Author: debyemm

Saved From Foster Care

Evgeny Anisimov with Misha

We have discovered in my all things adoption group the strong love some fathers have for their children. More than once, that group has provided financial assistance and emotional support to fathers who’s children were given away by the mother without the father’s consent. This story is heartwarming and special for me, the boy’s name is the same as my daughter’s. We did know the name had Russian roots. Her dad chose it and gave it to the hospital authorities before I knew he was going to name her that (we had thought we were having a son and so a female name had never come up). My daughter was born in El Paso Texas which is on the border with Mexico and in the Spanish language, female names end with an “a”, so it worked and I love that it is her name.

Back to the story, provided by LINK>My Positive Outlooks, Mom wanted to give up baby with Down syndrome to Foster care, so dad decided to raise him all on his own. “My determination, activity, curiosity, and so on—everything was with me. Everything happened as I planned, my son was born. But the child is special, his life and future destiny are already very significant,” Evgeny said in an interview. He realized the child was his responsibility and that he should be up to the task of taking care of him, no matter how difficult that may be. His wife however wanted to surrender their son to foster care.

While every task is simple, the single dad admits doing it every day is difficult. Luckily for him, his mother helps him, so he can have time for himself. “I understand that the future might bring more issues, but I hope that we will be able to overcome everything,” he said. He also hopes to support and inspire by his example those people who are or will be in the same situation as him.

Adoption Gift Receipt

The “gotcha” thing is common but I’ve never liked it. Today, I read something about a gift receipt ? related to an adoption. I was completely lost on this one. The adoptive parents were asked if they kept the “gift receipt” to which they answered “she’s already been ours.”

Some comments – “The gift receipt comment just…Completely and absolutely oblivious to how much that dehumanizes that child.”

Then this – “I was ready to possibly say just delete and move on but the “gift receipt” comment really gets to me and it gets so tiring how how casually shit like this is thrown out there. It reminds me of how my parents referred to me as being “on sale” because they adopted me the day before the adoption rates at the agency I was placed with went up. It’s not cute or funny. It’s dehumanizing and gross.”

And this (I think I’m beginning to understand . . . ) “like wtf makes people okay with saying the shit they say?! It’s so disgusting the way they use these “cute innocent” remarks and jokes to glorify our trauma. It made me sick reading the gift receipt thing like what?! And with social media now… can you imagine this little girl growing up and finding this and reading that. In some ways social media had made adoption even worse then it already was.”

And one more from a mother of loss to adoption – “my daughter grew up hearing how she was a ‘gray market baby’. I was preyed upon and “pre birth matched” back before that became a thing.”

But before reading those comments above, I was searching google on this. I noted how many kinds of “adoption” certificates are out there !! Really. From Olive Trees to African Rhinos, Aardvarks, Monkeys and Unicorns. I’m certain you get the idea, everything under the sun; and of course, puppies and kittens. And a gift certificate for a day of play. No wonder I was so totally lost about the issue (though not any longer, now I do understand).

If you don’t know why “Gotcha” is an issue – read this – LINK>The Controversy of ‘Gotcha Day’.

And why I write these blogs – change happens on a systemic level, not an individual one. I have to remind myself of that a lot. I am constantly reminding myself that if I am true to my principles of trying to make that change happen, there are actionable things I *can* do that make a bigger impact and hurt less than try to change one heart at a time on social media.

Never Ending Grief

Today’s story from an adoptee – Today I was told my biological half brother, who has been the most communicative of my first family, has terminal lung cancer. I’ve never met him, our younger brother or either of my sisters, in person. I do not have a good relationship with first mom and first father is deceased. I had knowledge this might be a possibility and thought I was okay. But I am grief stricken. I can not stop crying and left work today. My heart is broken for a brother I never got to have and now one that will never be. Suggestions for dealing with this grief are welcome. I probably should add I lost both my adoptive parents and brother already and a son to suicide 4.5 Yrs ago. This grief feels too much and never ending.

One respondent suggested – I’m sorry for his diagnosis. I’ve found writing a grief letter to be helpful to process thoughts and feelings. Let the feelings of grief come up within your body as you write.

