the accidental bohemian

healing. family. spirituality. growth.

December 28, 2023
by thebohemianjournalist
2 Comments

finally, a family update

It’s been three years now, since I took that break from writing in The Adoption Diaries. But I realize I have left everyone hanging on what became of this odd little blended family and the rescued boy. Aside from my dedicated readers out there from the beginning, there are new users every month that are still just finding this story. So I must now give an update to all of you!

I had to take a break when I did because the stress was too high at that point and it felt private; the horror of what we were suffering didn’t feel like anyone else’s but ours. We had hit an age of development with him that is a normal pull-away-and-become-your-own-person-with-your-own-rules age. But with a kid like Jack that didn’t just mean your average wow this is really hard stage. It was more like–okay…are we all really going to survive this?

There were lots of run-ins with police, a few high-speed car chases, (one ending in an intentional carefully executed collision between our son’s car and my husband’s truck), bedroom windows nailed shut, and finally, a runaway situation.

We lost him.

Literally.

He was seventeen when he ran away with his girlfriend, Jada.

He loved us, and the bond was already strong, so he never left just out of the blue. This was the cycle: He messes up, we issue a consequence (Mainly at this point, loss of car), and he runs to evade said consequence (usually in the car).

So the final time he ran, he texted us and said: I am not coming back. Then he blocked us.

We nearly disabled his phone then. But halted and thought it over. We needed to keep the communication open. We needed to be strategic and not reactive. Nothing could be done here simply out of anger or spite. We had to play our hand perfectly or we would lose him for good. This was it. The final battle. The question was, would we win or lose? And what did winning actually mean?

See, we fought for him when he was fourteen. We fought for him when he was fifteen. And sixteen. It sometimes felt like a never-ending battle, fighting to keep him, find him, guide him, get him to come home, get him to go to school, get him to go to sleep, get him to wake up. All of life was a fight. And some of them were grizzly, horrid, even bloody, traumatizing. To be fair, he tried really hard to please us, to follow the rules, to honor the boundaries, but it wasn’t sustainable. His precious little brain was wired in a way that he just couldn’t keep it up. He got distracted, his phone died, he couldn’t keep track of time, he was easily sidetracked by any person or fun that presented itself. School, schedules, and curfews were impossible for him to uphold consistently. And as soon as he made a mistake and got caught and faced a consequence, the whole world may as well just come to an end. The fight for him and with him was just a way of life.

But the reason we fought, and never stopped fighting was because we were laying the groundwork then. He was young and he needed to be harnessed, dragged home, possessed, protected. But also, and more importantly, this groundwork we were laying was showing him his value to us. No one had ever fought for him like we did. No one had ever chased him down with a car. Rammed his car with a truck in a parking lot to stop him. Nailed his window shut. Tackled him to the ground. No one in his life before had ever bled or suffered or fought like we did for him. Without relenting, without stopping, without ever giving up. My husband, his dad, fought especially hard. And what all that fight said to him, even before his little scared soul ever knew what it was hearing, was this:

You are OURS. We will never stop wanting you. You are worth every fight. We will never give up. Because YOU ARE OURS. More than you’ve ever been anyone else’s.

We earned the bond. We earned the unconditional love. We earned the reality in his heart and mind and in our family that said: there is no one in this world that has EVER loved you like we do or EVER will.

And so. After we lost him. We got him back.

He was seventeen when he ran away. The fights and the battles all clustered around his freedom and independence. He didn’t want to go to school or stay in school or do schoolwork of any kind. He didn’t want to come home at night or stay home at night or sleep at night. He wanted full freedom–like most kids his age do. That part wasn’t unusual. The unusual part was the full-on world-war-like experience that took place whenever we tried to set or hold any boundary in place. And the even more violent horrendous fallout of attempting to dole out consequences for breeching them.

When he ran away, he dropped out of school of course, not that he had been going before that, and he was failing every class anyway. He was only months away from graduation, but would never have actually graduated due to the neglect of his studies.

We had to make a choice: We had reached a battle we couldn’t win, an age when it was not vital to keep fighting it, and a situation where the hierarchy of needs here pointed to something so far greater than whether he slept in a bed in our house or graduated high school.

The most important thing was NOT to keep him in school or in his bed at night anymore. It was to keep him in our life. To keep our relationship. To protect the bond.

We knew generally where he was when they ran away. He only had so many friends that had their own places or parents willing to harbor them without question. We left them be for a handful of days and let everyone have a little bit of a rest. We stopped chasing at that point. Let everyone cool off. It was necessary. Then we texted Jada and asked them to come home for a chat. We told them we were going to release him, but we needed to make a plan. He and Jada came right over.

We said, “Ok. You two are old enough now to make it on your own, is that what you want?”

“Yes.”

Jada had already turned 18. Jack was 17. Jada was still on track to graduate. We were calm and gentle and uplifting here, not condescending or passive-aggressive or bitter. They only wanted to be their own people, it was now time to help lift them up to be their own people. We had come to the end of the rope and we knew letting go was going to save us all, clinging yanking pulling would only make everyone miserable and make our relationship fail.

We said, “If you want to be released we will release you, to live your own life, but it’s time to stop hiding out in people’s basements and doing nothing but running. You’re not on the run anymore, no-one is chasing you anymore.” We told them we would help them get an apartment and they could both get on with the business of working and living. We helped him pack his things and he and his dad hugged hard for a long time and his dad heaved rare true tears on his tall shoulder. It was a good-bye of sorts. And, probably not coincidentally, our older son had moved out to his own apartment the same week. We were emptying our nest in one fell swoop. There was pain.

But there was a great exhaling sense of relief. Because it was, in its strategy, actually us claiming him back. In all the glory of the tired cliche, we had to let go to have him back. The fight was only going to kill our bond, one way or another.

The bond was the focus.

The bond needs to always be the top priority.

The bond comes before education. Before rules. Before everything. It is the big picture that all the other details must fit into or they must be thrown out. There is no other way to make it in love. And a person without healthy bonds cannot be healthy in any of those other things. The bond is first.

He and Jada struggled of course in their new life, and there were ups and downs, but we knew when to support and when to step back and let them struggle. When to help and when to let them feel the true magnitude of their independence. Our bond was not hurt. It GREW. And it keeps growing.

It has been more than three years now. He is twenty years old. He is our joy. Our JOY. He gives us so much joy. We went from suffering and stress in him that felt like it pushed us to the edge of ourselves… to JOY in him.

It has been a wild ride for him. We even almost lost him once to a car wreck that he should not have lived through; that can be another blog post. They have moved a couple more times but since that initial help to get their first apartment, they have not needed help again. We are so proud of them both. And Jada is a daughter to us.

