soshewritesweb

Strength is My Weakness

Posted on April 3, 2025April 3, 2025 by soshewritesweb

Nearly every job interview I have ever had, the interviewer has asked me to tell them my greatest strength and greatest weakness. I am not sure I ever gave an honest answer. I mean, who does? We try our hardest to give a strength we think would impress the interviewer, then we give a weakness that is really a strength, and we try our hardest to seem humble. You know, something like, “I am really organized, so it is hard for me to leave a job undone or a mess. I often give too much to my career and sacrifice my personal time to get the job done.” I mean, come on, how can anyone really give a weakness and expect to get the job? But what if your strength IS actually a weakness? I have begun to see my strong will and “get-er-done” attitude as a crippling attribute that can leave me exhausted and completely empty. Why is that, you ask? Because the strong become the ones everyone turns to in hard times and chaos, but what happens when the strong break under the pressure? The scariest look to receive is from a family member who sees you breaking, and the fear in their eyes as they ask themselves, if you can’t handle it, how will they?

Growing up, I learned quickly to hide the hurt. I learned to pull myself up by my bootstraps (yes, it can be done), to wipe my eyes and deal. Three big brothers didn’t exactly lead to a girl in flowy dresses and a straight tiara. I was more of the torn jeans and a Bryan Adams t-shirt under my flannel, with a baseball cap on my head and an attitude in my walk kinda gal. The words by Miranda Lambert ring truer in my ears than most.

“Hide your crazy and start acting like a lady, cause I raised you better. Gotta keep it together even when you fall apart”
Miranda Lambert ‘Four the Record’

I learned early to stuff the emotions too big to handle deep down and not let the fear of it all show. The world could be falling down around you, but girl, you better have those lips on just right! I was always proud of being the strong one in the group; it was easy to hide the nerves and insecurities when everyone around you depended on you to get through it. It gets easier with time to hit hard times head-on and do it with a smile, shrug your shoulders, and just deal. I spent many years taking on the challenge of turning chaos into manageable hardship, only to find it isn’t really all that manageable. When deciding on adoption, I never doubted for a moment that I would handle the craziness that would come with the cuteness. I heard over and over from all our friends and family, “If anyone can do this, it’s you.” It became a repeated phrase each time we hit a new type of chaos, every time I reached out to say I wasn’t sure I could get through it.

She ran away again, stayed gone all night this time ” you’re strong enough to get through this”

She pulled a knife on her brother and is threating to kill us all “if anyone can get through this its you”

I’m doubting everything and everyone around me. “Girl, I know you got this”

At some point there has to be recognition that there is a wall that can be hit and not climbed by even the strongest. When that happens, what do you do? Well, you do what you’ve always done, you pull yourself up by the bootstrap, brush yourself off and then have a long conversation with yourself on how to continue on, but only after you have allowed yourself to break.

You see, only when one breaks can one be put back together. When you break, there is no choice but to be put back together (well, not a choice I want or can acknowledge). When you break, those around you have to step in; it forces them to, and forces you to allow it. There is a key question in job interviews that I think goes right over the heads of those who have the inherent need to do it all and do it all well: “Do you work better in a group or alone?” Again, who says “alone”? Even when knowing you would do it faster and better if you just did it yourself, that’s not what the employer wants to hear, even when they know you’re being hired because there is a need for someone who can do it alone without fail. It’s a catch-22. Better together, easier alone, never admit the latter.

That is the reason strength can be a weakness. You don’t learn to lean on people in hard times, you learn to lead them through it. You aren’t use to asking if another sees a better path forward, you’re focused on controlling the path you’re on. Employers ask if you work well with others for a reason, there are warnings for two person lifts for a reason, sports have teams not just one athlete for a reason. We need others to help so we don’t get hurt or burnt out or lost in the chaos and make it to the finish line. When you control, take it all on, and plow through, you remove lessons that both you and the ones you are trying to help need to be able to learn. When you don’t allow help, how will they learn to do so? They can’t and those who knew how have become too frozen from your control or compliant and lazy to do so. Just take a look around you, we have become a society that sits back and watches people struggle while we shrug our shoulders and say “Meh, they can handle it. It’s not my place to step in”.

I hit my wall four years ago. I finally broke under all the “strength” of holding it together. In my breaking, my husband, son, some family, and close friends were able to step up and surround me with the true strength I so desperately needed: love, comfort, rest. They helped me through letting go—letting go of the future I fought for and would never see, letting go of the expectations that hard work would surely pay off, letting go of dreams that were never mine to dream. Our oldest daughter turned 18 and turned to a life we had tried desperately to guard her from; our other two children had to live separately, so we had to buy a second home. All of this was smack-dab in the thick of COVID. I had too many paths of chaos, and none of them could be managed without my breaking and being put back together. I didn’t break overnight; I broke slowly and painfully as each hit came at me. I didn’t get put back together overnight; I had to sit through each piece of me being picked up off the floor and then had to wait for the glue to dry before the next piece could be found and placed. I still haven’t found all the pieces of who I once was; the cracks are still raw, the glue still not completely dry. Today, exactly 14 years to the day of finalizing the adoption of my beautiful blue-eyed girl, I am planning a trip to sit in court and fight for her beautiful little brown-eyed girl to be kept from her so she has a chance and a future her mother was robbed of. She chose the life I put all my strength into fighting off, and in my weakness, I blamed myself for not having enough strength to save her. But I now realize it takes more strength to let go and allow her to make her own path, find her own way out of the pit, or allow her to bury herself in that pit. We all have to choose, take the lessons taught, and do with them what we will.