Another suggested – I’m so very sorry for all of your losses- the pain must be massive. My heart aches for you. Please hang in there- the world needs your light. I would encourage you to reach out to your brother and prioritize meeting him as quickly as possible. Have the relationship you’re grieving. In the meantime, I would start keeping a journal (or a note on your phone) of all the things you think of to discuss with your brother. Maybe even write him a letter (that you don’t have to send) expressing the feelings you’re experiencing right now.

Another adoptee wrote – A grief counselor and therapist really helped me deal with the loss in my life. I don’t know if this is helpful but my therapist told me I have to grieve the life I will never have. For me, I will never have a family and once I can grieve and accept that fact, it will be easier to move forward and be clear on what I really want and need for my future. I know the circumstances are different in your case. 

Another notes – I too have had so very many losses myself. It is a hard walk to travel through. I reach out when I’m feeling needy or I have feelings that are overwhelming before I am in what I call a crisis. For me it took time to learn how to do this (reaching out) and my triggers, what they are and which times I know I’m going to struggle the most – such as holidays, birthdays. I learned that it’s always up and down, and sometimes it can be easier by working on myself and embracing my journey.

Another adoptee wrote – Disenfranchised grief is real grief too. She also wrote – Virtual hug to you (cause physical hugs I can’t stand).

It Matters

An adoptee’s story – I recently met a biological 2nd cousin at a funeral of her brother, whom I had already known. We were both delighted to finally meet in person. She lives in NC and I live in NJ, so the opportunities for this are few. We loved meeting each other!

She told me her daughter’s adopting a baby and she’s so excited to finally become a grandmother. I replied, telling her I’m so happy for her, and also sad for the baby who is losing a mother. She said the mother is addicted to drugs and she’s hoping the mother “will just disappear”. She admitted (without my prompting) that she knows this is “kind of selfish”, but it’s still how she feels. I couldn’t believe she said the quiet part out loud! – to an adoptee in the family, who obviously was so happy to be able to know my biological family and was just meeting a number of them for the first time! She couldn’t make the mental connection between my need to know them and this baby’s need to know their own biological family.

Because I had only just met her, I kept silent, but thought to myself that I could send her the book “Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency” to help her understand the child’s need to know at least some people in their biological family. And then I could follow up with the suggestion that it might be safe and even advisable for the child to have supervised visits with the mother…Even if it seems unnecessary to the adoptive family.

She had concerns – Too forward? She won’t read it? She’ll be angry and won’t read it? She’ll be angry and reject me? If that’s a possibility, should I still do it? Why does all this have to be so complex?

From an adoptive parent – I think it really depends on the person. When I was a hopeful adoptive parent I would have surely read it. I read everything I could find online and off. Others who had walked the journey before me (because there weren’t adoptee or birth parent voices readily found online at that time) were my teachers. They opened my eyes to the ethical implications, the way separation at birth alone causes trauma and that it’s not reserved for a 15 year old who grew up in Russian orphanages. None of it was enough to stop my adoption plans but it did help me to go into it with eyes wide open. I didn’t adopt domestically though. But yes – send the book.

Another adoptive parent one agreed – it’ll depend on the person, I would’ve read it but probably would have been sort of guarded against it. The fact that she mentioned knowing it was kind of selfish makes me think she might be open to it… hopefully! I also specifically searched for adoptees specific to the international program I was looking into and they existed but were extremely minority voices. The messaging I was getting back then was how to adopt more ethically. Not the downfalls of adoption entirely. Shortly after there were good books written and more and more voices speaking out and more and more priority given to those voices. With social media, things changed quickly. So while there were resources before, there was infinitely more easily acceptable voices now. But really my point is just that you never know what will break through to a potential adopter and I think books are a great way to spread information and start that conversation.

Another one thought –  I think she would definitely have something to gain from it but most people are not receptive to that, especially people from older generations, and i dont know if its something i would want to say outright if you want that relationship. Also it might be more helpful to have that conversation with the people actually adopting. I have relatives that feel that way and they can feel that way but we are still going to have contact with other family members anyway and it’s not up for discussion. Our contact with them is more limited. Since you’ve already lost this family one time, maybe build a relationship with them first and see if they seem receptive to talking about the hard parts of adoption. My second cousins were adopted out and we didn’t have any contact until one was an adult, still don’t have contact with the other. We have had some serious talks about adoption. Our parents generation in our family does not acknowledge their trauma and the challenges it caused in their life. I’ve seen my cousin basically written off for this and that’s the main reason i would approach it cautiously. It may be worth considering expressing it more about how you felt growing up and hoping they can make that connection. I feel statements tend to be something people are more receptive to.

