and extended family. Bethany had only been with us for a few days when she tugged me over to the photo collage and ran her fingers over each picture, brow furrowed, naming each new person in turn. Then she looked up at me and said, "But where is the REST of my family?" I double checked the photos and assured her that everyone was there. "Nope," she said, "Where's my sissy? Where's Jacky-mom? Where's my Terri-mom? Where's the REST of my FAMILY?!" Her voice was plaintive and tinged with worry.

I remember feeling a moment of panic. I didn't want pictures of those people on our daughter's wall. They wouldn't be a part of her new life. Stalling for time, I pulled out her photo album and listened as she pointed at each picture and shared bits and pieces of her life story. She lingered at the "mommy" pictures, the photos of her biological and foster mothers, tracing their outlines with little freckled fingers. I felt so sad watching her. I could feel the yearning inside of her and I KNEW that the hatred she professed to feel for me was partly born of her not having wanted a NEW mommy when she'd already had two of them. Bethany's coming to our family was OUR dream, not hers.

She helped me pull out her favorite photos and we layered them into the photo collage on her wall, and it hurt. It hurt to realize how much our new daughter had gone through, the people she had loved and lost, the people who had loved her back and those who had hurt her. It hurt because I realized we couldn't erase it all. We couldn't give her a NEW START. We could only build on what already was. She was a little four-year-old person with a history and a life that happened before we even knew she existed.

I had to fight down the desire to shush her when she talked incessantly of the past. Her language was littered with declarations of "Terri-mom did this" or "Jacky-mom did that." It was especially hard when she talked so lovingly of her biological mother, who I knew had used drugs and alcohol throughout her pregnancy, then serially abused and neglected Bethany until she lost custody of her. I also knew that she'd lost custody of Bethany's four older biological half siblings. The fact that Bethany professed to love her so was a hard thing to swallow.

It was hard to see Bethany hurting and missing the people who had been an integral part of her first four years of life. We couldn't provide contact with her birth mother because of her persistent drug use and frequent incarceration, so we returned to the foster mother.

It was a five hour drive to "Jacky-mom's" house. She lived in a ramshackle rental with peeling white paint that was snugged right up against rail road tracks. The yard was barren of grass but littered with toys, and a half broken trampoline stood in the far corner. As we turned onto the dirt driveway, Bethany's voice rose in pitch until she was screeching, frantically telling story after story in broken bits and pieces. Her frenzy was frightening to see.

On the wide porch with it's broken rail stood at least a dozen children of all races, shapes and sizes, many of them with grimy thumbs in their mouth. Jacky came through the door with a baby on each hip. We later learned that they were AIDS babies that were nearly impossible to place.

As the children screamed in joy or ran and hid or rocked in corners, we watched Bethany crawl into her Jacky-mom's lap. We watched as she patted and petted her and ran her fingers across her nose, lips, and eyes, and I had to leave so Bethany wouldn't see me crying.

I stood with tears streaming down my face, looking down at a baby, dark as night, and she stared back at me with ancient eyes as I reached out and touched her cottony hair. One of the older children sidled up to me and told me the baby's name, said she had AIDS and would die soon but that I shouldn't cry. My mind exploded with the knowledge of the hardship these children endured, with the awful reality that they'd never been sheltered from, not even for a minute. That a child should speak of the impending death of an infant with such resolution.

We went back many times to visit Bethany's Jacky-mom and I came to love and respect her hugely. Her home and yard and children may have been unkempt but there was love there. Was it enough? Not even close, but the job was HUGE and who was there to do it?

The connection with Bethany's past allowed us to see her with new eyes in the present. It wasn't the prelude to happily ever after nor did it fix anything, but it helped us to find compassion for Bethany as she struggled to make her way, exploding with anger, having tantrums and fits, loving her father with over-the-top demonstration, and rejecting me at every turn.