I have a new future in sight, dreams that are mine to dream, and expectations of finding myself all over again with a little hard work and help from the love of my life…and so I write.

Adoption

Scars That Bind

Posted on April 12, 2020April 12, 2020 by soshewritesweb

It’s Easter Sunday, a day I would normally be dressed in my finest and making sure my family look their best as we head off to church, my kids would have already searched for the baskets I would have hidden the night before, my husband would be telling us all to hurry to get in the car so we won’t be late, and yet here I sit in my sweat pants and a t-shirt on my favorite chair looking out the window to yards void of kids and families enjoying each other. We live in a strange time where we are all directed to stay home and social distance. On Facebook I see all the families trying their hardest to keep a certain degree of normalcy using zoom to bring family members into their celebration along with recordings of church services allowing us to worship with the hundreds around the country locked up tight in their homes and I wonder if this Easter we share the most common bond with the disciples of Christ we ever have. They too must have been locked in their homes wondering if it was safe to go outside, they too must have feared for their future and what tomorrow would bring, they must have sent prayers up to the father asking for him to help them understand and get through the heartache they were enduring. Only, we know what today brought. We know that on the third day the one they lost and were mourning would show up at their door and offer them relief from their fear and uncertainty.

Here I sit thinking of the days that led to Jesus being crucified and then raised from the dead and I am disappointed with myself. I think of the beating he endured for the love of God’s children and shake my head at how I have been angry at him for the bruises and scratches I have been dealt by the little ones I have brought into my home. I have myself cried out “Father, why have you forsaken me!?” only I have not had the faith and the heart to continue to carry the cross I have chosen to carry willingly and obediently. I sit even on this day with bruises and scratches from my daughters latest fit and I think about how I cried to my husband “I can’t do this anymore” I think of how my youngest son now lives with friends as he awaits to be accepted in a facility so many states away and how I have screamed at my Father “WHY!?! Where is the glory in this?” I have not fallen on my knees and agreed his will not mine, I have stood defiantly and cried out for him to give me a new cup, one that is not chipped and broken from all the times I have dropped it. I am ashamed at myself for looking at my very small bruises and scratches and crying to a Father, who watched his son be beaten so badly that his skin hung from his body, how it isn’t fair that I am so hurt by my children. My trauma children, who HAVE been beaten in the past and feel the need to show me their hurt and fear through anger and fits. Then I think about those scars on my Lord’s body, how they were healed on the day he arose, and how only the holes in his hands and feet were left to show that his scars bind us to him.

Those scars show us how our Father loves his children, how even when we rebel and act out in ways that are less than grateful for his love and provision, he is there to hold us and love us. His example of complete love tells me a story of hope and healing after the pain. Those scars tell a story of the pain he endured for us and shows us we were worth all he went through, all we put him through. I know that I will not just get over the hurt I have gone through in the last year or so. I know that my still fresh scars will not just heal up with my thoughts on this day and what it really represents, it will take time. I will pick up my chipped and broken cup, I will try to glue the pieces together, and carry on. I will look at 2020 and know that I have a hope in tomorrow because no matter what it brings I have a father that loves me and will carry me through it. I have scars, some healed and some not, but all tell a story of redemption and hope. I will get new scars and I will inevitably cry out again “why have you forsaken me” but the sun will continue to rise and I will be reminded that I am never forsaken and so I write……………..

Adoption

This Hurting Moms Rant

Posted on April 20, 2019April 20, 2019 by soshewritesweb

I sat across the table and couldn’t believe what I was hearing, even though I knew it was what I was going to hear. I have spent the last four years trying everything I could to help my little one, well all three of my littles. I have done therapy, I have done attachment camps, seminars, conferences, books, and all have left me feeling more lost and defeated thinking there is no real help for my child. I have spent the last six years holding off the formal diagnosis not wanting to label her at such a young age, not wanting her to always be seen as her diagnosis but rather as a smart little girl, who has been hurt and deserves the chance to overcome those hurts. Now as I sat across the table at the IEP meeting I have been trying so hard to not to have, with the formal diagnosis I have not wanted to be seen and hear “I am sorry, by Federal law this diagnosis ops her out of an IEP. Our hands are tied.” In the midst of all that has happened in our state in the last week, I am told “We can’t help your family in this way because laws keep us from being able to”. If ever I have wanted to scream profanity in a school setting it was then. My daughter, who not only meets all eight of the criteria (which is rare the school psychologists informs the rest of the group, it is usually only three to four are met) for the diagnosis she is old enough to be given, but meets criteria they can only diagnosis as an adult, and she is unable to receive the help she needs, no we need, because she can control who she shows her behaviors to.

“I am sorry, by Federal law this diagnosis ops her out of an IEP. Our hands are tied.”