So that is my update. I stopped writing because it was so bad I couldn’t even share it anymore. We fought through it with every molecule our warrior souls could muster. We knew when to stop fighting. We chose to place the bond at the very top of the hierarchy of needs, even when people judged us for it. And we have a beautiful whole incredible family because of it.

The following photos are from this Thanksgiving, when we spent a week at the cabin with our amazing sons, their amazing women (that they have been with since they were each sixteen years old–beautiful loyal boys of mine) and my parents. It was the best time we’ve ever had. We did many things together over Christmas. We see each other regularly, and both the boys work with their dad at the family PDR business.

We made it.

We are a success story.

That’s my update.

April 29, 2020
by thebohemianjournalist
2 Comments

as we are.

Stress makes me not my best self. Of course this is true for everyone probably, but for me, an introvert with Asperger’s and a fierce attachment to my own personal space and large doses of peace and quiet, stress really makes me not my best self.

The past couple years, as I have tried to adapt to being the mother of a new person, a person who on his best day is still high maintenance, I feel like I have failed more than I have succeeded at being a pleasant human being and the kind of mother he deserves. I can clearly remember the day Jesse and I sat in foster training and we were handed that random child profile to study and discuss. I remember reading about this boy who was fourteen but was really about nine, he still needed to be watched very closely. He couldn’t remember not to ride his bike in the street. He needed constant help and reminding and refocusing to move through the basic tasks of each day. He was clingy and emotionally needy and hated being alone, due to an attachment disorder. And to top it off, he had violent emotional outbursts that had gotten so severe he had been institutionalized. I remember looking at my husband, terrified. I said, I don’t think I could handle this one. This one was clearly not compatible with my cool detached solitary independent nature.

Well. The joke was on me.

This boy ended up being the EXACT child God had already chosen for us, we found out a few months later, as he plopped randomly into our laps once again.

And for some unknown, highly irritating reason, I have been kicking and screaming (no matter how hard I try not to) ever since.

I keep trying to settle down. I try so hard to consistently be a nicer more pleasant person. I keep trying not to yell or have meltdowns. And though I have made a great deal of progress

I. Still. Keep. Failing.

So many days, the worst ones, I say to God, Why did you pick ME? Why did you give this precious little person, so fragile and broken and small and hurting inside… to an insensitive, non-cuddly, grumpy, irritable, hollering Aspy mother???????

And God always just says simply

Because I did.

I gave him to you.

I gave him to you.

I gave him to you.

And then I conclude, so it must be right. It can’t be wrong if God says it is right. Then I pick myself up, dust myself off, hug and apologize and move on to being better. Again.

I carry on day after day and do my best. Some days my best feels like a really great success (We have so many more good days now than ever before!) And some days it feels like, Well, we made it. Thank God it’s over. And some days it feels like I am an utter and complete wretched grumpy failure.

As this quarantine loomed before me and words like Homeschooling and here every single day began to present themselves to my consciousness (most of you know I have tried this before and it did NOT end well), I was gripped with a strange muffled terror. I went kind of numb. I did not know what to expect, I was determined to succeed, I was aware that I was going to struggle, and I had peace that God would give me grace. But way way back, in some part of me I didn’t want to look too closely at yet, I was definitely scared. More time with him putting stress on my precarious mood meant more times I would inevitably be my worst self.

He has changed. He has grown. So have I. I knew we could do it. But I was also afraid. Not as much for myself and the alone time I would lose, but for the person that this loss might make me. I was afraid for the mother that I was, already teetering most days between a lovely person and that demon-woman baking coffee cake in the kitchen. Some of my son’s friends are actually afraid of me. One of them literally tiptoes past me whenever he comes over mumbling things like I promise we’ll be quiet. I am not mean to them, but I have kicked everyone outside and locked the doors before, so they know I am not exactly warm and fuzzy.

Ultimately, these past weeks have gone well. I do miss my alone time. I do have bad days. But it is going well! We have a nice routine.

One of the main reasons we are succeeding so much these days is that I have found the balance between accepting who I am and striving to be a better person. These two things must have just the right ratio to allow a person to be healthy.

For instance, a person who has too much acceptance for her flaws and not enough desire to change will be a person who fails to grow, a person who allows changeable flaws to fester in the wrong direction. A person who just keeps on being unrefined and immature.

And a person who has too little acceptance for who they are and strives too much for change, will live in a whirlwind of guilt, shame, and failure. Will beat herself up too much. Will also fail to grow as a result, because shame is like a giant weight tethered to one’s ankle that limits forward movement.

But a person who has just the right amount of self-love. Just the right amount of, oh crap, I did it again, I’m sorry viewpoint on their failures. And just the right amount of desire to change what she can, better herself but not whip herself for slow progress or for personality traits that are not removable… this is a healthy person.

My son, more than anything else, knows me. Warts and all. He accepts me as I accept him. Two flawed people linked by a strong bond, filled with forgiveness and given the opportunity to exercise it regularly. One of the most powerful aspects about our mother-son relationship, in fact, is that we are both deeply flawed and therefore we have no choice but to delve headlong and powerfully into the realm of unconditional love. A kind of love that, as it turns out, my son has seen very little of in his experience of being moved around from place to place. During long horrible years in foster care, though many people did the best they could, he has been sent away for being flawed more times than he was ever just loved and kept despite it, in his mind at least.

And this relationship, no matter how much I might think I am failing at times, has transformed him. This is what he sees…

I am flawed. I mess up too. Here is how we fix it. Here is how we move on. Here is how we grow. Here is what true security feels like. Here is what true life looks like. Here is what real family looks like. Here is how you respond when you mess up. Here is how you respond when someone else messes up…

All of this is teaching his brain and his heart about real love and real life and real problem solving and real growth.

We joke with each other about our flaws, rather than sweep it under the rug and let a chasm grow there. I may say jokingly something about loving my brain-dead boy when he does something dumb and he will say how much he loves his Autistic mom too. It works in a really special way. Just yesterday he was gone all day with a friend riding their dirt bikes in the mountains. It was a glorious day. My first alone day in a very long time. I reveled in every minute of it. When they pulled in around 4:30, I wandered out to the deck overlooking the driveway, I leaned on it smiling as they unloaded Jack’s dirt bike, not saying anything, just watching and smiling in the sun. Jack looked up at me after awhile and said, “What’s up, mom?” I shrugged and said, “Nothing.” His friend, who I had never met before, said sweetly, “You’ve been gone all day, she misses you.” Both of us laughed heartily. Jack said, “No, she doesn’t. She loved me being gone today!” It was the perfect illustration for the acceptance and the bond that we have, special to us. I’m not that kind of mom who misses my kids, I’m the kind that says, aren’t you leaving soon? And he knows it, and it’s not only okay, it’s perfect. Because it is ours.