People come with history. It's an important fact to remember. I'm confronted by the reality of this every day, parenting our adopted children. I'm often momentarily staggered by this or that behavior or perception, then I realize that it's alien to me because it was born in a past I never knew and only makes sense in the light of yesterday.
©Just Kate, 2009

When Love Hurts: Living with RAD

I want to continue telling our story but I need to back up and clarify that Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) happens in biological, adoptive, foster and step families and is not something that is exclusive to special needs kids who are adopted when they are older, it can happen whenever there is childhood abuse and neglect. Children develop coping mechanisms or survival mechanisms, that help them get by when they are serially abused or neglected and those survival mechanisms become literally hard wired into their brain. Neurological pathways are created that will impact and define them FOREVER. There is no cure or proven effective therapy for Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).

Reactive Attachment Disorder happens when a child does not properly bond with a caregiver during the first four years of life. (The core of who a person is and will be is determined by the time they are four years old, so what happens in those formative years is crucial!) When a child cries and is not comforted or is hurt by those who care for him, it causes permanent damage; the child becomes unable to bond with other people and will sabotage relationships with the people who are closest to them, functioning best with people who do not know them well. They typically blow out of close relationships because they are simply incapable of maintaining them.

Children and adults with RAD are typically very charming, they know how to project the illusion of connectedness, love, and compassion and go to great lengths to portray that image to people who are peripheral in their lives. It is the people who are closest to them who suffer; others will never know the reality of living with a reactive attachment disordered child or adult, because they wear different faces for the different people in their lives. This disparity in behavior can leave the person who is seeing the worst behavior feeling like they're quite literally insane, because nobody else sees what they're seeing!

I think it helps to KNOW that. I spent so many years thinking there was something wrong with me because I could not fix my relationship with our adopted daughter, Bethany. Others only saw the vaguest glimmers of what I saw: the push and pull, the lying, the manipulation, anger, and rejection; mostly they saw a child who appeared to be trying to please.

There were times when Bethany would appear to soften a bit towards me in our private relationship and I would think I was getting through to her only to run up against the wall of her anger and rejection. There were times when she would cling to me, touching my face, telling me she loved me, and I would reach for her only to be pushed away; she would call me names, kick and bite at me, and tell me that she hated me. And the lying... She lied about anything and everything; it was truly crazy making.

I kept telling myself that a small child could not possibly be acting as horribly as what I was experiencing and that feeling was hugely compounded by the fact that there was nobody else in my life who had witnessed it to the degree that I had. My husband definitely saw glimmers of it but it is hard to believe that a CHILD is capable of the kind of behavior that RAD children exhibit towards those they are closest to; again, the same is true of RAD adults.

I tried to distance myself from Bethany but it felt like neglect. We had adopted her, hoping to give her a better life, wanting to rescue her from the history of neglect and abuse that she had already suffered at the hands of her biological mother who was a drug addict, alcoholic, and prostitute.

The harm that Bethany’s birth mom inflicted on her by alternately lavishing love on her and then abusing and neglecting her is incalculable; Bethany learned the art of "push/pull" from her birth mother; she was not trying to be horrible to me, she was simply trying to survive in the only way she knew how.

Those years with Bethany were some of the darkest of my life. I became a person I did not recognize. When all attempts to love her to wholeness failed, I turned to harsh "discipline” and spanked and shouted to a degree that shames me.

If I'd only known not to take it personally, that emotional distance was the RIGHT RESPONSE and not neglectful, maybe then I might not have come undone, and I did come undone when I finally began to let go of her six years after she came to us. I cannot even type that without crying. It has been years and it hurts as if it was today. I had to let go of Bethany. There was no other way.

You see, Bethany cannot tolerate love. She wants it more than anything but is scared to death of it, so she nurses her anger and that makes her feel safe. She creates close relationships and then blows out of them HARD, leaving emotional massacre behind her. It is a horrible thing to be caught in the wake of someone with RAD; loving and living with Bethany was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but letting go of her was hardest of all.