I cannot begin to count all of the mothers and fathers out there that are screaming for help for our children. Begging for there to be more help then there is. Crying to teachers, caseworkers, therapists, psychologists, doctors, family members, pastors, anyone who will listen to them, and we are unable to get the help we need. Every news story that hits of a young child who has shot their parents, threatened their school, or killed themselves in the mountains of Colorado after not being able to carry out their plan, I read countless posts of hurting moms asking why can’t we be taken serious before the tragedy that is mental health takes a life!? Mental health is not something that can be helped in the gym, it isn’t a class that can be taught in school, it isn’t something that can be taken care of at a weekend conference. It is a real struggle to those who have it and those who care for them. In most it is more like a disease than a controllable behavior. How do we care for the disease in its early stages? How do we help heal our littles before the tragedy hits? How do we shine a light in the darkness our kids live in? How can schools hands be tied with one of the scariest mental health diagnosis’ a family can receive? Unlike diseases that are acknowledged as such, our children’s disease not only hurts them, it hurts those around them, and not just emotionally. They come after their parents, their siblings, their pets, their neighbors, their teachers, and their classmates. Yet, our hands are tied.

The choices we are given as parents to help our children don’t have private rooms with a bed that pulls out for mom and dad, with Disney characters on the wall, and sweet nurses that smile at them and gently offer their healing medicine. Nope, they have shared rooms of other kids screaming in the night, white walls with nothing in the rooms but their beds, no extra bed for mom and dad because we aren’t allowed to stay with them, and nurses trained in holding them down as they try to hurt all of those around them. We as the parents aren’t spoken to in soft understanding voices by the doctors letting us know the treatment plan and how we are going to do everything we can to kick this diseases butt. No, we are left at home in tears and guilt with no real idea on how we are ever going to help our child heal or even get the disease under control. We don’t have meal chains set up to be dropped off in our time of hurting, we don’t have GoFundMe pages set up by friends in the community to help pay for the places we would send our kids for help if only we could afford it, we don’t have people offering to come sit with our kids while mom and dad go out and take a break (and even when we do they don’t have the training needed to be able to) no we have judgmental eyes on our house because we are that family. The one our neighbors will say “I always knew there was something wrong with that kid.” when the tragedy that is mental health hits. We are a group of hurting parents who long for a real light to shine on the world we live in, praying for those in power to hear our cries and start trying to figure out how to really help our kids, a community tired of lives being taken senselessly. I am a mom of children with mental health issues, I am a mom who just might have some mental health issues because of that and so I write………………

Adoption

Love Costs Everything

Posted on November 13, 2018November 13, 2018 by soshewritesweb

I was at a youth camp once, I was there as a sponsor for all of our high school kids from church. One of the programs was a movie about missionaries in other countries and how they were putting their lives on the line to share the gospel. It was called ‘Love Costs Everything’. I sat and watched while sobbing at the things these people were put through, how they were beat, tortured, and killed all in the name of Christ. I remember in my sobs asking God to use me, to allow me to be able to give my all when asked by Him. It was that same camp just one year later I would realize my call to adoption. Flash forward nine years later and I found myself asking God what else I had to give. Wow, how short our attention span can be.

When we as Christians ask God to use us, to allow us to answer His call, we always think it will be some grand adventure. We think we may have to serve in a way that could put our lives at risk, go from village to village sharing His words of love and salvation. We envision mountains moved, evil defeated, lives restored and all in a country far from our own. It is when our own ideas are thrown to the side and God asks us to serve in our own homes we can lose sight of the work we are doing. I am the most guilty at this. We started this journey with eyes wide shut, thinking we would be able to let ourselves become everything a child that has lost everything would need. We fell into a world we had no real idea existed. No one really knows this world until they are thrown into it. People who have only heard of adoption, know someone who was adopted, or know a family who has adopted are clueless. No offense, but the truth is the truth. I mean the crowds of people we had surrounding us, cheering us on, vowing to stand by our side as we walked this path was so encouraging. We knew we could do it, our support group was huge and we were in it for all the right reasons. We went to the classes, we heard the “horror” stories, we listened to the stories of love and joy that people who went through it shared. Oh, we were going to be so happy as a completed family once our little one found her forever family. Instead we found a world we never knew existed. We were introduced to the world of trauma. Now don’t get me wrong, I knew that trauma was a huge part of kids in foster care and orphanages around the world, they teach it in the classes, but to learn that this world is full of children that may never be reached, may never be able to accept our love, may never truly love in return was not a world I knew was real. This is a lesson that can only be truly learned by walking it and living with it. It is one of those things that cannot be learned by reading a book or taking the course, it has to be experienced to really be grasped. Parents with children of R.A.D. are the strongest and wisest I know and it has all been “street taught” if you will.

The Mayo clinic says this about Reactive Attachment Disorder:

Reactive attachment disorder is a rare but serious condition in which an infant or young child doesn’t establish healthy attachments with parents or caregivers. Reactive attachment disorder may develop if the child’s basic needs for comfort, affection and nurturing aren’t met and loving, caring, stable attachments with others are not established.

Now, rare is a bit of a stretch if you ask me. I know too many mommas that are crying out for help for their little ones that seem unreachable, hear too many stories of sheer terror happening in the homes of the brave that took on this unimaginable world for it to be as rare as they say. In these families strong marriages are destroyed, strong women are brought to their knees, young children’s innocence is stolen in the night, homes are literally burned to the ground, and families are forever broken. All these families have one thing in common, their love cost them everything. They loved a child that they knew may not love them in return, they drove them to therapy appointments that did nothing, they endured the judging eyes of those who swore to stand by them in their journey, they heard the whispers of how they should do more or be different, they lost sleep, fought each other behind closed doors, and they lost a piece of who they used to be. Yet every one of them will tell you they still love that child and it hurts them that they might never choose to accept that love or give it in return.