There is an ease to our relationship that is wonderfully balanced, filled with forgiveness and acceptance despite anything that is said or done in a bad moment, a family bond that he knows can never be severed, a mother that he knows he can never lose, a peace that comes from not being the only flawed, special-needs person in the household, and a desire to become a better person, to put effort into treating one another with respect and striving to grow every day. There is also a bond that grew in the worst moments we have shared together, the kind that reprograms the perspective. A kind that says, Well if we made it through that, then we can get through anything. The really really bad fights that used to send dogs hiding and left screen doors hanging from their hinges never even happen anymore. They have no place in our lives now.

He feels so safe now that the insecurity programed into his heart from a life of rejection, which used to send him into horrible fits, is no longer there– I am unconditionally loved, they even kept me after THAT happened!

And he is not afraid of my moods anymore– that’s just my mom. My mom is like that. Can I have a muffin?

And this love and safety slowly worked its way through his nervous system and healed parts of his brain where fear used to govern his behavior. He has moved out of his brain stem, out of fight-or-flight mode and finally settled safely and confidently into just living in a good place where there is nothing to be on guard for. Protected, provided for, not going anywhere, no matter what happens.

He loves his mom, warts and all. And he does not fear me. He does not fear losing me. This tells me that perhaps I am succeeding more than I am failing after all.

And every time I start to feel that heavy burdensome sensation that I am not good enough for him after one of my particularly moody days, I turn to the other side and observe what it so clear in my household…

Boy oh boy do they love me. I must not be as bad as I think. Then I recenter myself, finding that lovely perfect balance again, in my heart and my mind, between accepting who I am and desiring to always become better, day after day, year after year. Growing, but not wanting to cut out parts of me that for some reason God sewed into my personality, and that for some reason my boys love anyway. All I have to do is leave for the day and come back to be reminded, as a husband, two teenage boys, and two dogs scramble over one another to get to me, that they not only love me, they like me too. Right now.

And I feel the same way about them.

February 4, 2020
by thebohemianjournalist
2 Comments

therapy?

Therapy has been a confusing in-and-out situation for us from the start.

What kind of therapy? How do you know if it is helping or not? How often should your kid go?

I tried a lot of therapy in my rough years. I saw a psychiatrist, counselors, and even a hypnotherapist. During my first marriage I was a mess, married to an alcoholic who regularly abandoned me, I was dependent on marijuana and raising a child on my own (well, I had grandmas helping a lot) but it was pretty bad. I did not know I had Asperger’s at the time and instead, all of it put together: drug use, stress, bad diet, abuse, abandonment, and Asperger’s (complete with regular over-stimulation and melt-downs I did not understand) came across as a kind of weird mental illness that no one could really narrow down or give a name that stuck for very long.

Medications came and went but nothing really seemed to make me better, only worse. The only thing that kept me from going completely over the edge at the time was the marijuana, because I was a sick person and I needed some sort of medicinal help. This was the most natural and most stabilizing of my options.

But therapy… it never helped me one lick. (I learned as I aged that this is because only some personalities benefit from talking out their problems with others, and mine is one that does not). Anyway, I eventually quit everything and started over. The marriage ended. I quit all medications and all drugs. I quit seeing doctors and listening to the latest opinion on what kinds of names people thought they should call whatever it was I was going through. I quit therapy. I cleansed myself of it all and focused on only two main things:

1: Building healthy quality relationships: mainly with my son, my new husband, and with God.

2: Cleansing my life of things that were toxic or were having a toxic effect on me. This was focused mainly on eating a simple organic diet, and creating a calm peaceful environment in which to live. As an Aspy, these things had miraculous effects. I had removed triggers and stopped over-stressing myself.

The healing came.

As our son entered our lives, we were faced with a big decision. What do we do about therapy for him?

I knew that typical American therapeutic intervention had not brought healing to me, personally. But I did not know what my boy needed. So we took him to counselors. But it seemed to make him worse in some ways and we never saw any real benefit from it. He hated going, he fought us, and then it almost seemed to reinforce to him: you are different, you are flawed, you are set apart. He knew his friends weren’t in therapy. So this meant, of course, that he was somehow different from them. Broken. Repeatedly forced by “the system” to do things other kids didn’t have to do.

Then there would be times when he would play us against the therapist. For one example: My therapist says you shouldn’t take my phone away because my music is one of my coping mechanisms…

Even though the therapist was never actually undermining us, it was being misperceived, something still just felt off about the whole thing. Like, is this really doing enough good to be worth it right now? I needed to step back and reevaluate for awhile. Because deep down, I knew, both from wisdom’s standpoint, and also from my own experience, that therapy can be good for some people at the right time for specific reasons. But not just for the sake of ticking it off of on a list of things to do.

And in this case, I knew, we were his therapy.

We were the ones that were bonding deeply with him, walking him through the everyday difficulties, soothing him when he was hurting, talking about nightmares and hard memories and past traumas.

We were the ones he trusted and knew, who helped him navigate his reemerging relationship with his birth-mom who is doing really great at this point in her life. And with his siblings that he can’t live with and misses terribly.

We were the ones helping him get physically and, in the process, mentally healthy with everyday lifestyle, including whole food, plenty of water, vitamins, good sleep, love and affection.

We were his therapists.

How was this one guy he saw for one hour every two weeks ever going to do anything better than that? If he was, then we would be all for it. But in this case, it just seemed to fall flat.

We took him out of therapy and just resumed normal life, trying to make him feel as normal as possible. He went to school, had a large group of friends, a very active social life, and a very loving home life. We went to church, and went out as a family, had game nights, and family dinners and spent hours talking and laughing. This was his therapy. And he thrived.

But we didn’t want to be closed-minded. And of course he was still struggling with anger and trauma. So after some time had passed we tried again. We went back. He was not particularly fond of his previous therapist so we found another one that came highly recommended to us as a great personality for bonding with teen boys.

After one visit, he regressed instantly. Slumped over in the seat beside me the whole way there and back. Slumped in the chair in the office, looking like he was being called back to his old way of life, court and therapists and meetings and appointments, the life of a foster kid. It was as if he was a redeemed person having to go back and face the old self he had left behind. I knew, in taking him back there, we had reminded him of the old Jack, the past, and it felt like going there was harmful to him, not helpful. He had a new name now, a new life. He was developing a new identity, and the reality was quickly catching up. It was time to move forward and, for now, not look at the old. Not look back. Let him resume the act of forging ahead, a brand new person. Not a foster kid in therapy anymore. A regular kid who had a regular family and a regular life.

Around this time I started reading the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Incredible book. I recommend anyone who is raising a child with trauma to read this book.

