She sat in my lap and screamed and sobbed. Her denim jumper was damp; a mix of sweat and tears.
My husband had just called me because she would not stop screaming. I met him outside the bank beside his truck and I took my raging and screaming child into the quiet confines of my car. Her shrieks echoed loudly and I held her hands that were trying to claw her face. I ached to touch and heal her pain. She was hysterical and shaking and I had no idea how to meet the need she was desperately voicing; and the hardest part was knowing that she didn’t even know what the need was. Something minor had triggered a spiral into unfathomable darkness and fear, and it took a long time before my voice penetrated the depths and she resurfaced a shaking and hiccuping ball of exhaustion that collapsed on me.
I sit in my car and here is another moment that I don’t know what to do, or where to turn. In the world of foster and adoption, there are lots of parenting tips, attachment theories, and science-based methods that in these big moments….it mostly feels like squirting an inferno with a water gun. I have sat in this space many times over the years and there comes this realization that I cannot fix, heal, piece back together such a shattered heart. Instead it is a long journey of sitting in the dark moment and holding on tight.
In the Lord of the Rings movie, my favorite part, is when Frodo is so burdened by the darkness and pain he is carrying, that he collapses. His friend Sam says the following:
In the deepest pits of pain and broken, I cannot carry trauma for my child. I can only cry, “Up you get. Come on baby, I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well.”
And so I just sat in the car as the moments ticked by. There was no special methodology, trauma-informed parenting technique, or intervention. It was just an ugly, raw moment where I picked her up and she told me where we would go. And she took me to a place where her cries weren’t heard and she was hungry and scared. I sat with her and it was lacking in methodology and parenting technique, it was walking her pain and it hurt.
The awful part, the heart-wrenching-sobbing-mess part, the dark-rage-and-bottomless-tears part is this, you should not foster or adopt if you think you can rescue, redeem or save a child. Because you cannot. You are not their savior, their redeemer, or their rescuer. By choosing this path, you are choosing to do something HARD. And I’ll be honest, a very human part of me wants to warn you away. You see, I listen every week to broken, shattered and torn-apart families. I watch every week as children from hard backgrounds struggle to emerge from the darkness of trauma and cycle into the same sabotage, shame, and blame cycle. It is here that we see our ineptitude and inability to repair, and it is here that we come to the end of ourselves and realize this was never our job.
We started fostering over ten years ago. I walked onto the stage of foster care and I was ready to save a child. Months into our first placements and I found that I had crawled off the stage and was now working in the dust below. Foster care and adoption was not my stage to strut upon as the star of the day. Instead I felt myself crawling in the muck and the mire, sifting in the wreckage as a lonely stage carpenter trying to rebuild broken framework without instructions.
I began reading everything I could about raising children from hard places and attended classes and trainings to find the magical answer. I learned about brain development and the science behind trauma. I studied and started to apply what I had learned. And I’ll be blatantly honest; I’m human and there are times I don’t “parent with connection” and I cannot reach my inner-Karyn Purvis* to save my life. However they say experience is the greatest teacher. And what has been the greatest teacher for me, is the day to day valley with my kids. It’s the moments that I cannot fix and instead just shoulder the load with them in the moment.
What does the valley look like?
- supporting reunification even when every fiber of your being is shred in two.
- watching them drive away in the back of the caseworker’s car knowing that the parents they were removed from; are still the same parents one year later.
- it’s crying in your bed at night because you want to quit because this kid is SO HARD, and nothing is working, and then getting up the next morning and not quitting.
- when you’re so tired because the child needs medication every three hours and there is no break at night.
- when your bank account has $12 and you need $30 in gas because the nurse on the unit called and asked you to return because your foster baby is fading.
- when you go to church and everyone asks where you have been and says how good you look, and inside you are falling apart.
- it’s the nights you don’t sleep because sometimes there really are monsters under their bed, and the dark is truly scary.
- it’s hearing that “I could never do that”, and thinking, “I can’t do it either, but I’m here and it’s the only choice”.
- It’s answering the question, “Why didn’t my real mom want me?”
The valley is lonely – Even when surrounded with the most amazing and well-meaning friends, you will be lonely. You are going to struggle and you will look for answers from the attachment experts and the behavior methods, and as a fellow lonely-struggler, I encourage you to remember that character and substance are found within hardship and adversity.
And sometimes, you can only cry, “Up you get. Come on baby, I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well.” And you dig in and you walk the valley because you were born to do this.
We are not built for the mountains and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, and that is where we have to prove our mettle. Oswald Chambers
* author of The Connected Child. I highly recommend this book to all foster and adopt parents.