Yes, the world of trauma and R.A.D is a mission field. It is a world far away, the language is unknown, the customs are different, and the cost is high. The chosen in this life are not welcomed onto the stages of churches to spill the hard reality of their spiritual battles, their pictures are not on the donation wall, and they are not always admired by all for their fight and convictions, but they are missionaries just the same. They are forced to walk a path not recognized, they have to stand up to their families and their friends as they try to stay strong in their battle alone. They are faced with the hard reality that any moment an officer can show up and arrest them for the false allegations their little has made. There is no rest in the homes of these chosen and often the homes have become like prisons. Their healthy children are brought along for the ride and grow to become some of the most caring and sacrificial people you will meet. They know the cost that is being paid by themselves and their parents and some will resent this mission field while young only to grow up and serve on the same field. This mission field is full of every kind of fear, danger, hurt, and hope that every mission field holds and it is one of the only ones that we get the clearest picture of who we are as children in the kingdom we fight for. Those fighting this fight have taken in children who are lost, children the world has tossed aside, hurt, used, and left to care for themselves. We give them love, hope, and a chance at a future. They far too often reject that love, hope, and future as long as they can all while blaming the ones offering this new life to them. Sound familiar? Parents of these little ones are truly blessed in a way no other missionary is. We are held in the hands of our own adoptive father and he whispers in our ears “Now do you understand? Do you see how I love you even still, after the fits of rage, the angry outbursts, the accusations of not loving, not caring, and not understanding? Do you see how my love cost everything and how important it was to give?”

I have spent many hours asking God why he led me to this path. Why I wasn’t chosen to do grand things in His name and why I was asked to serve in this manner. I have lost too much sleep crying out for Him to make it easier and to let me off the “crazy-go-round”. Nine years after being a sponsor at a camp I heard my calling loud and clear, I found myself as a camper at a trauma attachment camp with other families fighting this good fight. I found myself surrounded by my fellow brothers and sisters sharing stories and battle scars and together we spoke of how our love has cost us everything and we are richer for it. We are not the same people we were when we first started this journey. We speak a new language, we have lost the crowds of people we started with and found truer friends in the loneliness, we have found a new understanding of the lost, and we have found our true identity in Christ. We have paid the price and will continue to pay more. The cost is high and the need is great, and so I write…………..

Adoption

O.verly C.ontroling D.isorder

Posted on July 15, 2018July 15, 2018 by soshewritesweb

I recently discovered I have OCD, but not the normal version, my version is overly controlling disorder. How did I come to this conclusion you ask? By sitting in the chair at our therapist and being told that I may just need to have lower expectations and allow our 15-year-old daughter to fail. Let her fail, like that is the advice I am paying for? Let our girl ruin her life, I mean how does one just throw their hands up and say. “Your choice sweetie, good luck with that!”? Time for a new therapist obviously. Unfortunately this is not the first time I have been told this. My husband, her therapist, my family, teachers, and the list goes on have all said I might just have to let her choose the wrong path. This is not easy to do for any mom I don’t think, but for a mom of a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder I think it is even harder to do. We take our children in and work as hard as we can to give them the tools they need to be able to be functioning members of society, we give up all of our free time, our friends, our own comforts, and our sanity only to have our kids refuse to choose the right path. The question then becomes what was it all for? Why did we work so hard if the outcome was always going to be a devastating one? Then, why can’t everyone around us understand the pure anxiety of just letting them go to make those choices? The sheer frustration of years wasted in a sense, memories lost with the other members of our family due to being left behind to handle the one throwing the fits while they spent the day doing fun memorable things, the one being lied about to all our friends and families, the one being triangulated from their own spouses and looking in the eyes of the one triangulating and seeing the pure satisfaction of your loneliness. Now, I am being told to just let go and let her make the mistakes that will lead to more devastation. Awesome.

”But she is tasting whiskey now!”

Let her make her own mistakes.

”But she is running away and staying gone all night!”

Let her make her own mistakes.

”But she starts high school next year and is headed straight for trouble!”

Let her make her own mistakes.

I have felt like I am on the path to losing my mind as I think back to all the years I promised to do all I could to keep her safe and help her dodge the mistake traps that teenage girls fall into only to watch her search those traps out with pure excitement. Then I found myself sitting in a class listening to the most amazing couple speak about how they had to just let their adoptive son walk his own path even though they both knew it was the wrong path, the dangerous path, the hard path, and the opposite path they had led him to. In their story they referred to the passage that I have heard all my life growing up in church. The prodigal son. Most have always focused on the son and his journey. How he left, he partied, he fell, and he went back. We have all heard of how the father looked for him to come home and excepted him back with open arms. But what really hit me this time was when they said the father LET him go. He knew his choice was not the right one, he knew it would possibly be the last time he saw his son alive, he knew he may never know what happened to his son, but he LET him go. He didn’t follow from a distance. He didn’t call his friends to keep their eye out. He let him go.

Sitting in the office of our therapist and giving her all the ways I want things to go, she looked at me and said, “you can’t control her feelings, thoughts, or behaviors while she isn’t with you. You can only control yourself.” Hard pill to swallow. “She can’t control your feelings, reactions, or thoughts, only you can” Harder pill to swallow. “What are you so afraid of, her failing or you?” Impossible pill to swallow. Is it really that hard to understand why I want her to do well? Is it wrong for me to take the danger out of her path, to keep the possibilities of mistakes happening out of the picture?