An adoptee expresses her perspective – Unfortunately it isn’t possible for anyone to predict her reactions. However, I would consider it divine providence that you came into their lives right as a new adopted baby is. It can be an opportunity for them to have a deeper understanding of the baby’s needs. Say your peace, respectfully, and with a soft heart. Don’t make the truth harder to swallow that it has to be – if you want them to actually be receptive. It sounds like you do care about them – so just follow your instincts. If they react poorly, you’ll know that it wasn’t your doing but something broken in them.

Yesterday’s Rant

The rant I didn’t share yesterday but don’t take that or my image above to mean I didn’t and still don’t agree 100% with her perspective. From one all things adoption group – which has really been informative for me since 2017, when I first learned the truths of my own parents’ adoptions.

This group has helped dozens of moms get their babies back from hopeful adoptive parents. Most are simple revocations. Far too many have led to long drawn out court battles across state lines. Thankfully, we have generous members who have allowed us to help moms and dads fight.

These cases are agony for parents and babies. I never feel sympathy for the hopeful adoptive parents AKA as kidnappers for several reasons. One, they knew the risks going in. Two, they shouldn’t be so damn happy to take a baby out of their desperate parents’ arms. I’m not putting parents on a pedestal but I know the desperation that leads to relinquishing in the first place. Third, they ignore revocations and fight like hell to keep baby. We’ve helped five dads whose babies were placed for adoption without their consent.

I’m not the parent in any of these cases but during an ongoing “case” it consumes my thoughts. I wonder how hopeful adoptive parents can be so selfish. I wonder how some of them are so wealthy but use their wealth to fight to keep someone else’s child. So many in the cases we have helped with have been in financial positions to do so much good in the world but they are doing damage.

I struggle with understanding such selfishness. It crosses into evil. Yet, if cases like these hit the press, it’s the hopeful adoptive parents with all the sympathy. Natural parents are villains and not even because they signed in the first place, but because they are poor.

I can’t fathom how you look at someone during the lowest point in their life, when they feel desperate enough to give away their own child and take said child vs offering to help.

We look at every single profile when we receive join requests. I struggle with the constant “hoping to adopt” and GoFundMe’s posts asking for money to adopt. Yet, this group has existed for 9 years and those same people won’t buy a pacifier off a baby registry or donate a $1. WTF is a $1?

I believe in being a good human and baby buying isn’t it. Lusting after a baby isn’t it either.

Only Because They Are Poor

So much could be said – here is just a sampling.

From a 2021 story in The Seattle Times LINK>Taking Too Many Children From Their Parents. They share this story . . . Esther Taylor remembers everyone tensing up. She was 8, and didn’t understand everything going on. But she knew a social worker had confronted her mom about the way Taylor and her siblings were living, in a house with faulty wiring and a rat problem, ostensibly home-schooled but not taught frequently of late. And she could see her mom getting upset.

Then, confusion as what she thought would be a routine errand at a state office turned into an all-day affair. Why are we still here? Eventually, Taylor, a sister and a brother were led to a supply of clothes, where she picked out a Lilo & Stitch jacket and other items. They would not be going home, not even to grab pajamas.

Now 22 and a college student in Walla Walla, Taylor said she wishes state workers had asked how to help instead of sending her and her sister to one foster home, her brother to another. She is still haunted by the two-and-a-half-year separation from her mom, whom she remembers as kind and funny, and who died of cancer seven years ago. Taylor said she struggles with abandonment issues and sometimes wonders: “Am I not worthy to have a mother?”

Even agencies overseeing foster care are recognizing that separating children from their parents may be unnecessary in many cases to resolve problems often linked to poverty, while causing lasting trauma and disproportionately affecting people of color.