I have jumped way ahead of myself here, but I felt a need to make it clear that this story does not have a hearts and flowers ending, it is a story of pain and hardship and growth. The good news is that it is not over; Bethany's story is not finished yet.

Once again, I want to clarify that I am neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist and I cannot offer clinical help, I am simply telling our story in the hope that it may help someone else; if you're struggling with a RAD child or adult, please know you are not crazy and you are not alone. Most important of all, it is not your fault; do not be afraid to talk about it or ask for help.

©Just Kate, 2009

The Loneliest Day

I plopped my newly adopted four year old daughter down on the counter top and, keeping a hand on her, pulled out my wallet to pay the cashier. My five year old son, Nic, always tall for his age, could just see over the counter top. They were both extremely well behaved and I was proud of them. Little Bethany twisted around to look at the cashier and her glasses slid down to the end of her nose. She tilted her chin up so she could see down them, then said, "My mom does drugs and hurts me." The cashier's eyes flew to mine with a look of shock and horror and I hastily said, "We only JUST adopted her." Before I could say another word Bethany said, "Yes, THIS mom adopted me and I do NOT like her. She's ugly."

My face flamed red as I quickly finished the transaction in silence and, with Bethany on my hip and Nic's hand in mine, exited the store. Back in the car I explained to Bethany that some information is personal and should not be shared with people outside of our family or her therapist, like the fact that her biological mom did drugs and hurt her. She crossed her arms and glared at me through narrowed eyes. Her tone was matter of fact when she said, "I hate you, Mommy. I do."

Nic looked anxiously from Bethany to me, taking it all in, as Bethany turned to him and said, "I love my new brother, Nic." I had no idea what to say. I was fighting tears, I remember that, but I didn't want her to see that she'd gotten to me. I turned the key in the ignition and heard Nic say, "Well, I love mommy. I don't KNOW you yet."

I felt Bethany kick the back of my seat in response and, glancing in my rear view mirror, I smiled at Nic, hoping to reassure him. He looked confused and upset. I said, "That's right, honey, we don't know Bethany yet and she doesn't know us. It's going to take time for us to feel like a family." Bethany kicked my seat again and said, "I'll never love you. You're a stupid mommy."

And so it went. Bethany rejected me at every turn while lavishly loving her new daddy and brother. She would become angry with me, throw her glasses to the ground, then jump on them. Pair after pair she smashed. When my husband came home from work she'd run to him with a hug and say, "Mommy ruined my glasses again!" He would laugh and tell her he was sure mommy hadn't ruined her glasses, and he would remind her to express her anger with words rather than by ruining things.

When I talked to our therapist and caseworker I was told that it was all a normal part of the adjustment process and that we just needed to have patience. It felt like thin counsel and consolation when I was feeling utterly despondent and like a failure.

I finally told Bethany that I would spank her if she ruined another pair of glasses. She responded by hurling her glasses to the ground and jumping up and down on them while screaming at the stop of her lungs, "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" I marched over and swatted her bottom. She ran up the stairs, fell when she got to the stop, scrambled back up and disappeared into her brother's bedroom. I followed slowly, wanting to remain calm. She had a way of escalating emotions and I didn't want to get sucked into the vortex of her anger. I didn't want to yell at her again.

I hated the yelling. I'd never yelled before. I felt like a stranger to myself and I hated it. I wanted somebody to rescue me, to help me figure out how to break through to this angry little one that was now my daughter.

I took a deep breath and pushed Nic's bedroom door open. It took me a minute to realize what Bethany was doing. She was squatting on Nic's bed with his pillow beneath her, laughing hysterically. The smell of urine was sharp and sudden. She was peeing on his pillow.

I yanked her off the bed and grabbed the pillow, holding it away from me, dragging Bethany behind me, kicking and screaming. She pulled against me all the way down the stairs, holding the rail to get leverage as she kicked at me, falling a step or two, regaining her footing, then kicking again. Her shrieking was ungodly. Out the back door to the trash can we went. I dropped the pillow inside then marched her back into the kitchen. I couldn't make her stay in time-out so I sat with her on my lap, holding her against me as she kicked and screamed and flailed and tried to bite me.