I just about fell off my chair when I got to this part…

Dr Bruce Perry, child psychiatrist writes, “For people whose memories don’t negatively affect them in their present, pressuring them to focus on them may actually do harm… In one study we conducted in the mid-1990s, we found that children with supportive families who were assigned to therapy to discuss trauma were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than those whose parents were told to bring them in only if they observed specific symptoms. The hour per week that the children assigned to therapy spent focusing on their symptoms exacerbated them, rather than exorcised them. Each week, in the days prior to their therapy session, these children would begin thinking about their trauma; each week the children would have to leave school or extracurricular activities to travel to the clinic for therapy. In some cases children became hyperaware of their normal stress reactions, keeping tabs of every blip so they’d have something to say to the therapist. This disrupted their lives and increased, rather than decreased their stress…”

He goes on to say, “… no one should be pushed to discuss trauma if they do not wish to do so. If a child is surrounded by sensitive, caring adults, the timing, duration, and intensity of small therapeutic moments can be titrated by the child…. the same principals hold for all children dealing with loss and trauma living in a healthy social support system.”

I could not believe it. This doctor who has more than forty years of experience with children and trauma, was putting into words the exact questions and feelings and conclusions I was putting together watching my son through his own therapeutic experiences.

I want to be very careful here, to say that I am not giving personal advice about whether or not a child should or should not be in therapy. Rather, I am sharing my own experience and how my child personally thrived.

If he ever came to me and said, I want to go to therapy, then this would be exactly what we would help him do. But as it was, and as it had been with him, it was clear to me that his therapy was taking place already, within our home, within our love, within relationship with us that was deepening every day. And then a very experienced and educated Doctor was able to confirm my decision and intuition, giving me even more resolve and peace in the matter.

Dr. Perry shares later in the book about a young boy who was being ostracized at school by his peers for being different because he was developmentally delayed and so he acted much younger than his classmates. Dr. Perry was able to give a talk to this boy’s class and explained what a delay meant and that Peter needed help catching up, and would they help him? Immediately Peter became popular and loved and understood, he made many friends.

Dr. Perry writes, “The results were rapid: almost immediately he stopped having tantrums and outbursts, probably because what had prompted them was frustration, a sense of rejection and feeling misunderstood… His peers and his family healed him by creating a rich social world, a nurturing community… The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love… My experience, as well as the research suggests that the most important healing experiences in the lives of traumatized children do not occur in therapy itself… Of course, medications can help relieve symptoms and talking to a therapist can be incredibly useful. But healing and recovery are impossible- even with the best medications and therapy in the world- without lasting, caring connections to others. Indeed, at heart it is the relationship with the therapist, not primarily his or her methods or words of wisdom, that allows therapy to work.”

I recently began seeing a therapist myself. I am doing EMDR therapy every two weeks. It is the exact right time for me, the exact right therapist, and the exact right type of therapy. It is important that we do not simply go through the motions of what we think we should do, rather than truly stepping back to evaluate if it fits into the perfect social support system that is needed right now, in this time of one’s life to bring the right connections for healing.

As long as the goal and the result is that relationships are being built and deepened, that the child is being nurtured in the right ways, and that the child is being supported by an excellent group of people, peers and mentors, and that the child is not ever forced to focus on trauma when they are not ready, then that child will be receiving the therapeutic benefits of healing as a result. Trauma will naturally come up and the child will seek support from someone he or she trusts once they feel safe enough to do so.

For my Jack, it was clear what he personally needed. He needed to feel normal, to be affirmed as normal, to fit in and to develop the trust and safety of many deep relationships. In these he can, in his own way and in his own time, talk through the past. But largely, he can simply leave it behind.

And now, as we have finally moved into the season of seeing the fruit of this healing and transformation… Oh the reward! We are seeing a more healthy boy every day, capable of managing his emotions, developing and growing rapidly, feeling safe and secure and loved, feeling like an amazing person who fits into society and loves life.

This is therapy. Find it in whatever way your family needs it.

January 29, 2020
by thebohemianjournalist
0 comments

when you are calm, I am calm.


We have all seen it. A baby or a toddler has a tumble or a bonk, and they immediately look to one of their parents to see how upset they should be about it.

Did that hurt? How much? A lot… Or a little? Should I cry… Or carry on? Are you afraid? Because if you are afraid, then I will be afraid. If you look horrified then I will commence with crying forthwith.

No? You don’t look horrified. Oh, good, I guess that didn’t hurt. I’m glad I have you to inform me.

There is an early brain development stage called mirroring. The reason we, as fully formed adults, have the ability to look at someone smiling and feel happy, look at someone laughing and laugh too, or look at someone crying and feel very sad, is thanks to these mirror neurons in our brains. They literally do what their name implies: They mirror emotions back and forth from person to person. This is what develops our capacity for empathy, to feel a bit of what someone else is feeling, to have emotions that connect with the emotional atmosphere in the room. If everyone is happy, we become happy. If everyone is grieving, we become somber, or we grieve with them.

One of the primary contributing factors in the early childhood of a psychopath or a sociopath (someone who literally cannot perceive the pain of other people) or in people with attachment disorders, is that there was either a lack of human connection at this very important time of brain development, or violent human connection where loving connection should have been. The mirror neurons failed to be stimulated or develop properly. The games that we all play with our babies–smiling at them and they smile back, smiling back at them when they smile at us, face to face connection regularly, relaying emotions back and forth, back and forth, constant eye contact… due to many different reasons, some babies do not receive this. And their mirror neurons are inhibited, underdeveloped, or even in the worst cases, non-existent. In the first two cases, this develops some level of an attachment disorder. In the worst cases, it can become sociopathic.

Our adopted son, who came to us at the age of fourteen, had underdeveloped mirror neurons. He had an attachment disorder, very common among adopted children. He almost never made eye contact. And his emotions rarely lined up with anyone else’s in the room. We would all be laughing and playing and joking, for instance, and he would sit, distantly, his face shut down and not connecting with anyone in the room. Detached. Vacant.

Or, someone would be sad or crying or angry, and he would remain blank. He often had no remorse for any of the things that he did that hurt other people. There were flickers of it, it wasn’t non-existent, but it was very inconsistent and intermittent, like wires that were frayed and only sparked on occasion, the connection poor and spotty. We knew he had it in him, because he had extreme empathy for animals. Just not other humans. And who could blame him? His brain had been taught many things over his short tumultuous life, but a safe trusting place among other humans was not one of them.

But something remarkable has taken place in the almost two years that have passed. His brain has developed rapidly, and he is starting to connect truly, and even deeply, with us and with others. He is able to make eye contact and connect soul-to-soul, he is able to perceive and experience the emotions of others. To mirror those emotions back. To feel remorseful, care when someone else is hurting, comfort someone in pain. To engage in the energy of the room. When we are laughing and playing, now he joins in with us. When we are sad or somber, he joins in the spirit of grief and reflection.