Oh, okay I see it now.

Continue reading “O.verly C.ontroling D.isorder” →

Adoption, Co-parenting, Uncategorized

The Fairy Tale Family

Posted on December 24, 2016 by soshewritesweb

There are stories we are told as children. Stories of Queens and Kings, princes and princesses, witches and fairies, heroes and villains. These stories all have happy endings, the bad guy always loses and the princess always finds her prince. The evil step mom gets what she deserves and love always overcomes. These stories are loved by children all over the world. Our sons grow up wanting to be just like the hero, saving the princess and slaying the dragon. Our daughters all think they are princesses and spend their lives looking for their prince. They dream of the big day that they will get to wear the beautiful dress, all eyes will be on her as she is swept away by her prince charming. There will be dancing and laughter and at the end of the night they will ride away into their happy ending.

But what comes next?

All the planning just made for the happy ending, there wasn’t any plans made for after the honeymoon when life hits and new villains arise. There isn’t a story that tells you how to fight when you become the evil step-mom, when you’re the villain in the eyes of the new princess, and vice versa. How do you navigate the not so happily ever after? I think I found the answer in a nugget of wisdom a friend recently gave me. “Write a list of the good that happens everyday and read it when the days are hard.” There it is, so many times we sit and read fairy tales of happy endings, or unrealistic relationships and they leave us wanting something that is not attainable. We lean on the Disney versions of the Brothers Grimm tales and forget the gruesome story lines were created to frighten children into listening to their parents. In the process we create in our minds what family looks like and if we don’t have it then we have failed at our happy ending. Well I no longer want to live in a fairy tale family. I want to embrace the one I have. The one that has a different story written all over it. In this story there is only one hero and one villain, in this story I neither have to carry the burden of being the hero nor fear of the villain. I don’t have to guess who either is. I know my hero, I know the villain, and I know the way the story ends. Now I just need to navigate the chapters of this story and pick out the victories as they get mixed with what seems like defeats. This all starts with looking at my family and seeing the normal in the abnormal. img_0247-2

In this picture you might see a mom and dad with their sons and daughter, their spouses and kids. You would be right in a way. I see this picture of my mother-in-love standing next to her amazing husband. I see her surrounded by her two sons and her daughter with their spouses, with all their children above them as if they have always been together. Strong in the understanding that family is safety. This would be a fairy tale looking family photo if I ever saw one. In this family we see a first-born prince and his princess who have survived the threats of those around them even when they invited those that would try to hurt them into their lives embracing their wonderfully made children. img_0017-3 Followed by the youngest and dearly loved prince and his princess who met in a far off land where both their long journey’s took them and they are there with their little knights.
I see a daughter that found her
knight in shining armor, who saved her from herself and her dragon by showing her that true love comes when you think you could never love again and they are surrounded by their princes and beautiful little princess. img_0079-2 Wait, did you catch it? The little knights and princes are one in the same, so how do brother and sister share them? Because their father is not of this world but rather the creator of this world. Here in this fairy tale family we have two brothers and a sister-in-love turned daughter. Here we see redemption in a story that would have ended with death and despair if our Father hadn’t stepped in, here in our land we know the meaning of family is forever because even into eternity we will see each other and we want what is best for our children rather than our own comfort. So, we have this as a result. img_0095-2 Two people brought together in youth and pulled apart by the evils that await all of us in this world. Theirs is a story that has an ending hand written by the Father above. Because of the author being who He is we were able to celebrate together as a family the best Thanksgiving of all time. We shared laughter, joy that we were all here, alive, and claimed by the God that created us to be family. This picture drawn by my sweet brother-in-love and his beautiful wife together with my sweet seester and her adoring husband was used to show the children who have been hurt by family being ripped apart by the villain of this world that love does indeed overcome, true love that pours out of the Fathers heart to ours.

So maybe fairy tales do exist, maybe they are real. There might just be real life princes and princesses, a place where step moms are just as beautiful and magical as fairy Godmothers and happy endings are ever-changing. Yes, we can create our own happy endings, family is what you make it, and the only villain that exists has already lost. My family needs constant reminders that we are walking our happily ever after and so I write……………

Adoption

Finding joy in the Hell-idays

Posted on December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 by soshewritesweb

It started, the first day of Thanksgiving break, the crazy began.

Our oldest daughter began her Monday with writing about how she wanted to punch her little sister, filled the day with her descent into the “woe is me” pit of pity, and ended it on the side of the road trying to get the sheriff deputy to take her mom down and drive her to her friend’s house. Let me back up a bit.

Holidays are the worst here. We know this and try to keep our eye out for when it will explode. Our kids have a hard time on every holiday break. We are not sure why, is it because the schools start asking questions about family traditions, pictures of their first holiday, if they get to go to their grandmas house and make cookies with all their cousins, or because they get too overwhelmed with all the noise around them. No matter the reason I have began to dread the holiday season and have renamed them to the “Hell-idays”. This year we actually had something that was causing excitement and joy. My husband’s brother was coming to town with his new wife. We would all be together with our kids for the first time ever. The weekend leading up to their arrival was filled with our younger two talking non-stop about their “Gotcha Day” (the day they were adopted). They were talking back and forth about where they would choose to eat, what they would want as a toy, and how much fun it would be. As the weekend went on and attention was focused on all that the week before us held my daughter began to sink more and more into her pit of pity. Her journals were filled with disdain for her sister, she wrote of hitting her and disliking her, and everything her little sister did was watched through angry red eyes. I was distracted most of the weekend. Trying to get everything ready for Thanksgiving and the family it would bring, I was not paying as close attention to what was going on around me, losing focus and stress of being ready coupled with a kid in the pit is never a good combination.