From a law office, of course (blogger’s note – this doesn’t address the issue of poverty !!) LINK>5 Things You Need To Do If Your Children Are Taken By Div of Children and Families (DCF) –

  1. Contact an Attorney
    Before you contact anyone else or even give yourself the chance to cry, reach out to a family lawyer. The family court system is extremely complex and does not favor parents who have lost temporary custody of their children.
  2. Review Your Safety Plan
  3. Jot Down Everything You Remember
    It’s particularly important to note any threats or warnings made by DCF.
  4. Request That Children Be Placed With Family Members
    If you have family in the area who can care for your children, request that they care for your children until they are returned to you. Being separated from parents is a traumatic event for children, and it can cause even more lasting damage if they are placed with people they don’t know. Limit the damage by ensuring that children are with someone you and they trust.
  5. Begin the Appeals Process
    To get your children back from DCF, you may need to appeal their original decision to take custody. This often involves proving that you provide a safe, stable, and healthy home life.

Finally this from The Center for Public Integrity – In some states you can go golfing but LINK>you can’t visit your child in foster care. A Public Integrity survey found 20 states restricted visitation for parents of children in foster care.

Truth No Longer Matters ?

When there is no agreed criterion to distinguish science from pseudoscience or just plain ordinary BS, it is post-empirical science, where truth no longer matters and it IS potentially very dangerous.

Case in point – Diane Baird – who labeled her method for assessing families the “Kempe Protocol” after the renowned University of Colorado institute where she worked for decades. From a ProPublica expose – LINK>An Expert Admits Her Evaluations Are Unscientific.

From that story – Diane Baird had spent four decades evaluating the relationships of poor families with their children. But last May, in a downtown Denver conference room, with lawyers surrounding her and a court reporter transcribing, she was the one under the microscope. Baird is a social worker and professional expert witness. She has routinely advocated in juvenile court cases across Colorado that foster children be adopted by or remain in the custody of their foster parents rather than being reunified with their typically lower-income birth parents or other family members.

Was Baird’s method for evaluating these foster and birth families empirically tested? No, Baird answered: Her method is unpublished and unstandardized, and has remained “pretty much unchanged” since the 1980s. It doesn’t have those “standard validity and reliability things,” she admitted. “It’s not a scientific instrument.” Who hired and was paying her in the case that she was being deposed about? The foster parents, she answered. They wanted to adopt, she said, and had heard about her from other foster parents.

Had she considered or was she even aware of the cultural background of the birth family and child whom she was recommending permanently separating? (The case involved a baby girl of multiracial heritage.) Baird answered that babies have “never possessed” a cultural identity, and therefore are “not losing anything,” at their age, by being adopted. Although when such children grow up, she acknowledged, they might say to their now-adoptive parents, “Oh, I didn’t know we were related to the, you know, Pima tribe in northern California, or whatever the circumstances are.” (Actually, the Pima tribe is located in the Phoenix metropolitan area.)

A fundamental goal of foster care, under federal law, is for it to be temporary: to reunify children with their birth parents if it is safe to do so or, second best, to place them with other kin. Extensive social science research has found that kids who grow up with their own families experience less long-term separation trauma, fewer mental health and behavioral problems as adolescents and more of an ultimate sense of belonging to their culture of origin.

But a ProPublica investigation co-published with The New Yorker in October revealed that there is a growing national trend of foster parents undermining the foster system’s premise by “intervening” in family court cases as a way to adopt children. As intervenors, they can file motions and call witnesses to argue that they’ve become too attached to a child for the child to be reunited with their birth family, even if officials have identified a biological family member who is suitable for a safe placement.

A key element of the intervenor strategy, ProPublica found, is hiring an attachment expert like Baird to argue that rupturing the child’s current attachment with his or her foster parents could cause lifelong psychological damage — even though Baird admitted in her deposition that attachment is a nearly inevitable aspect of the foster care model. (Transitions of children back to their birth families are not just possible, they happen every day in the child welfare system.)

In the Huerfano County case, Baird filed a report saying that the baby girl’s life with her foster parents was “predictable, safe, and filled with love”; that removing her from them and placing her with her biological grandma — with whom the girl had been having regular, joyful visits — would “derail her healthy development and create lifelong risk”; and that her “healthy development and mental health will be best protected if her current caregiving environment does not change.”