Ironic that God chose two people with Asperger’s to help this boy develop empathy… Let that just simmer awhile.

But also… wow, how our empathy has grown exponentially through this process as well as we have had to work harder than ever before to connect deeply with him, each other, and God in order to be successful. What an amazing synergy.

Going back to the original thought at the beginning of this post: looking to our parents when we are really little to see how we should react to things. Jack is in this stage of development with us.

Now that he has learned to mirror with us, and now that he has developed a sense of safety and trust… he is now connected to our emotions.

Therefore, when we are calm, Jack is calm.

What an amazing biological phenomenon! That God created us to be able to pass our emotional state of strength down to our children through mirroring! That they can, in their underdeveloped emotional age, still find a sense of peace and calm in stressful situations, by having it reflected into their brains from ours! I mean, what?! This is amazing.

That puts it in our hands. As parents, we can help our children connect with our emotions and follow them. That means that we have the power, even in cases as extreme as Jack’s, to shape and transform and strengthen the emotional responses of our children. We are responsible. It starts with our emotional strength and our ability to connect and mirror it to them.

So if your children are struggling with an insecurity that is causing them to regularly fall apart, what they need is you to become fortified. They need you to become stronger. They need you to become calmer. They need you to find the way and then show them, to mirror to their brains a sense of safety, of peace, of calm.

I am a reactive person by nature. Authentic and open, I wear everything on my sleeve and don’t have much of a capacity for hiding, filtering, or bull-shitting. Though I am also a happy and easy-going person by nature, I lived through a terrible first marriage from which I learned to set iron-clad boundaries in my life between myself and anybody else’s dysfunction. I also have a low stress tolerance from being an Aspy. I also come from a passionate and fiery Irish bloodline on one side and a powerful no-nonsense German one on the other side.

For a long time, his blow-outs seemed largely independent of us, separate from us, and we felt powerless against them. At the worst times, nothing we could do and no amount of staying calm could stop them until they blew over. The violence and the reactions were driven by so many internal factors. He was like a thrashing wild animal and we were like horrified hiker’s just trying to make it past on the trail without getting mauled.

But it was this amazing phenomenon of bonding and mirroring and connecting that has changed this.

As we grew to bond with one another, as he grew to trust us and look to us for how he should respond and when he is safe, his blow-outs can now be contained and ended quicker as long as we are able to contain our response to them. As he became more safe and secure with us, his really bad blow-outs only seemed to take place in response to one of us snapping first.

Now, for the most part, he remains calm as long as we were calm.

He has what is called Reactive Attachment Disorder, meaning that his outrageous reactions are due to short circuits in his ability to have healthy attachments. And his brain-stem is triggered easily, sending him into that wild animal state, thrashing for survival.

I needed to work so very hard to remain as calm as possible, so as not to set off that reactive part of his brain. I pressed in, put in the work, put in the prayer, challenged myself and stretched my self-discipline as far as it would go and then farther. I started EMDR therapy to unload any lingering traumas trapped in my brainstem and I worked hard to remain calm or step away in my weakest times, when tired, angry, or stressed.

The blow-outs tapered off, slowed down, were shorter in length, and we could get him back faster into his frontal lobes–out of the Lizard brain and into his reasoning brain–if we stayed as calm as possible, or even did not react at all.

Now they usually only happen if one of us loses our temper first. He has little capacity to be challenged, to be harshly disciplined, or to be confronted when he’s done something wrong. He is a runner, and if we try to block him from running, he lashes out. But, though it goes against normal parenting, if we step back, disengage, and let him run, we get him back quicker, than if we try to stop him.

The only two blow-outs I can recall over the past handful of months that were the someone-is-bleeding-and-neighbors-are-looking-and-parts-of-the-house-are-on-the-front-deck level of bad were when Jesse or I got so angry with him for something he did that one of us showed anger and extreme disapproval. Again, this goes completely against normal parenting, because we are not parenting a typical child with a fully developed brain. If he starts to unravel, our calm reaction brings him back very quickly. He has now gotten to the point of having very typical levels of anger and frustration for the average teenage boy. And it blows over fast. But mostly he’s just happy and content.

It is by no means easy to parent him. But it is as calm and functional as it can likely ever be.

Just like very small children who rely so heavily on gauging our responses to see how they should feel and react to things, our Jack is doing this now, and it is our adapting and growing and strategic responding that is steering his responses into our current. He has grown so deeply into our safety, we are such pillars to him, that as long as we are in control and do not lose our cool, he is held together by that. He can siphon off of our emotional strength now that he has connected deeply, emotionally, to us. As long as we maintain that strength, remain those pillars, he thrives. And true to attachment parenting, in this safety and security, he is starting to be able to venture out and explore independently. He is becoming more and more “together” outside of our presence now too. Not falling apart at school or having serious issues when he is away from us. He is becoming much more functional. Everyone who comes into contact with him is finding him a joy.

In fact, a woman at church, who knew Jack when he went there with his mentors before us, just told me on Sunday that when she knew him before, he would not make eye contact or say much of anything when she tried to talk to him, but now they can have a real conversation. She said it’s remarkable how much he is able to look her is the eye now. And he is this way with everyone, his confidence and ability to connect has gone from night to day. 

One fun example: Just last night a neighbor came by while we were cooking dinner, to complain that Jack and his friends were driving too fast on our street on their dirt bikes. Jack came in while we were still chatting. We told him the neighbor had something to say to him. He turned around and gave our neighbor his full attention right away, with an apologetic look. The neighbor said, “Hey, I got little girls, you have to slow down.” We supported this, reminding him that he knew the rules. He nodded and apologized and said, “Okay, sorry, we will slow down.” It was just so natural and peaceful. It made me proud.

In the past, he would have run and hid from the confrontation. He would not have been able to remain in the room with that neighbor, let alone make eye contact and respond and apologize. He might have even stormed out and disappeared for awhile.

I love Jo Frost, the Supernanny. She goes into people’s homes and the parents say, Please fix our kids! And she says, every single time, Ummm, actually, I’m here to fix YOU. In less than a week, after the parents change their behavior, the children are miraculously transformed. And nearly every single time, without fail, the main thing the parents are doing wrong is they have fallen into a going-through-the-motions type of parenting because they are so exhausted. They are tuning their kids out and not truly connecting with them anymore.

