Breaking thru Beautifully...

When life happens and all you want to do is cry, come join me on my little adventure...for after all, sometimes, it's just about breaking thru it all....beautifully.

RADically changed; Beautifully Broken (Part 1)

I was speaking to a close friend the other night, trying to explain my emotional attitude, when I finally looked at her and said, “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but there is no way I could explain it to where you could understand. Living with a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder cannot be understood unless you are going thru it.”

I felt pretty guilty saying those words, but it is truly how I feel. But the thought has not left me since. And I think perhaps, I am meant to share my story, so this is the first part of several posts of sharing our story; hoping that in some way, it will help someone who needs to know that there are others of us out there that really do understand what they are going thru. This is a deeply personal story, so please bear with me as I re-live the past fourteen years.

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I’ll never forget the day it all started. My drug-addict brother showed up at my house introducing me to his new someone, stating they were having a baby. I asked how long they’d known each other; they had just met at a drug rehab meeting and the world was all great and they were having a baby.

I was in the delivery room by their side as she came into this world. I remember being hopeful that the years of drug abuse would now be past him as he started this new life. I had my suspicions not too long after, but couldn’t prove anything. Until she was almost five months old.

I remember being called to their apartment. I will never forget it. My oldest son, 15 at the time, was with me. We walked into a dark apartment. She was there, showing me the train tracks on her arms, bragging about how many more she could get on a single arm. My brother walked out with his infant daughter in her car seat. He was not a small man, and can be quite imposing when he wants to. He put the carseat down beside me, knelt down in front of me and calmly spoke the following words;

“You are going to take her with you and take care of her until I ask you to bring her back. You will not call anyone, or tell anyone anything. You will not try and take her away from me. If you do, I will take your children away from you and kill them all.”

My son was standing a few feet away.

The two of us walked out with this tiny infant. For the next week she cried and cried. I did my very best to take care of her and my own five children. I tried to calm and comfort her as best as I knew how. I now know that she was going thru drug withdrawal because her mom had been nursing her while using meth. I ended up with shingles from the stress of it all. From worrying about this precious baby who, at the time, I thought only wanted her daddy.  From worrying about what would happen to my own family if I shared their secret. I convinced myself it wasn’t as bad as my brain was imagining it to be.

I convinced myself it would all work out.

There is not a single day that I do not feel responsible; guilty, for my part in the trauma that she has endured.

My heart is shattered by her life; but that is nothing compared to what she feels every day.

She is lost. Broken. Beautiful, but broken.

My broken butterfly.

broken-butterfly

For more RADically Changed stories:

RADically Changed: Beautifully Broken

 

 

 

This is the story of how it all came to be.

 

Hope

As the months have gone by, everything has changed. You can fight change, or you can embrace it.

Control; you can try to control everything, or realize so much of life is out of our control; and then embrace that, too.

How does one react to the circumstances surrounding us? We can fight everything and everyone, or we can work together.

When my youngest daughter was home, everything was a fight. EVERYTHING! We fought over brushing her hair. We fought over doing her homework. We fought over brushing her teeth, taking a shower, leaving things alone if they don’t belong to her. We fought over our relationship, her imaginary relationship with her biological mom; We fought over her need to fight over everything.

I see things differently now. My eyes have been opened. And thru this process of long-term treatment, I’ve learned a few things.

It’s ok to ask for help.

I had to realize that her RAD issues are way bigger than I can handle. Way bigger than I can help her with. I can’t “fix” her, but together, we can seek out others who can help us along the way.

It’s ok to not back down.

When there are issues that need to be faced, it’s ok not to back down. They have to be discussed. They need to be brought out and talked about. It’s hard, but we can not possibly work thru things if we ignore them and let them fester. We can not move past our fears if we do not talk about them and learn how to deal with them; together.

It’s ok to back down.

When some issues are so hard and mentally and physically exhausting, you just can’t deal with it; it’s ok to back down. Bring it back to the table later. Let it go for a few until you are rational and emotionally strong enough to deal with it. Not everything has to be dealt with all at once. There is always more time.

It’s ok to be human.

My children need to know that I am human. That I make mistakes. That I can cry with the best of them and say that life sucks and that we can get thru this life of ours together. When they see the human side of their parents, they learn themselves that it is ok to not have it all together all the time. That’s how we learn. That’s how we grow. That’s how we move forward.

Hope.

We must have hope. Because hope allows us to look forward to the impossible. With hope, we just might be able to break thru it all; beautifully.

Hope-1

 

 

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