Baird, in an interview with ProPublica, admitted that “I do sometimes use the same verbiage in one report as I did in others.” But, she added in an email, “My consistency is not a boiler-plate approach, but rather reflects developmental science which applies to all children.” She emphasized, “In all cases I advocate for what I am convinced is the child’s best interest.”

Baird also noted that in many cases she is hired by county officials, rather than directly by foster parents, although ProPublica’s interviews and review of records show that this typically happens when officials are in agreement with the foster parents that they should get continuing or permanent custody. Baird, despite not being a child psychologist, achieves credibility with these officials — and with judges — in part via the impressive label that she uses for her methodology: the Kempe Protocol.

Founded in the 1970s, the Kempe Center is best known for getting laws passed across the country requiring “mandated reporters” like teachers and police officers to call in any suspicion of child abuse or neglect to a state hotline — after which kids were to be removed from their families, into foster care, if there was evidence of maltreatment. “No organization,” said Marty Guggenheim, the founder of the nation’s indigent family defense movement, “played a more direct role in shaping the modern system of surveillance, over-reporting, and under-emphasizing of the harms associated with state intervention.”

In recent years, Kempe has taken a more critical look at its past, accepting some institutional responsibility for what it has called the “myth of benevolence”: the idea that certain kids should be redistributed from their families to (often better-off) foster and adoptive parents. The center recently released a statement saying that it had participated in ignoring poverty by placing sole responsibility for poor children’s health and well-being on their families’ alleged maltreatment of them. The statement acknowledged the center’s “complicity” in its “generation-spanning impacts.”

Some of Kempe’s staff have called Baird’s method a “bogus Kempe protocol” and “junk science” used “to rip apart families.” She is “leveraging the Kempe name to bolster her opinion.” Drawing from the foster parents’ version of events, Baird routinely reports to the county or testifies in court that visits with the birth family have been detrimental to the child, and, accordingly, she recommends that the foster parents keep the child indefinitely or permanently, on the basis of attachment theory. She has called just this amount of evaluation “the Kempe Protocol” in several cases we reviewed.

Sadly, there appears to be no clear recourse for all of the birth families who’ve lost their children in the past because of Baird’s work. 

Shame On You Missouri

Whose Money Is It ?

From an article in the Missouri Independent, LINK>Legislation aims to stop Missouri from seizing federal benefits owed to foster kids. Turns out Missouri’s child welfare agency took at least $6.1 million in foster kids’ benefits last year to reimburse itself for the cost of providing care. Of course they did !! Missouri’s practice of taking millions of dollars in Social Security benefits owed to foster kids to defray the cost of providing care could come to an end under legislation debated last week in a House committee. The state took at least $6.1 million in foster kids’ benefits last year — generally Social Security benefits for those with disabilities or whose parents have died — to reimburse itself for agency costs.

It’s a decades-long practice that has come under increased scrutiny across the country over the last few years. Several states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon, have stopped the practice. Fifteen states and cities have, according to NPR, “taken steps to preserve the money of foster youth.” Nationally, state leaders have raised concerns they wouldn’t be able to fill in the budget gap left by abolishing the practice. California’s governor last year vetoed a bill that would’ve halted the practice, saying it would have cost too much.

If the legislation actually passes (a big IF in this state), the division could use the funds for the child’s “unmet needs” beyond what the division is obligated to pay, such as housing as the child prepares to age out of foster care. The state would also be required to ensure the account in which the child’s benefits are deposited is set up in a way that doesn’t interfere with federal asset limits.

“This money is important for their future,” Rep Hannah Kelly of Mountain Grove said. She has been a foster parent in the past. The hearing was in a House Children and Families committee. “We have a responsibility to make sure that it is safeguarded for their future.”

The state withheld $8.1 million in foster kids’ benefits in 2018, $7.9 million in 2020 and $7.1 million in 2022, according to data shared at the House Children and Families committee. State agencies are allowed to be designated as the payee for kids in their custody, though nationally it’s been documented that kids aren’t always informed the state is receiving their benefits. The main federal benefits at issue are through Social Security: Supplemental Security Income for those with disabilities and survivor’s benefits for those who have a parent who has died. Kelly’s bill also includes benefits issued by the Railroad Retirement Board and Veterans Administration.