Eventually, after what seemed like forever, she fell asleep. I loosened my hold and shifted her in my arms, rocking her softly as tears streamed down my face. My husband came home and found us like that. I tried to tell him what had happened and saw the look of disbelief on his face. He said he knew I was overwhelmed but felt I shouldn't exaggerate. I felt like I was all alone in the world.

At some point Nicholas had come home from afternoon kindergarten and curled up next to me, thumb in his mouth. I'd barely registered it. When my husband went to change from his work clothes, Nic removed his thumb and patted my arm. He said, "I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm sorry." I hugged him to me and was sorry too. I was sorry that I hadn't even noticed when he came home, that I couldn't make this little girl love me, that I had spanked her and yelled at her, that my husband didn't believe it was as bad as it was, that my therapist and caseworker thought I simply needed more patience... I was sorry about everything.

Looking back, I think that's when I started to pretend. I stopped trying to talk to my caseworker, therapist and husband. I stopped hoping that someone would understand. I lived in a private war zone that other people only caught glimpses of. I made sure that Bethany and Nicholas were always beautifully dressed, that I was smiling whenever other people were around, and that our home was immaculate. While chaos reined behind closed doors, we at least LOOKED like a normal family.

I now know that Bethany was doing something called triangulation. She was pitting her father against me. She was playing the victim, putting me in the position of persecutor, and her father in the position of rescuer. Had we known that's what was happening we could have armed ourselves against it, but we didn't know. Triangulation is something that reactive attachment disordered children routinely do. They create chaos, pit one person against the other, and thrive on discord. After awhile I began to think that I was losing my mind. That's another common reaction. I had no idea that other parents, when confronted with children like Bethany, felt that they were losing their minds too. I was all alone, but I didn't need to be.

I'm not a psychologist and am not offering clinical help nor am I pretending to be an expert. I am simply telling my story and offering up what I have learned in the process.

©Just Kate, 2009

The Truth About Loving

Do you remember thinking, when you were a child, that you would never do this or that thing that your parents did? I do. I remember thinking that I was always going to understand and appreciate my children as individuals and not try to force them to fit into some a mold of my making. I felt that way because my father didn't like me and I was aware of it from a very early age. I often wondered why he couldn't see the good in me even if it was different from the good he wanted to see.

When I became the parent of four special needs adopted children, I suddenly found myself confronted with children whose personalities were shaped by people, biology, and life experiences that were completely unknown to me. To this day I find myself wondering why my children do this or that thing that seems so odd to me.

Today I heard myself say something that I heard incessantly from my Dad when I was growing up. I said, "What's wrong with you kid?!!" E-Gads. As soon as I said it I cringed. Whether or not there's something WRONG with my child is immaterial. We ALL have things wrong with us and most of us want more than anything to be known for who we are, faults and all, and loved regardless.

It sounds so simple and obvious but it's really not simple at all. If you think about it, we are drawn to certain personalities and repelled by others. We're not friends with everyone we meet. So why is it that we expect parents who adopt older children to immediately feel connected to them? Relationship takes TIME and there's no magic in a certificate of adoption.

The sad truth is that many parents fail to connect with their biological children. I was raised by my biological parents and I've already said that my father did not like me. People generally recoil from the truth of that. They don't want to hear it. But it doesn't do any good to pretend to something that isn't true. To say that my father loved me would be disingenuous.

Parent child connections take work, time, patience and perseverance. It's important that prospective adoptive parents understand that and it's important that their extended family and friends understand it too. The guilt that comes with not connecting to a child one has committed to raise and love can be crippling, especially when there's no understanding that it's NORMAL, that the building of relationship takes time and may never happen, as is the case when dealing with children who are suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder, in which case the parent serves as more of a therapist than parent to the child.