With every family, this is one of the main issues Jo fixes. True connection, face-to-face, one-on-one. The parents are always shocked by the immediate turn-around of how calm and fulfilled their children become within minutes of having their focused attention. When they really start connecting to them. Nothing could be a more clear example of how much we as parents are the structure within which our children find their footing and their own emotional tethering. Or how vitally important connection is to developing a sense of calm and of empathy leading to health and happiness.

We must, as parents, work on ourselves to help our kids, make sure we are those pillars of maturity and health and strength that our children can look to and feel safe beneath. We must connect face-to-face, soul-to-soul, with them. And if we have children who have had hindered or disrupted attachment early in life, the only way to heal them is to help them connect with healthy souls of other people around them. It is this connection to other humans emotionally and spiritually that makes us feel the need to be good people, that gives us the desire to be kind and moral, that gives us the ability to siphon healthy emotional strength from the people in our lives that are guiding us. Which gives us the ability to do the same with God, connecting and receiving his strength and peace and joy as well.

I am so proud of my son for growing. But I am most proud of Jesse and myself for, under extreme conditions, creating an custom-tailored environment in which he can finally grow. Because we, as parents, need to understand just how much our children are looking to us to find out who they are.

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January 22, 2020
by thebohemianjournalist
2 Comments

hemorrhaging of the soul.

The thing that is so wonderful about this process is watching growth and life take place. Watching something that was, in essence, dying, and is now coming back to life. What a joy! What a privilege to be a part of this!

Almost four years ago now, we adopted a Chihuahua. We had not planned to adopt a dog. We had never wanted a Chihuahua. But there he was, in an RV park in San Antonio, Texas. And due to unfortunate and unintentional circumstances, he was half-dead at the time. We knew that if we did not intervene he might not make it.

We took him into our camper and all he did for an entire week was eat and drink, eat and drink, eat and drink. He was skin and bones. He was so dehydrated, he would spend several minutes at a time at the water bowl, drinking and drinking and drinking. We were due to leave Texas and head to Colorado that week. We knew he may not have made it through the journey to that altitude in the dehydrated state he was in. A week later he was strong enough to make the trip. In one year he had gained a pound, going from five to six pounds, a huge amount for such a small creature. It was so rewarding to be a part of giving life to something that was dying. To this day, he licks my face in a special way, like he is still thanking me for rescuing him.

Our boy was a lot like this. Almost exactly like this, actually. And to watch him grow (literally!) so much in so little time, simply by having his body, soul, and spirit nourished, when it had been starving, is so surreal and miraculous that I have to step back when I am overwhelmed or angry or irritated and look at the big picture and say… WOW. Just WOW. Look at the life that is in you now, that was not there when I met you!

When he first came to us, I believe that, much like Maximus, he was half-dead. He was malnourished and dehydrated, having been on horribly destructive ADHD meds for five years and not having any parents to make sure he got what he needed because he had been institutionalized for so long. His growth had simply been stunted and there was no life or light or color in him. He sat slumped over as if he had not the strength to even hold himself upright, which was just as much emotional as it was physical, maybe more.

He used to have terrible nose-bleeds, so heavy and so lengthy that we almost had to call an ambulance on one occasion, because it would not stop and he was losing consciousness before our eyes. I remember thinking, your body is literally shutting down. You are literally hemmoraging from the face, and if we were not here, you would have bled to death this way. It felt like a horrifying physical sign of what was happening inside of him. His heart was wasting away, his soul was bleeding to death.

That night, the night the worst one had happened, it was only a few weeks after he moved in with us. I had to google what to do when we realized it wasn’t going to stop. We sat on the bed with him, one of us on each side, his head bent slightly forward so he did not swallow the blood, my husband and I taking turns pinching the bridge of his nose, holding ice on the back of his neck, going through wads of tissues. Speaking soothing words to him, praying silently in our minds, hearts racing… We were on the edge of dialing 911.

Twenty minutes later, which felt like hours, it finally stopped. He was so white and he passed out on his pillow, exhausted and depleted. I kept going into his room after that, checking, watching. We could not sleep soundly that night. I pumped him full of fluids after that, as much as I could get into his body. Got him off his ADHD meds and began feeding him more and more. Bringing his strength back, nourishing and hydrating his tired body. Tired from a lifetime of so much lack. We nourished his soul too. Love and affection and so many cuddles and hugs. He soaked it all up.

We know now, that night, the night we sat on either side of him, trying to stop the bleeding, this was a picture of the way we would be parenting him for the next two years, and continuing from here. One of us on either side of him, holding him together, watching so close, stopping the bleeding in his soul whenever it started. Pinching the virtual vein that had opened up, holding it hard and never letting go until the bleeding stopped. Over and over again. Praying, holding him together, checking and rechecking, worrying, watching.

The nosebleeds continued like that for the next year and then slowly tapered off. They were a manifestation of not only physical malnourishment, but also of a dying soul. Around that time, I saw a book laying on a friend’s desk that said on the cover it contained spiritual and emotional causes of physical ailments. It was written like a glossary. I quickly grabbed it and flipped to the N section and found what I was looking for. Underneath the word Nosebleeds it said, lacking love. I almost starting weeping right there.

Now they are rare and do not last long, only seem to happen if he is away from us for a day or two, and they are not nearly as severe. They stop as soon as I move to him, help him pinch the bridge of his nose. Almost as if his body is saying, are you still there? Is it true I am really safe and loved now? Is it true? And I come close to him and worry over him, help it stop and my actions are saying, yes it is true. Yes you are loved, you are safe. It’s okay. And then it stops. His body is so much stronger now too. Not nearly as prone to such malfunctioning.

As he has been brought back to life before our eyes, he can go longer and longer without his soul hemorrhaging as well. We have longer and longer periods of peace, more and more balance. The crazy moments when something bursts inside of him still happen, but we recover quickly now, as a family that has bonded deeply. As parents who immediately know what to do. No longer the frightened, green, inexperienced foster parents, sitting uncertainly on the bed, looking at each other over his head, pinching his nose, thinking Oh My God what do we do?

No. Now we are seasoned and sure. We are confident and knowing. We swoop in and pull him back together, we stop the internal bleeding with experienced hands.

A screen door may be pulled from its hinges, someone bleeding from an arm or a toe, neighbors looking concerned from their open garages, holes in the walls of our house, items scattered everywhere, dogs hiding… but we know what to do, we know how to hold him together, the bleeding stops, and… he is in our arms, crying apologizing and we, forgiving, reassuring… and then we settle back into peace again.. unit the next hemorrhage…

And actually, he only seems to fall apart now if one of us falls apart. Because we have become the pillars in his life. And as long as we are strong, he feels safe. As long as we stay stable and calm, he does too.

He runs to us.

He looks to us.

He knows we are the ones that will always be there to uphold him.