Around 10% of foster kids are entitled to Social Security benefits for survivors or those with severe disabilities, national reports have estimated. That would mean somewhere around 1,200 kids are eligible yearly in Missouri. The result of the practice is that kids who are orphaned or have disabilities are responsible for paying toward the cost of their care in state custody, while foster kids who are ineligible for those benefits pay nothing. “No child really wants to be in foster care,” said Rep Raychel Proudie of St. Louis, “…to make them pay for it is just absolutely egregious. We don’t usually make children pay for their care under any other circumstance.”

The state uses the money to pay for routine foster care costs, though agency staff did not provide details when asked by lawmakers about those specific expenditures. In other states, it’s used to help offset the money states pay foster parents and group homes, for instance, for costs like housing and food. The bill would prohibit that practice, so the agency would only be able to use the money to pay for things outside the bounds of their obligations, such as tuition, transportation, technology or housing.

A foster father, Jason White, testified at the House hearing that his foster child, now 20, “has exactly zero dollars to his name,” which he said would not be true if the state had put his federal benefits money into an account. The state is supposed to provide a quarterly accounting of how it is using a child’s money but White said in practice that hasn’t happened. He has no record of where his foster child’s benefits went.

Madison Eacret, lobbyist for the nonprofit social service organization FosterAdopt Connect, said the annual social security disability benefit per child is around $10,000: equivalent to “two years of books and supplies for college, 10 months of rent for a one bedroom, nine to 12 months of child care for a young child, or four years of SNAP benefits. Currently the vast majority of foster youth beneficiaries including those in Missouri never see a dollar of this money, and they don’t even know that someone has applied for their benefits.”

Mary Chant, CEO of Missouri Coalition for Children, said the money could help foster youth who age out of the system and can become homeless. “This funding would make a considerable difference in helping youth better position themselves for independence. This money belongs with the child.” 

This or That

I have a friend who discovered late in life what she had always felt – her “father” wasn’t actually her genetic, biological dad. What is often referred to as NPE (not parent expected). Today, she wrote –

There is a stunning feeling when you need to take personal responsibility to wrongs done to you. It is stunning and confusing. Sometimes causes a wound that is blinding and at times suffocating. Running in circles, like chasing your tail, some things are hard to accept. Accept it. Done, work with it.

Many therapies work to meet injuries and reform and transform them on many levels, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

I have found some injuries lead to what I have come to describe as “this or that” mentality. There isn’t a remedy. There is no answer, there is no change, there is no hope. You have a rich milieu and a drive toward contrast. Second that drive lets up, feels like you are being drawn back to the “this” instead of reaching for the “that”.

“That” is the therapy, whatever is moving you away from the “this” which is the wound, the impossibility of circumstances that twist your heart, wounded your life. You have that to work against constantly, with endless, incessant pressure that if used well and correctly you can possibly actually reach the “that”.

You may face people saying you need therapy out of that, yet due to circumstances that became your personality structure. This is what you take responsibility for: the drive, the determination of that personality structure.

There are some things that cannot be undone and you may never stop feeling that. You are not “responsible” for that, but for the drive that it gives you.

This requires a high degree of self-education, character and discipline, to define an act and act upon it. Otherwise, seems the “this” swallows you up. An enormous cost for something you had no hand in deciding or wanting. How the cookie crumbles.

Crumbled a great deal of energy on your plate.

When questioned, she further elaborated – What I have been looking at and trying to formulate thoughts and direction is around these types of wrongs and any scale of wrong that you had no hand in. It comes up on you and your life and personality is defined by it.

You are left “dealing with it”, taking responsibility for something that you cannot change. It has to change you. You go through a great deal, bone cutting, soul cutting, breath restricting pain and change. You can’t “fix” it.

There is a lot of therapies to “fix” us, to heal, but some injuries don’t heal…then what?

I have been looking at a lot of circumstances, studying them, looking into the dynamics of what drive people in all types of ways. It is always some deep wound, a deep “wrong” that drive people one way or another. So I began to look at the drive…THAT is what we are responsible for. Not the wrong, but the drive.

Hard to take your mind off the wrong and the injury – and if you look at that too much, you might miss the opportunity to understand your drive painful and impossible situations might give a person.