We need to rid ourselves of the cotton candy spun dreams that we hold as parents, whether we're parents via biology, adoption or foster parenting. Those dreams can leave us crippled when we're faced with the hard truth that parenting takes work and magic is a rare thing. :)

I'm writing this today as a reminder to myself and whoever else may be reading that our children aren't meant to be our mirrors or the fulfillment of our dreams. They are unique individuals that need our love and compassion, that need to be SEEN for who they are in all their ugliness and beauty. Isn't that what we ALL need?

©Just Kate, 2009

Living in the Moment

I've spent way too much time wishing away my life. You do it too. We're wishing away our lives when we say, "Once I lose weight I'm going to..." or "When the kids are older I'll be able to..."

When our biological son was born I remember thinking of how it would be when he was old enough to walk. I imagined basketball games, I imagined how I would feel when I lost the baby weight.

There's nothing wrong with dreaming or having goals, but we shouldn't let our dreams and goals take us out of the moment that we're living. Looking back, I regret the time I lost wishing my life away, anticipating what WOULD BE instead of appreciating WHAT IS.

We have a lot of pictures of baby Nicholas sitting in one of those plastic carrier seats. Every time I see a picture like that I want to reach right into the photograph and pick him up. I want to hold him tight and smell the fresh baby scent of him. I want to tap that younger me on the shoulder and tell her that the years will go by so quickly and once they're gone they're GONE forever. I want to remind her to live in the moment she's in.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed baby Nicholas but I wish I'd enjoyed him MORE. I wish I'd taken more time to laugh, to surrender to the messes he made, to wonder at the strong will driving his more than occasional defiance. I wish I hadn't been so quick to wipe his finger prints off the windows.

But as soon as I speak of my regrets, I realize how easy it is to lose oneself looking back at what was, thinking of what might have been. It's just another way we lose the moment that we're in. Don't get me wrong, Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." I believe that. Reflection is good. But we don't want to get stuck there. I think one of the biggest challenges of life is learning to live in the moment. All too often we only recognize our happiness in retrospect because we're so busy reaching forward to what comes next.

Whether your goal is to quit smoking or to lose weight or to get past pregnancy to motherhood or past the waiting to adoption, I hope that you'll take a moment to breathe out and breathe in and do it again and just feel the moment that you're in.

_________________________________________
Is there something that you're waiting for? Some hope for the future that keeps you from living well RIGHT NOW? Is there something in the past that keeps pulling you back, so that you miss today?

©Just Kate, 2009

Where's My Joy?!

Parenting is suppose to be a joy, right? You rarely hear parents who come home with a brand new baby, complaining about how hard it is. There may be rueful references to a lack of sleep or colic. Sometimes there are health issues and that's frightening, but for the most part, bringing a new child home is a joyous thing! And let's not forget about the instant bonding that typically happens between a newborn and her parents, whether by adoption or birth. I know that feeling. When my son was born it was like my heart leaped out of my chest and instantly belonged to him. Likewise, when we later adopted an infant daughter, she was placed in my arms and I melted under the warm, soft weight of her.

But bringing home a four year old with a history of abuse and neglect that one has only just met is a different thing all together. As I mentioned in my previous blog, meeting Bethany, our soon to be adopted daughter, wasn't exactly what I dreamed it would be. She took an instant liking to her new daddy and brother but treated me like I was invisible or more accurately, like I smelled bad or something. Before she stepped into our car, leaving the foster home, she patted her new daddy's hand and said, "I like you, not HER!" He barked out a laugh and bent to buckle her in behind me. She kicked the back of my seat, rhythmically, with great determination, until we stopped for lunch an hour later.

She wanted two hamburgers with lots of pickles so that's what we got her, to go. Back in the car she chattered non-stop about her yummy hamburgers and how much she loved PICKLES! In the rear view mirror our five year old son looked worried. I reminded him that it was a happy day and that there was no reason to look gloomy. I was just happy that Bethany was happy and actually talking to ME! Yay! Plus, she'd finally stopped kicking my seat! Things were definitely looking up.