By the time I realized that an explosion was on its way it was too late to stop it, we tried the normal trick we have for getting blood flowing back to the brain and anger to subside, but instead she was out the door running away for the second time in a month. I rushed out after her to keep her from running in front of cars like she had the last time and in doing so I only had time to grab my keys. No wallet, no shoes, no phone, just keys. I have to admit I was a little more than upset. This time we would not have a mother daughter outing trying to talk about her feelings and emotions, no one on one trip to get hot cocoa and our nails done. Nope, I was headed straight to the police station to let them explain to her what happens to teenage girls when they run away from the safety of their homes. With no wallet, no shoes, and no phone. Did I mention I was a little more than upset? Well, turns out I didn’t allow my wheels to exactly stop at the stop sign and the sheriff driving our way took note of that. With a prayer of exhaustion, I was ready for whatever he had to say and honestly a night in a no-star resort known as jail sounded right nice at the time! Her look of pure pleasure and hope was enough for me to look in the rear-view mirror and say “I’m done, I can’t drag you into healing, it’s up to you now and I am done.” might not have been my most shining moment but nearly five years of working my tail off dragging this horse to water to only have her look me in the eye and scream how thirsty she is had left me defeated and exhausted. At some point in time they have to choose to drink the life saving water and not just stomp around in it. By the grace of God and understanding of a seasoned deputy, he saw through the mess that sat before him, he took her aside and saw through the manipulation, he looked into my eyes and heard the truth that they were screaming through tears. He looked at her and let her know he would be the one to come find her the next time she chose this path, and he would let her meet some of the people she would run into on the side of the road, and he would let her see the pictures of other girls before her and they weren’t fun to look at.

1 mom 0 teenage girl.

The game was on, after loosing what she thought was a sure win there was a battle about to begin, one that would end with her cutting off all her hair after the week was over, the family was all gone, mom had been unshakable with her behaviors, and her dad said no to pie. Her response to her dad after chopping her hair off? “Mom will be mad for sure now!” My response? “I am not fixing it, she can deal with the natural consequence.”

2 mom 0 teenage girl

Without all my focus going to her I have been able to give more to my younger two. There have been no fits of rage from our Lil Lil and my little Geo has reached out to hug me with sincere hugs. They have both relaxed and began to talk with confidence, and have not looked over their shoulders to see if their time with me is upsetting their sister to the point of her punishing them for the attention they are receiving. After three weeks of I hate you notes, fits of rage, F’bombs galore, notes of how much she worships the ground dad walks on and not me, and finally me looking her in the eye and letting her know I am ok with being hated and could not care less if she worshiped him over me, the RAD trance was broken and she returned to a calm daughter trying to get back into my graces.

3 mom 0 teenage girl

Christmas break has started, Lil Lil has noticed big sister talking to mom again, her acting out has started. Yes, the Hell-idays are upon us, but even in the Hell of it all if you keep your eyes on the big picture you can find the joy, and so I write……………….

Adoption, Election 2016, Hillary, Trauma, Trump

An Open Letter to the America My Children Have to Grow up In

Posted on October 16, 2016October 16, 2016 by soshewritesweb

I’m done!

Enough is enough!

Are we not ashamed of ourselves yet?

This has been the worst of all election years I can remember. I have never in my life had to sit through and endure the ignorance that is the media today. I never as a child heard the crazy that came with the private lives of those in office, why? Because the private lives of those around us are just that, PRIVATE. What are they going to do for us as Americans, should’t that be the question? What are their policies, where do they stand on the important issues, will they be able to stand up to those that would hurt us as a people? These should be what the topic of conversations are, but instead it is “locker room” talk, laws broken and dismissed, and all the ugly that comes with this world as a whole. Let me first say that I am over the excuses that both sides of the tantrum throwing parties have been throwing out there. My son does not need to hear, from all those that are praying Trump gets it, that his speaking as disgusting and vile as he was is excusable because that is just how guys talk. Now, while I am on this topic let me just tell you that if you read ’50 Shades of Gray’ I don’t wanna hear any “Amen sister!” out of you. I don’t want my daughters thinking it is ok that men see them as a good time and a means to an enjoyable end. Now if you listen to Howard Stern then keep your “That a girl” to yourselves as well.

We are a nation of hypocrites!