I need to add one response to her – We have no say in the matter as to the wrongs committed upon us by others in this life. But we do have a say in the matter if such wrongs destroy us or not.

As a child, I had a horrible act committed upon me as six. A physical scar of which I carry to this day. I could have let the shame I felt, the anger, hate, and rage I felt towards the persons responsible simmer and boil in me for the rest of my life. But it would have destroyed the person I was before the event. They would have succeeded in utterly destroying the rest of my life.

It took me time. But for the sake of my life and sanity. I learned to “Let go” of that shame, anger, hate, and rage. Else, that poison would have gone on inflicting and reliving that act in my mind day after day the rest of my life. And my perpetrators would have succeeded in destroying “me.” So I let it go.

It doesn’t mean I forgive them! That will never happen!

But I can honestly say I’m back to being who I started out in life to be “I’m me” and the physical and emotional scar left over from that attack no longer has any sting, any meaning to me. Other than an old scar.

One of the core teaching Buddha taught about suffering in the world was that. One of the traits of suffering in the world is that it’s natural for humans to not ‘Let Go’ of past injustices. The violent act is over in minutes. But for the rest of our lives, we carry that suffering and pain like a great weight upon our souls. No one forces us to. We do it to ourselves by way of our Ego. And therefore we suffer for the rest of our lives. Not only that, but in time, we inflict that suffering upon others. Ie “Misery loves company.”

Therefore, we should learn to Let Go. And in doing so bring Peace to the Soul.

I never went to therapy for what happened to me. I was very young when it happened and my parents were of the generation that believed in that old motto and hope ‘He’ll grow out of it and forget.’ That never happened. I had to discover that healing on my own when I was older and I did.

I’m glad I never got therapy. For I feel therapists, though good intentioned, perpetuate that suffering by continuing to remind you that your helpless victim that somehow broken.

You only remain that if you refuse to ‘Let Go.’

I’m a Survivor!

Changing Perspectives

A woman writes – I am a foster parent/almost an adoptive parent. I am adopting my two foster kids in a few weeks. As I’ve been thinking about what comes next, I am really drawn to turning in my foster license and joining LINK>Safe Families for Children as a host family. I would really like to support natural parents and family preservation by helping families in crisis. However I’m wondering how that will impact my adopted kids? Would doing this potentially be traumatic for them? I don’t want to do anything that introduces more trauma unnecessarily.

Some responses – a lot of them wanted her to “just focus on the kids you’re adopting.” An adoptee asks – “Why do you need to split your attention and not focus fully on the children currently in your care They should be your main and only priority at this point, especially if you’re adopting them. If you want to support family preservation efforts, I’d do so with dollars. Give money to organizations that actively work to keep families out of the system to begin with.”

One foster parent admitted – “I would worry a little that they might resent the fact you didn’t do this for their natural parents. The kids could be hurt that their adoptive mom is helping others to keep their kids. I just think this is going to be another major trauma to her littles in the long run. They can be told all day long that their natural parents were not good for them, but seeing their adoptive parent help others keep their kids is still going to hurt them in the long run; how could it not ?”

Another sees the idea differently – Speaking from experience, I can tell you, there is no one who understands another kid in “care” like another kid in “care”. We have adopted, then fostered, and then did safe families and because this was our joint family mission, it worked great ! Make sure you are always on the same page before saying yes to a placement, take breaks when someone needs it and be flexible. Safe families is short term and a fantastic family mission.

Another with similar experience shares – Safe Families is structured to have many different volunteer opportunities…you don’t have to host…you can be a coach or a family friend…those positions don’t require having other kids in your home…My adoptive daughter thinks I am going to “get rid of her” every time a kiddo leaves our home…so we have decided to only take on parenting teens moving forward and give them the opportunity to age out with our children in their life … changing my role to be more of a model/guide, while still being able to help vulnerable families…I do respite for safe families and maintain contact with children and their parents and continue to support, even after they are fully home…you can still help and also not have your kids go through any additional trauma.

One pediatric psychologist asked – “How old are the kids you’re planning to adopt ?” Then, noted – “I would recommend involving them in the decision and honoring whatever feelings they have about it. Consent is super important and unfortunately foster children’s consent is historically non-existent.”