Another hour passed and we pulled into a small amusement park that boarders the I-5 in Oregon. As I went to unbuckle Bethany I noticed that the back of my seat was smeared with pickles, ketchup and mustard. She'd taken every one of her "yummy pickles" and squished them into the upholstery. Her smile was absolutely ANGELIC as she looked at me and said, "Whoopsie." Our son, Nicholas, finally spoke up and said, "That's why I looked worried." Well, good for him, he didn't want to be a tattler. Silly me for thinking everything was better. I can't tell you how crushed I felt at that moment, standing beside our car. I wasn't angry. I wanted to cry. The little girl I wanted with all my heart was determined to hate me.

When we finally arrived home that night, she recognized our street right away from the family book we'd given her the first time we met her. She squealed when she saw our house and said, "MY HOUSE! MY RED DOOR! MY ROOM!" Sure enough, she was pointing right up to her own bedroom window and so it went. She took possession of everything she saw on her way from the car to the door and on into the house.

A few minutes later she wilted half way up the staircase in the midst of naming and claiming things. Thumb in mouth, sprawled out in utter exhaustion, she went from 1,000 MPH to deep sleep in a moment. And in the quiet, as we sat beside her on the stairs, we realized how much she was hurting. How scared she must have been. My heart ached for this fiery little stranger that was to be my new daughter. I think that's finally when I understood how hard it was going to be. Until then I'd managed to convince myself that we'd jump the hurdle of newness and everything would be okay, but I'd underestimated her pain and the challenges inherent in parenting a child one does not know and has no relationship or history with.

My husband carried her to her bed. I carefully wiggled her thick glasses off and laid them on the bedside table. We were able to get her into her new pink pajamas without waking her. Then we surrounded her with stuffed dogs, rabbits and bears and Nicholas hopped up next to her and said a prayer.

There were pink balloons all over the house and a big sign that read: WELCOME HOME, BETHANY, but the joy was absent. It was the first of many nights that I would pray myself to sleep, asking God to bless and heal Bethany and give us the ability to love her enough to make it all better.


Post Script: Bethany is not pictured with our other children.

©Just Kate, 2009

Adoption Dreams and a Reality Check

My last blog entry should have ended with a record screech. You know, the sound a record makes when a needle scratches across the surface? Well, depending upon your age you may or may not get that. What I'm trying to say is that I ended by referring to our prospective adopted daughter as an "angel" because that's the way we thought of her. She was going to be our baby. She would love us and we would love her and that love would be enough to heal whatever hurts had happened in her life thus far. She and our biological son Nicholas would be the best of friends and they would chatter together and laugh and we would walk off into the sunset.

Okay, I'm being a little silly, but despite our training and preparation that is the way I thought it would be. There was a part of me that KNEW it wouldn't be that perfect nor would it be that easy, but it's what I wanted so badly.

I remember thinking back to my own childhood, to all those times when I said quiet prayers in the dark of night that my dad would give me up for adoption to someone who wanted a little girl like me, to someone that would like me and maybe even love me. I so desperately wanted to be rescued. And I thought that's what Bethany would want too. I thought that loving her would be my chance to make up for the love I didn't get, growing up, and the love she had missed out on in the earliest years of her life, too.

I had talked to other adoptive parents who told me how hard it was, but I knew that their struggle was unique, that it would be different for us. Or maybe it would be hard, but love would win out. I've always done well under pressure. In my mind, it was going to be wonderful.

We waited several months to hear back about Bethany. In the end, the adoption committee chose a different family. I couldn't believe it. I had felt so certain that Bethany would be ours. In my journal I wrote that I knew that somehow she would come to us. My therapist said I was in denial so I quit talking about it. But, as it turns out, I was right. Bethany did come back to us. The first family that was chosen opted out of the adoption. We were told that they had met her and been overwhelmed by her, that she was loud and demanding and not what they had envisioned. However, the caseworker assured us that their rejection of Bethany had been more about their lack of preparedness than the child. That made us feel better. In our minds our angel remained an angel.