We watch shows and movies that are pretty much soft core porn and then we attack the moral standing of a candidate that has had the hard knock of being recorded for all to see him in one of his darkest moments as a human. Heck, some of you that are so vocal and upset actually watch the real deal porn and then call others dirty dogs! The music the youth of our country are listening to is full of hate, disrespect of woman, and an all around lack of moral lives. They sing of killing not just cops but anyone that disagrees with them, they sing of cheating on your spouse or with someone else’s spouse because it’s fun and you only live once. Our daughters dress with as little fabric as possible stretched as tight as it can and we call the boys that can’t peel their eyes away perverts. Our sons have their butts hanging out of their pants and wear shirts that promote drugs, sex, and killing and we tell them if someone doesn’t wanna hire them it isn’t their fault. We have forgotten how to teach respect and we no longer expect it. Children are being stolen off the streets and sold into a life of sex trade and we are talking about being offended by a man speaking vile things to another excuse for a man. Haiti has had over 500 people killed by a hurricane and we wanna see more leaked emails to prove even further that the woman running for president of this morally corrupt country shouldn’t even be allowed to run. Our cops are being slaughtered and there is a conversation among some that say “well, its been coming for a while now.” We have a people of our nation that have mothers fearing if their sons will come home because of their skin tone and we are still pointing fingers. We are a mess and there is no hope of getting straightened out if we don’t open our eyes to the trash that we have become used to and therefore comfortable with until someone we don’t like comes along and wades in our pool of filth causing us to point out the nasty that is dripping off them when they try to get out. Seriously!?

The people of this country go about their business for three years, laughing at coarse jokes, singing along with trash lyrics, following the nude Instagram of the latest hot mess, ignoring those that are in need, and fearing what tomorrow will bring in the world of terrorism. Then magically about the fourth year we all became moral compasses pointing out the impurities in the candidates lives that we have been living ourselves. It is madness! We have two of the most morally corrupt people in history running for the most powerful position in the world and it is the fault of the people. We have been poisoned with the kool aid we are now angry they are offering but we won’t stop drinking it. We have become a nation of hateful ME monsters and in our wake we are leaving children at the doorstep of trauma.

Is it really a surprise our nation is on the brink of disaster? Look at what we are ok with, babies murdered in the womb with conversations that maybe it is ok to go ahead and kill them after birth. Rome did that. We are showing more and more sexual explicit actions on prime time TV with our children sitting right beside us watching it happen. Rome did that. Our men are becoming women and our women becoming men. Rome did that. The churches are no longer a place to run to heal but rather a place of persecution. Rome did that. We have made our leaders, actors, and famous our gods. Rome did that. Christians are being called hateful and too set in their old-fashioned ways and they need to change their beliefs. Germany did that. Our guns are being threatened to be taken. Germany did that. Every empire has fallen after they stop living the lives of moral people, as they have taken their eyes off what is good and right and turned to lives of pleasure at all costs, the dictators step into control without notice, and then it is too late.

Is it too late for us?

How can we turn this around?

Start living lives that we claim we believe in during election years. Get angry that the men of this country are ok with children being used for their pleasure and that the term “locker room talk” isn’t talking about sports. Show grace and mercy to those that are in need of it. Offer a kind word to those that might not deserve it. Raise children to be respectful and stop buying the trash music this world is offering them. Force Hollywood and the powers that be to stop pushing the limits of morals and shoving it down our kids throats by not buying their posion. Go on a hike with your kids, love your neighbor, be faithful to your spouse, guard your eyes and mouth, and start demanding we are offered candidates that are worthy of this great country and our trust. Our children deserve a better world and so I write…….

Adoption

The masks of the broken

Posted on October 9, 2016October 10, 2016 by soshewritesweb

I have never known a person not broken somehow. No one that has gone their whole life without a hurt of some kind.

I have known those who wear the mask of perfection, the ones that advise those real enough to ask for help and then go home and drown their sorrow in what ever their choice of drowning might be. I can spot the hidden broken in a crowd because I was once one of them.

I am a Oklahoman with a splash of Coloradoan. I call it Colokian. I was raised to be buttoned up. To hide the hurt and the crazy that went on behind our closed-door. I was good at it. I think I could smile through a bullet wound. We never let on that our home was a scary place to be. I remember standing at my front door praying that God would let my dad be in a good mood, the nerves and the fear threatening to surface as my friends would pass by waving and laughing. As I grew from child to a young adult I became the best I knew at keeping the mask of perfection on through anything that came my way. Those around me always seemed to have a crack here and there, bless their hearts. It wasn’t until I got married and realized that the mask only made it hard for him to really know me and whats worse how to love me. We had way too many downs caused by my mask to keep it on. Learning how to take off that mask and allow him to see my brokenness was oddly freeing. Being broken together only made us stronger together. Just when we thought we had healed our broken, we added our shattered ones.

Our daughter came to us as a broken swan, she had been made to feel like a little duck that didn’t quite fit in. Those around her would whisper their concerns to me and look around to make sure the little duckling didn’t hear. “She is very manipulative and likes to play mom and dad against each other.” They would whisper across the table. “Why are we whispering?” I would ask. The answer, so she didn’t feel judged by them or get upset by them talking about her struggles. I never liked it. I didn’t know how to help her heal if I couldn’t talk to them about her behavior in front of her. It became obvious that I needed to do just that when we were driving home from school and out of the blue she began to brag about how good of an actress she was. I asked how so and she answered that she could make her friends feel sorry for her and make them do anything she wanted them to just by crying. “Nope, that’s called being manipulative.” We had a good talk about what that meant and how easy it is for girls especially to manipulate and how nobody really likes to be treated that way. Then she said something that made it clear to me that the only way I could help her was to be real and transparent, to help her take off the mask even if it hurt her or made her upset. After I told her she had become manipulative not a grand actress, she looked at me confused and said, “hmm, no one has ever told me that before.” It was time to learn how to get real. The journey has not been easy, she still hates to say what is really going on in her mind, but she is learning. Just when she really began to grasp the art of how to be real, and I was admitting how her behaviors struck a nerve in my own masks that I had thought I had removed, her new siblings came in all their fractured glory. Then suddenly we are seeing where we are still very broken. The truth of this journey is that it is constantly pointing out your own hurts, fears, struggles, and brokenness.

