Recently I had the opportunity to do a story on an amazing woman who has fought through almost 18 months of misery. She had been beloved teacher for 28 years, just two years from retirement when one day, while sitting in her office during her lunch, prep hour and after school, she was critically poisoned by carbon monoxide. The most likely source was the construction equipment that was being used to remodel the building she was working in.
I've known some of her story for a while as she lives near me, attends my church and I have the opportunity to go into her home and visit her once a month as her visiting teacher (which, by the way, I am not very good at!). I have watched her struggle and listened to her as she expressed so much frustration at the long term damage that was done by that colorless, odorless but extremely harmful gas.
As hurt as she was physically, she seems to feel more of an emotional pain as her story has been questioned repeatedly by her employers, those who she had devoted so much of her life to, those who she had called her friends. Her heart has broken and she struggles to forgive their actions.
But slowly, she is starting to heal, both physically and emotionally. She has expressed to me multiple times her gratitude in helping her to share her story in the hopes that it will save one life, that her pain will not be in vain. She says that it has been a huge part of her healing process.....
With that in mind, I am going to share my story, in the hopes that it will help me heal. What I am about to share is extremely personal and I am terrified of the possible judgement that may come as a result. But I know that emotional wounds are similar to physical wounds. In my training as an Emergency Medical First Responder, we are taught, in the case of severe bleeding, to apply layer upon layer of absorbent material along with pressure to stop the bleeding. Then, once the patient has gotten to an appropriate medical treatment facility, the experts there will remove the dressing and bandages that we applied and clean the wound, apply the proper medication and re-bandage it so that it can heal properly. In my world, I have put layer upon layer upon layer of material and applied pressure, almost to the breaking point in the form of busyness, to the wound but have not completely allowed the wound to be opened back up, cleaned and treated properly. The symbolic bleeding has stopped but the wound has become infected and cannot heal. And I have recently realized that I desperately need it to heal.
Ten years ago, something was missing in my life. My husband and I, along with our two children had just built our dream house in a beautiful area. A year earlier, I had to have my uterus and one ovary removed because of health issues. While I was devastated that I could not biologically have any more children, I knew that there were other children out there that I could help. Soon after moving into our new home, we met a couple who had devoted their lives to being foster parents. I knew, without question, that this was the path that we needed to take. This would be what would help fill that missing piece in my life and heart. We jumped in and never looked back, fulfilling our licensing requirements in what had to be record time. Even if we never were able to adopt any of the children, we were okay with that. We just wanted to help.
The day our license was approved, our phone rang with a placement, an 11 month old baby boy. He had been removed from his home because of extreme domestic violence and the plan was reunification. As we scrambled to get everything ready and I drove to the local office to pick him up, I was terrified! How could I love this child as my own, knowing that he would go home one day? As I sat at the stoplight, I was filled with the most overwhelming love for this child I had never met and I felt at peace.
I still remember driving into the parking lot and pulling into a parking spot next to a car that had an adorable blond haired chubby little boy asleep in a car seat in the back seat. And even before the caseworker confirmed it, I knew this was him.
When he came into our home, he weighed 30 lbs! He didn't know how to walk, let alone crawl. He could sit unsupported but that was about it. With the help of many professionals, he began to catch up. We got to know his biological parents and his grandmother and developed a really good relationship. We supported the plan for reunification and worked towards that goal. However, a month or so before the reunification was supposed to take place, things in the parents' world fell apart and they decided that it would be more beneficial for him if they relinquished their rights and allowed us to adopt him.
So we did. We renamed him and he became an official part of our forever family shortly after he turned 2. Still working with a team of professionals, it started to become apparent that he had some very unique needs. Those needs were hard enough to address with a "normal" size child, but he was not normal sized. He was huge. We struggled but were dealing with life. He was adored, loved and well cared for. We followed every direction that we were given - some worked, most didn't. When he was almost three, we added another foster child to the family, who oddly enough was another blond haired, eleven month old little boy.
Four months later, right after the parents of the second little boy relinquished their rights and asked us to adopt him, a knock came at the door. When I opened it, three investigative caseworkers from DCFS were standing on my doorstep. Someone had reported that we were abusing and neglecting our children. Unfortunately, this happens often with foster parents but knowing that fact did not prepare us for that. Every single decision I made as a mother was questioned: how I disciplined, how often I took my children to the doctor, where the kids slept, what they ate, how I got them dressed and changed their diapers, everything. My husband was questioned, our neighbors were questioned, our therapists were questioned our bio kids teachers were questioned, our caseworkers were questioned. It was a six week long nightmare. It became a terror when I realized after reading the statements in the allegation that it had come from a distant family member, not one that I had talked to directly but one that a close family member had talked to. Not only was I completely terrified, I felt horribly betrayed.