And the life that is emerging from this, in ALL of us, is exquisite to behold. I am not the person I was when I started this journey. None of us are. I thank God for the life and the growth I have been allowed to be a part of. What a miraculous journey for all of us!

He and Maximus bonded immediately. They were kindred spirits, they had both been rescued from a life of lack and been nursed, nourished, brought back to life. They both transformed before our eyes and were given honored positions in our family. He comes home and says, where’s my Chihuahua? and searches until he finds him.

His face radiates life and color now. He has become tall and strong and handsome. He is unrecognizable. He has gained forty pounds and grown eight inches now, since the day we met him. Mind, it has not even been a full two years yet. Eight inches and forty pounds in less than two years. And just like Maximus, he looks at us in a way that tells us he knows we saved his life.

Oh God, don’t ever let the frustration and weariness distract me from the joy that such a miracle is to be a part of!

Our boy less than two years ago…

Our boy… filled with LIFE.
4,874

January 21, 2020
by thebohemianjournalist
2 Comments

you see what I do not see.

So much has happened, where to even begin? I will just take some of it out of my journal from the end of last summer.

Journal entry. July 2019.

We have been trying to figure out if we are meant to adopt again and it has been so confusing. We felt God was speaking to us, in our hearts and even in a few dreams, that a teenage girl was coming. He said to me, make room. We started preparing a bedroom. We had our social worker out to renew our license. I felt pregnant again, the way I had with our first adoption. With another fully formed person, out there somewhere. Who was she? Where was she? When was she due? It was all so exciting, just like it was with him.

But then. Something else happened. [Our adopted son] began to unravel again. I feel as though he is made of liquid. Like he has no form of his own yet, relies so heavily on something or someone with a definite form to hold him together, help him keep his shape at all times. As soon as we step away, test out a bit more space, a bit more independence, he falls apart and we close in again, scoop him up, put him back together. He is like our infant in a six-foot body.

Things have gotten so bad, worse than ever before. Our lives have turned into damage control. Constant, never-ending responding and reacting and cleaning up the messes he is spilling out onto everything around us. It has been a nightmare. I have cried out to God for it to end. I have grieved and had so much anger. This chaos in my home, in my everyday life, makes me feel so unbalanced and balance is one of the things I crave most.

We said to our social worker, hold on. We have to step back. Now is not the time. She agreed.

I then went into a state of confused agony. Having to grieve through the resentment I felt at times that my second child was so dysfunctional that it might make it impossible for me to ever have a third. How ridiculous my conscious mind knows this is! Because I am an essentialist at heart. I would rather give my all to one, than half of me to two. I already have committed to pouring every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears I have inside my body into this one broken person, determined with a mother’s ferocity, unmatched in potency, to bring healing and balance to this one boy. He is first. There does not ever have to be a second if he must be first and last, this is part of the commitment I made to love him how he needs to be loved. To give him what he needs to make it.

I asked God, am I still pregnant with this girl you showed me in my dreams? Or is it okay to let her go? Is this, essentially, and strangely, my first miscarriage? An adoption miscarriage?

——–

We continued to pour ourselves out, our brains working overtime to become wise and strategic, our hearts working overtime to generate more love in the face of what wanted to become resentment at times. An exhaustion in the depths of our bones, the very deepest crevices of our hearts and minds.

We pressed on. We will not give up on you, our boy. God has said, ‘he is yours’, and we will never take those words lightly.

And then the answer came in a dream.

August 26, 2019.

I had a dream last night. I was in my house, and there was someone knocking at the door. But I was delaying answering it. I remained in a different part of the house, there was a strong hesitation in me. I knew who was at the door, I could see them on our security camera. It was a man, a social worker, and he had a child with him. I did not know what to do. I knew if I opened the door, I would be saying yes to this child. Was I supposed to open it or not? Several minutes passed. Finally I went to the door, I was going to explain to the social worker that I did not know yet, but when I opened the door, they were both already walking away. Neither one of them turned around. But when I called to him, the social worker just slowly shook his head, no, as he walked away.

I woke up. And then the last of her slipped away.

She was gone.

My first and only miscarriage, though not a physical one. My third child, slipping away. She was not meant to be. And I woke feeling like I was no longer pregnant. And I knew it was the way it was meant to be.

We do not always understand why some life slips away. But sometimes it just does.

I stopped longing for a third child after that. It was as if there had been an old longing in my heart, and God let it surface so it could pass away properly. The last ghostly whispers of desire left with that virtual miscarriage. And a very nice feeling of completeness has settled in its place. Our hands are full with our special-needs boy, and that is enough.

What you have chosen to give me, God, is enough.

I say that in my heart and in my prayers everyday. What you have given me, it is enough. Am I never meant to have a third child? I do not know. All I know is that it wasn’t that one. It wasn’t now.

I am grateful and I will not long for anything more than what he has decided I should have. This is happiness. This is peace. Loving and accepting what you have. And what you do not. In the end, this is what will bring our hearts to the place of peace that makes them thrive. In the end, this will deepen the bond we have with our creator, rather than damaging or breaking it by feeling illusions of theft and mistrust toward him. He is just. And he sees.

You see what I do not see. I tell him. You see what I do not see. God, I trust that you can see what I cannot.

What a sense of security that gives!

4,874

August 14, 2019
by thebohemianjournalist
0 comments

in the dark. in the silence.

My first marriage ended. Badly. It was toxic and combustible. I was eighteen when it began. Twenty-three when it finally self-destructed, freeing both of us, at least partly. He pulled the plug in the end. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sometimes I wonder if I would still be limping along trying to love him, if he hadn’t made that hard decision for both of us.

But divorce does something to your brain in the problem solving region. Those frontal lobes that are ever collecting information and deciding how to navigate things in the future, based on the results.

I have been with my second husband now for over thirteen years. Married for eleven of them. Our bond is deep. Our personalities compatible. Our interactions healthy and safe and good. It didn’t always feel this way. But we have worked hard for it. We put in the time. We both bettered ourselves and fought for healing and decided to serve and honor one another. It’s lifelong-ness is sure.

But my husband has never had a failed marriage. He has only had this one. He has never left a woman. He has only had me. He has never called it quits.

But I have.

***

We can’t go on like this.

I can’t do this anymore.

This has to stop. It has to.

You can’t stop these thoughts as a foster parent. Every one of us has felt them, I am sure of it. I have heard many stories, read many books and memoirs. Every one of us has felt it, thought it, said it. I can’t do it anymore. It just has to stop. I can’t go on like this.

This is fair.

Extreme struggle. Extreme stress. War and battle. Loss of sleep, loss of sanity, loss of a sense of safety at times. We are driven to make it stop when it torments and drains us. We are driven to solve the problem. We must fix it. It has to be fixed. It has to be! We simply can’t go on like this!