We met her just once before we picked her up and brought her home. She was, indeed, a very loud little girl, very insistent, inquisitive, and demanding - a fierce and fiery little redhead with long tangled hair and dried macaroni on her coke bottle glasses that were taped at the temple. In a flame red floral dress with pink and orange striped socks, Bethany greeted us from behind the skirt of her foster mother, shy for a moment and then bursting out to screech, "Hi Daddy" as she flung herself into my husband's arms without sparing me a glance.

We went to a pizza and arcade restaurant with Bethany and her foster family where Bethany towed her new daddy around by the hand, screaming at the top of her lungs, "Look Daddy! Look! Look! Look!" I followed quietly behind, attempting to talk with her several times, but she looked right through me. She did, however, include Nicholas in her circle by the end of the night. She was clearly enamored of her new daddy and brother and utterly disinterested in her new mother.

We left her with her foster family and headed home, me with a knot in the pit of my stomach. I was suddenly terrified by the prospect of adopting this beautiful 4 year old ball of fury who wanted nothing to do with me. I talked to the caseworker who assured me that it was a common reaction and one I shouldn't worry about. My husband also comforted me, saying that she would come around. I desperately wanted to believe that so I set my fear and trepidation aside and busied myself with preparations to bring our new daughter home.

©Just Kate, 2009

The Journey Begins: Adopting Bethany

I remember the day we first began to talk about adopting an older child. The sun rained down like a blessing as our little family of three traveled, windows rolled down, loving the crisp Autumn air. In the backseat our four year old son chattered away non-stop, pointing here and there and there, asking why this and why that. We did our best to answer him but it was exhausting. I looked over at my husband and grinned. He smiled back and shrugged as our boy, Nicholas, kept up a constant stream of chatter.

That night after Nicholas was asleep I asked my husband what he thought about adopting an older child. It was something that we'd casually talked about but hadn't actively pursued. Suddenly it seemed like the time might be right. Nicholas was nearly five and we thought it would be nice for him to have a little sister, close to the same age. We talked about it and decided we would look into it.

By the end of the week I had amassed a huge collection of books and other materials related to the adoption of older children and I'd been in contact with a caseworker from the Oregon Department of Human Resources who had provided a wealth of information regarding the adoption process.

We enrolled in classes for prospective adoptive parents, completed an exhaustive home study, and went through the rigorous process of becoming licensed foster parents: the first step in adopting a child through the state of Oregon. We also joined a support group for prospective adoptive parents. After several months passed we felt well trained, well informed and 100% ready to complete the adoption process.

As part of the process we were required to fill out paperwork stating what type of child we were interested in adopting. We wanted a girl of any race under the age of five and were okay with a mild developmental disability or history of physical abuse or neglect but were not okay with a history of sexual abuse. The questionnaire was that specific.

Our caseworker had a book full of photos and biographies of children that were waiting to be adopted. We poured over the books and fell in love with child after child, but it wasn't that simple. We needed a "match."

The caseworker called us a few weeks into our wait and informed us that a little girl, aged 4, might be a match for us. We immediately went down to the caseworker's office and studied the information available on Bethany, a fiery little redhead with huge blue eyes that were magnified through coke bottle glasses. We read that she was exceptionally bright, very LOUD, bossy, inquisitive, and anxious for a "forever family." We decided to add our names to the list of families interested in adopting her.

Nicholas studied her pictures along with us, noting the way the red hair on her arms stood out and was back lit by sunshine. "She looks like an angel," he said, tracing the golden outline of her.

We went home and prayed that God's will would be done, that the little golden angel named Bethany would be ours if it was the right thing for her and for our family.



To be continued...

©Just Kate, 2009