This is why it is so hard.

You have to admit you are so angered by the smallest of lies because your reality as a child was always stretched.

You finally see that you hang on to the control because it was absent in your youth.

All of these masks you have learned to wear perfectly become a heavy burden making it impossible to deal with the day-to-day behaviors of the newly broken children that come into your life. There are not very many options on this path. Throw your hands up and scream “I quit!”, fight with all you have to help them heal dropping their mask and learn to drop yours in the process, or hide under more masks and more stress that others might see through the cracks. We chose to fight and heal as a family. Now, if I told you we have succeeded and are all better it would be a lie. I have to repeat to myself on a daily basis “WAIT, or Why Am I Talking” I have to remind myself that control is not always needed, I have seen that their behaviors are not the behaviors of the ones that have hurt me in the past, that their lies are their only way to feel safe in this world that screwed them over, and I have to give myself grace for losing it more often than I should. That’s the thing about life though, we never really have a time in it that we are not having to work on the broken that it brings. Just when we help out little ones heal from the past, their future will hand them their new masks and so I write……….

Adoption

On the gray side of things

Posted on September 23, 2016September 23, 2016 by soshewritesweb

I remember as a kid thinking there had to be more than just black and white. The way that life happened wasn’t as clear as one or the other, it was more complicated than that. When adults tried to tell me that things happened for a reason I never really believed them.

Why would there be a reason my best friend at six would be killed in an accident while on a Sunday drive with her family?

Why did my “real” father not want to know who I was, or want to be a part of my life and why did the man I called daddy have a hard time loving us all the time?

How could so many see only black and white when I clearly see gray and even red at times?

These were real questions I had, and now I see in the eyes of my little ones the same confusion. I don’t think there is a black and white world but rather a cold gray one. This world is full of those that would tell you that it is either black or white, but how? How is a father leaving his children for a new start at a younger woman black or white? How is a mother allowing her young to be used so she can have a refill of numbing juice black or white? How can a young man pull the trigger and take a life so he can be welcomed into a group of other misguided souls be black and white? The answer is it isn’t. It is full of shades of gray. Not fifty shades, but rather a thousand shades of crazy gray. We all come into this broken world new and trusting, in the womb we can tell that this world will either be safe or scary. Once we come kicking and screaming we are either comforted or reassured we will need to kick for dear life forever. Some will be held with love and safety and others will be beaten and used, how is there a reason to this? Why is that the go to statement? I know I can’t look into the eyes of my hurt ones and tell them this happened for a reason.

Do I tell them that they where put into a family that hurt them and abused them because I would want more children and be unable to have my own? Do I tell myself that I was unable to have more children because there would be three little ones that needed my heart to be open to taking them in? Do I look into the eyes of those that doubt I can love the ones that I didn’t carry and tell them I can because it was written in the stars? I say no. I choose to live on the grayer side of things, on the sometimes redder side of life. I live here not because it is safer but rather because it is more colorful. If I only had a room of white to look at I would go crazy, if the room was always black I would go mad, but here in the gray and red I find peace and life. There is truth here to grasp onto, hope of growth and change. I can look into the eyes of my hurting child who asks why it has to hurt so much to live and give an honest “I don’t know, but I know after the hurt comes the healing and that is the honest truth of it.” I can look at them and be ok with being just as confused and angry over their pain, I can let them see that this world confuses me too but I chose to try every day to figure it out. I think it would be so much harder to live in a world black or white. The weight of that thought makes me gasp for air. Please don’t get me wrong, there is right and wrong, but I can’t add that for every wrong that is done to a person there is a reason. Unless that reason is that we live in a fallen world full of fallen people all trying to decide if they see black, white, or gray. In the moments that I sit and listen to my son pour out his heart over the loss of his little furry best friend, or try to come up with the way to navigate my daughter trying to hide a boyfriend at a way too young age, or tell myself to hold my frustration at yet another lie, I have to tell myself to try and see their shades in between my black and white. I have to look into the color that is their reality at the time and figure out why and that is a hard place to be if I only believe in black and white.

As I spoke on the phone with a dear one yesterday I heard myself giving advice on how to speak life into her little problem child. “Just encourage her, speak beauty and love into her without the disappointment and frustration, give her a safe place to turn when the world chews her up and spits her out.” As I heard the words come out of my mouth I thought to myself, “hey kettle, having a nice chat with pot?” There I was giving advice to someone that I haven’t even learned how to live myself. See, not so much black or white there as much as stormy gray. A beautiful stormy gray that tells me after the rain comes the sun. I am ok with the gray, with the unanswered whys and the uncomfortable be-causes. I can let go of my perfect white walls and my lonesome black rooms. I can embrace the gray of my youth and look into the wisdom it has taught me. I don’t wanna teach that there is only black or white, don’t show your uncomfortablity with the norm. I want to teach them to imbrace their shade and look for where it can inhance the shades around them. I don’t want my daughter to look at all the perfect shades of white around her and feel so imperfect and only feel like she has a life of black to turn to. I want her to be comfortable in her skin, in her flaws that will someday be her profection. I want that for all me children and so I write…….