"Madness"

2010: A Rough Year

We officially adopted K June 21, 2010, a true irony that it was the longest day of the year. I struggle daily with the challenges of parenting a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, especially since I happen to be the target for all of her hatred and anger wrought from a short but profoundly disabling lifetime of abuse and neglect. I struggle to maintain compassionate loving feelings for a youngster who, through no fault of her own, utterly repulses me. I struggle to maintain compassion and love for myself as I navigate through some of the ugliest feelings I've ever encountered.

Five days a week I work with broken people who had childhoods like, or worse than, K's, and I am committed to giving her the best shot at being a functional human*, which means practicing a level of self awareness and mindfulness that I've previously been too lazy** to take on. Because it's seriously fucking hard.

Today K is with her sister, M***, and M's family. Our two separate families have made a commitment to making sure the girls maintain a relationship, and we swap weekends as often as we can. Lately K has been spending more time with her sister's family as we seem to need the break. K does very well with M's family and does not display the challenging behaviors we are privy to daily. For this I am both thankful and envious. I am thankful that K has the ability to keep her shit together; I am envious that we do not benefit from that ability. Mostly, I am sad that the threat and fear of trusting and attaching to us is so profound that she behaves in ways that cause us to fear our own abilities to hold on and stay the course.

I once had my astrological chart read by a guy who told me that I had it in me to survive "a concentration camp". Not to diminish the experience of any survivor of the concentration camps or any other kind of inhumane tortuous condition, but I definitely have my moments with K. And I question that guy's reading.

So for 2011 I renew my commitment to my family, to K, and to myself, to put our relationships before all else. I will not die on the hill of un-brushed teeth, poor table manners, stolen trinkets, and poopy butts; I will stand up for kindness, respect, and freedom from verbal and physical abuse. If we're not safe then K is not safe, because she will be unable to heal her own wounds if she continues to suffer further shame from the wounds she inflicts on us.

*What is a functional human? I'll feel successful as a parent if my children can provide for themselves financially (hopefully doing something they love that is legal), if they can regulate their emotions without harming themselves or others, if they have meaningful, respectful relationships with other "functional humans". There's probably a lot more, but those are the basics.

**I have some pretty harsh self-judgements around my "lazy" that I'm working on.

***M is K's fraternal twin. Their birth mother abused a variety of substances during the pregnancy and the theory is that K got the lion's share of the bad teratogenic shit, ergo she is more challenging and has more challenges.

Peace.

Madness

We are in the process of adopting Katherine, a beautiful and amazing 9 y/o 4th of July fireworks display. The first time I officially met her, she asked if she could take pictures with my cell phone of her art work (we were at our elementary school art show). I told her she could take three pictures. I knew she was in foster care and needing to transition into a permanent placement, and John and I had already decided to adopt her when CFS determined she was ready to be adopted*. We new of her reputation for having challenging behaviors (severe ADHD, PTSD, oppositional/defiant disorder, attachment issues, and emotion regulation difficulties).We figured we'd already dealt with host of similar challenges with Erlan so we felt like we were prepared/could handle whatever she could dish out. So, back to the cell phone and my first taste of Katherine chaos... after she took her three pictures I told her it was time to give my cell phone back. Foolish me, 20 some pictures, a few movies, and several laps around the school later, I finally had to grab her and wrestle the cell phone from her death grip. I've since learned that she is obsessed with cell phones and in a few years it will be powerful leverage for everything. Leverage is a valuable commodity in terms of parenting Katherine.

The first time Katherine came to our house, her foster family drove her out to our place, kept their truck engine running out on the road, and practically ran back to their car saying "may the force be with you". We had decided that for her first visit we would just hang out at home and let her "work" the llamas which she was excited to do, being the animal lover that she is. She had been with her foster family for nearly two years and they managed a cattle ranch, had horses (horses trump cell phones so we figured the llamas' appeal might be short lived), chickens, goats, and an 11 year old boy who tormented Katherine daily.** Katherine has a lot of anxiety and it manifests itself in a need to control absolutely everything. All the time.

The afternoon went along smoothly, but by dinner time she hit the wall and exploded. She started darting around grabbing anything that looked like something she probably shouldn't touch, she was impossible to engage or redirect so we got dinner on the table as quickly as possible. She grabbed at the food with her hands and shoved it in her mouth. She poured salt and pepper in her milk. She grabbed food off our plates. It was like having the Tasmanian Devil at the dinner table. As soon as we finished eating we loaded up and headed out. Neither John nor I felt like we could handle Katherine alone for the car ride back to her foster family's, and we didn't want to leave Erlan alone, so we all piled in--John and Erlan in the front seat and Katherine and I in the back.

The 45 minute drive was beyond remarkable. Katherine disengaged herself from her seat belt numerous times and I had to threaten to sit on her if I had to, to keep her safe in her seat. She grabbed at every loose item in the vehicle and sat on it so we couldn't get it back. She swore, she told a bazillion lies, she flipped us all off, and she talked non-stop. When we got to her foster family's house and her foster mom came out, Katherine's behavior changed noticeably. She quieted down, she followed Robin's instructions, and she walked back to the house like a normal kid. When Robin asked how things went, I told her mostly very well and that we'd talk later. We drove away in total silence, our eyes as wide a saucers. After about 10 minutes, Erlan turned to look at me in the back seat and using Dr Evil air quotations, said "MADNESS". We all laughed hysterically (and I do mean hysterically) and wondered just what the fuck we were getting ourselves into.