So we plow ahead to fix it.

Set better boundaries

Learn better ways to handle outbursts

Create time to get rest and respite

Reroute behavior with guidance, with consequences and discipline

But no matter how much we work to problem solve, to create order and peace, to prevent utter mayhem, none of it actually guarantees the results we desire. In the end, no matter what you do, if the person you are parenting remains toxic and combustible, then toxic and combustible is a part of your life. And there are times when the only solution feels like quitting and getting as far away from this person as possible.

This is where our past experiences come in. How many difficult relationships have we seen through? And how many times was the solution, the relief, found in running away?

Last night was an amazing day and an amazing night. Jesse and I could not even remember the last time we had gone an entire day without a seriously disturbing or stressful situation. Especially recently, it has been absolutely non-stop. But yesterday was bliss.

He came home happy and we sat on the deck eating cherries and grapes and talking. Then we drove to the store singing bad country music and wandered around having fun. We then all went to the grandparents’ house for dinner, played cards on the floor of the living room, laughed and talked and enjoyed one another. It was one of the best nights I have had in awhile.

We came home and went to bed without incident. All was perfectly peaceful in the house. And then it happened. He heard me come down to fold a last load of laundry that had just finished drying. He wandered out sleepy eyed, and began to needle me for his phone.

It turned into a nightmare.

There was no way to reason with him or calm him once he went over the edge. We felt powerless against it. A force in our home that could not be contained. Only managed. Barely. The things he said to us and about us were so shocking, infuriating, untrue, I can’t even bring myself to think about them. We have to separate our feelings from it, not take it personally, shake them off. But he was like a runaway train, smashing all in its path.

At eleven pm I have a headache creeping up the side of my neck, which is beginning to feel like hardening cement. The stress is high. The frustration off the charts. Jesse and I sit on the floor in the dark hallway upstairs, whispering to each other about what to do.

“I don’t know if he is capable of living in a family,” I confess. “This is only the beginning, isn’t it? How much worse might it get? He is out of control. There was a reason he was in a group home. His behavior is simply far too great, too much, to be in a family. If it goes on like this, he may need to go back to a home, at least part time.”

Our case worker has commented recently that she knows families that have given up after going through only a fraction of what we have. “And it is still escalating,” I continue. “How can we keep holding on if what we have been through isn’t even the worst yet?”

But my stoic husband is shaking his head. “No, no, that would ruin him. He can’t lose another family. He can’t.”

My emotions are still high, my anger still very real. “He’s already ruined!” I whisper back. “And now he is just ruining our lives too! I can’t do this anymore! I really can’t go on like this.”

“You can. We can. And we will. He will only become a criminal if we send him away.”

“He will probably become a criminal anyway! He already is! All he does is break every law and rule he ever comes across! He has no moral compass!”

“But if we send him away, he will absolutely fail. If we give him everything we have… then at least he has a chance. And if he ends up never making it, then at least we know we did everything we could.”

I know this is true. We say it to each other all the time. Passing it back and forth, depending on who is more upset in the moment and who is more calm. We take turns.

“I know that sending him somewhere may not be the answer,” I whisper back, trying to calm myself. “But if it keeps going like this, honey, I just don’t think I can live with this person every day for the next two years. And this is what those places are for, we would still be his parents, it would just give us extra support, professionals who can manage him day to day and more limited time home. But one way or another something has to change. It has to…”

I know I am being a bit irrational, that this probably won’t really happen. But I have to say these things. It feels like a tonic, the ability to just entertain the option of an end to it all. Deep down though, I know it is all talk. I just want the war to end. I hate conflict. I am a peace-lover.

Then a thought hits me. I picture a country, far off, and foreign. Stuck in a war. A war they have no control over. A war they did not ask for. Fearing for their lives. Struggling to survive. Family members killed. Bombs going off. Horrible tyrannical military or dangerous religious groups terrorizing the people. Out of control. Non-stop stress and fear and struggle. Pain and loss. True hunger and lack. This is the reality for much of the world.

Sometimes you are thrust into a war zone and you do not get to escape it. I tell Jesse this and he agrees. This is our war zone at the moment. And we still get a really good life. Our war zone is within a good life, not surrounding us. It is not anywhere close to as bad as what people in warring countries have to endure. We still have everything we need and excess. We are all still alive and do not fear for our lives or the lives of those we love. We sleep in warm Tempur-pedic beds every night with stomachs full of healthy food.

“Imagine packing up his things,” Jesse whispers. “Imagine really doing it. Sending him away.”

“I have,” I say. “And every time it crushes me. I don’t know if I could ever really do it. I imagine him on his first night there, crying himself to sleep, feeling alone and scared and rejected. And I can’t stand the thought. This awful side of him would have retreated by then… and the precious little boy would be the one suffering the results.”

“Yeah.”

We are starting to feel confident that he is asleep now. The threat thrown over his shoulder as he finally went to his room, “I warned you...” haunting us still. Hyper-vigilant. Our home is a war zone.

“I think the reason I might be feeling like this is because of James,” I whisper. “It was this toxic with him. It was hell on earth. For five years. And the only way it was finally resolved… well… was divorce. Getting away from him gave the final relief, the reward. Getting away saved me. I think my brain is rewinding to my time with him. I keep having these thoughts, I refuse to live with this abuse– get away- put up huge boundaries- save yourself. But the thoughts feel like my old thoughts, from living with James. Like they are replaying, reminding me to run from the same situation that is happening all over again. Living with a toxic unsafe person…

“But you,” I tell him, “You stuck it out with me, no matter what we went through, you never gave up. You don’t have divorce in your mind, telling you to run away, giving you that answer to the problem… And I guess I made it through five years with James. By the time Jack turns eighteen he will only have been with us for three and a half years. I can do that. I have done it before, and without a good life. I stayed for love then. I can stay for love now…

“And that is the ultimate lesson isn’t it? Jesus… laying down your own life so another can live. The only chance Jack has of living depends on us being willing to give up part of our life for him.”

“Yeah,” Jesse agrees. Again, this is something we talk about a lot. Remind one another. It gets you through.

Just keep giving… so maybe he can live.

Of course, there are times in a toxic relationship when there must be a separation. There are times where there must be a divorce. There are times when safety requires this. I am certain my divorce was absolutely necessary, that I would never have been able to be healthy in that marriage.

But there are other times too. Times where God says No, you must stay. You must not flee this war zone. It is a war that needs fighting. I’ve learned from reading the scriptures that even God is not a pacifist. He knows when to yield and he knows exactly when to fight. He tells us too, when we listen, when to do which.

Jesse and I sit and sit for a long time in the dark. In the silence. Sometimes, afterward, that’s all that’s left to do.

***

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