Eventually, the allegation investigation was over. We were cleared of any wrongdoing. It was completely unfounded. But the psychological stress took it's toll on me. I started questioning everything. I withdrew and started to avoid social situations, afraid that I was under scrutiny all the time by everyone around me. We were raising tough kids. The one we adopted first, B, was hard, to put it mildly. The one we were waiting to adopt, C, had his own set of issues. Our bio kids each had their own personality quirks that we were dealing with.
A week after we were cleared, we got the phone call we had been waiting for came. There was a baby girl that had been born the night before who needed a home. Did we want her? Tears started streaming down my cheeks, knowing that our little family was complete when this black haired baby joined it.
Within a year, we had adopted C and the new baby, making me a mother of a 10 year old, a 7 year old, a 4 year old, a 2 1/2 year old and a 1 year old. I was completely frazzled. I began to gain weight and retreated into books to escape my reality.
My reality wasn't pleasant. B started to develop more issues, becoming extremely defiant and aggressive. He outweighed our 7 year old by 20 lbs and was inches taller. Physically, I could barely handle him. We increased therapy. I started devouring parenting books and theories along with massive amounts to chocolate. We had him tested by a neuropsychologist. We had DNA testing done. We switched therapists. We utilized respite care. And we survived.
The results from the testing were grim. He had an extra Y chromosome which explained his size and strength. He would only continue to grow. The professionals predicted that based on diagnosis, he would most likely end up in prison as an adult, even with interventions. I refused to believe it and thought that if I just tried harder and did more and loved him more and was a better mom, he would be fine.
But he wasn't. No matter how hard I tried, it didn't get better. He hurt the other kids, he destroyed property, he tried to hurt himself, he hurt me. And it just kept getting worse. And I gave up. Emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, I was exhausted and depleted. I was a shell of my original self. There was nothing left.
Finally, a day came that changed everything. I had run outside to feed our chickens and heard screaming. I ran back in to find him cornering the other children under our kitchen table, holding a butcher knife to their throats. He was just about to turn 6.
I wrestled the knife away, forced him into his room and called the therapist in hysterics. The next few weeks were a blur. We had appointments with more professionals and DCFS staff, trying to work out a plan that could save both our son and our family.
However, there wasn't the possibility of such a plan. A month after he turned 6, we packed up his things, including a quilt we had hurried to make him and a caseworker came in a white minivan (it's amazing the details I remember). We had tried to explain things to him but he didn't understand. And honestly, I didn't understand myself. We drove to a home in South Salt Lake. They were a family without small children who had special training and background in dealing with his particular issues. We unpacked his things into his room, gave him a hug and kiss, and left.
In the van, I couldn't breathe. I had never felt that much pain. I thought that I had known heartbreak in my life but nothing compared to that moment. I felt some relief of course but the pain far outweighed it.
We had a visit with him and I also went to the top child psychologist in the state with him for an evaluation. That doctor determined that not only were we dealing with a host of issues, the most pronounced was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When I took B back and forth to the required visits with his biological family, it was so traumatic that he viewed me as the source of the trauma. The doctor told me that he could not allow B to ever come back to our family because eventually, he would kill us. We were not safe if he were in our home. That finding was passed on to the state workers and attorneys and in June of 2011, we relinquished our parental rights. That day at court was so bittersweet. The bitter was extreme. We basically had to say the words that we had heard so many times from the biological parents of the kids we had adopted - we were not fit to be B's parents. We weren't able to meet his needs. The sweet came when we walked into the courthouse and for the first time ever, he saw me and literally broke into a run and jumped into my arms. That was the only time that he really had ever shown that he loved me.
After court, we had a final good-bye at a local park. The kids all played and already I could see that he had made improvements in his new home. I was so grateful that someone had the knowledge and skills that I did not have. The actual good-bye was again bittersweet. Knowing that there was a huge possibility that I would never see him again was a very bitter pill to swallow. But when he hugged me, he sobbed and sobbed, once again, something that had never happened. I believe that God allowed him to feel and show emotion that he had never showed before just so that I knew that B loved me, even though I couldn't be his mom and give him what he needed.
The family ended up adopting him after he had been with them almost a year. I know that they are the family that he truly needs and that we were just the stepping stone to get him there. We have had no contact from them. The only pics I see is when I "Facebook Stalk" his new older brothers. In February of 2016, he will have been with them as long as he was with us.
I still haven't forgiven myself that I wasn't enough for him. I beat myself up thinking that if I only would have done more or done differently that it wouldn't have ended up this way. I think that the hardest person to forgive in this life is ourselves. But healing can only happen when we do forgive.
Ironically, I am currently going to college to become a parent educator. I struggle with this every day - how can I educate someone to be a parent when I kinda failed at it with one of my kids? But I have also realized that I don't need to be perfect because no one is. Doctors still get sick.
Yesterday at church, this song was sung. I've heard it dozens of times before. But yesterday, one of the lines hit me so strongly.
"He will heal those who trust Him..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAHqlD8zDR8
No comments:
Post a Comment