More than 6 months later and about a month to go until we can legally adopt Katherine, she is still the "madness" in our lives, and she is our joy and wonderment. She argues constantly, she still lies for the heck of it***, cheats whenever she can get away with it, and every now and then, she flips one of us off. Her table manners have improved considerably, she loves Erlan and is a fiercely loyal sister, she is always eager to help (especially if it means avoiding her own responsibilities), and most of the professionals who have been working with her for years remark on how much calmer she is in general since coming to live with us. Every single moment I am with her I am challenged to growth and patience. And while it is exhausting, I am hugely honored to be Katherine's mother.

*K was in a therapeutic foster care placement and the professionals weren't sure she was ready to "step down" into regular foster care/concurrent foster adopt placement. I thought is was an odd concept, not ready for a permanent family, but ready for life long foster care?

**K had a very volatile relationship with her former foster brother and Katherine was pegged as the troubled trouble maker. When I realized he was the same kid who called Erlan a retard a few years ago, I knew he was the problem, not Katherine.

***K used to tell lies constantly. Of course she would lie to keep from getting in trouble, but she'd also just make shit up, and when I'd call her on it she would have the gall to argue her veracity. I would tell her that I would call so-and-so and ask about her story and then she would come clean by saying "OK, I take it back". She really doesn't do it much anymore, but I use to call her Princess Full of Poo whenever she would make up something obviously untrue. Now she just embellishes like any good story teller.

2009?

I am officially referring to 2009 as my lost year! People go on a party tear and have a lost weekend or even a lost week, but I think one only loses a full year when one has amnesia, and that only happens in soap operas. So basically the past year has been like 365 days of the sand passing through the hourglass. Or maybe, so much happened and it all went by in such a blur that it just feels like a blip (but isn't all of life just a nano-secondth of a blip?).

At the end of 2008 a long lost friend from Ireland reconnected with me after several years, via this very blog, and I was so excited and so full of all the things I wanted to share regarding the past 10 years, that I got totally overwhelmed and never really resumed contact. Now it's a full year later, but it seems like just last week I received this:

sarah cottle said: Pam, Pam Fazier, formerly of Seattle, then Bozeman? Pam who I've been trying to trace for years? Pam who took me whale watching on the Pugeot Sound? Pam who made Vicki, Kirstin and myself dress in silly clothes, drink booze and attend a barn dance one thanksgiving eve before eating an overcooked, exploding turkey? Pam who visited myself and brothers Mark and Andrew in Timsbury, England then drove around Devon and Cornwall in a rickety camper van where we 'surfed' and ate 'fish and chips with vinegar' washed down with beer every evening for two solid weeks? Lord! can this be you? Please, please find this message and get in touch or if anyone out there can make the connection tell her its SARAH COTTLE from ENGLAND who loves and misses her... Soon...x

Of course I contacted her by email and told how thrilled I was to have been found, and that I'd been trying to track her down as well, but I never really took the time to write a proper letter and reconnect. And in a way, it doesn't even feel like a year went by, and I'm just as thrilled to know that I can at least write her a catch-you-up-on-the-past-10 years letter, because I know where she is in the world. Although, it has been a year and she might have moved, right?

The blurry bits I do remember from my 2009 fugue state are as follows:

• My sister had a baby girl, Hazel Coyne Sehlhorst, born 3/13/09-I went to Seattle to attend the birth, but she decided to arrive late and I had to return home.
• John and I took classes to become foster/adoptive parents.
• I went to Seattle in May to meet my niece.
• In June we started our transition plan to adopt Katherine, a beautiful 9 y/o mini tornado, by having her for weekends. She brought "MADNESS" into our lives.
• In July John's mom died.
• In August Katherine became a part of our family, my sister et famille came out for a week, I got sick, and the month was over.
• Back to school in September, Erlan starting middle school and Katherine in 4th grade. Two kids, two different schools.
• Turned 47, working full time, NextGen, H1N1*.
• The holiday season.

How's that, a whole year in 9 bullets?

Main Accomplishment--living through a hatch and a dispatch** with sanity (and hopefully sense of humor) in tact.

Thankful for--my family, especially John; my job which, in a sense, is also family; that we are still housed, clothed, and fed, as so many are not.

Haunted by--the fallout from reporting a coworker and friend to the state licensing board.

Regret--any pain caused by my unintentional unkindness.***

Resolve--to write a proper letter to my friend Sarah; to try to do 2010 more intentionally; exercise; ditch j-screwed.

* I did not have H1N1, but it and NextGen (our new electronic health record system), were all consuming work phenomenons.

** My brother Steve married his pregnant wife the day after our mother died, and at the wedding a good friend (the mother of one of Steve's high school friends) after a few glasses of wine came up to me and said, we used to call this "a match, a hatch, and a dispatch". That phrase has always stayed with me as a sort of circle-of-life type thing.

*** Any intentional unkindness has either been accounted for, or hugely enjoyed.