Finding Hope

I feel so far removed from the world of RAD since V has been gone. I know I am still processing and healing all that we’ve endured over the last seven years.

I reflect on what happened and consider what I may have done or not done differently. I try to live a life with no regrets. And at the end of my thoughts, I still believe, I’ve done the best that I could. My best, not someone else’s. I don’t fully comprehend all of the cost, both figuratively and literally. I haven’t kept track financially and I’m not sure exactly how many relationships were weakened by misunderstanding and judgment.

There is no doubt I have accumulated more insight over the years and a clarity in the past three months. I’m still trying to piece it all together. I consider boundaries and consequences. I am understanding how attunement and mercy play an essential role in all parenting but especially in children that challenge nearly every boundary and limit set. I’ve known that having a heart at peace is pivotal to be able to offering any healing to hurting children. I now have a better understanding of how they all work together. I also know it’s impossible for someone to understand the intricacies of it without ever living it. I know pain extended far beyond V’s heart. I understand more than ever my limited capacity to change anything beyond myself. While I’ve been waiting for so much change in V, I know the only real change I can expect is in me. And much of that change was my expectations. I still struggle but I am becoming more comfortable accepting what is.

I have began this post a number of times since I returned from my first visit to see V more than three weeks ago.

I boarded the plane with one piece of checked luggage and carried on no expectations.

So I thought.

How do you tell a mother not to have any expectations?

I arrived at 10am and walked into the classroom and V ran to me. It was a pure exchange. But her sincerity slowly left throughout the day. At 5pm when I got into the car, somehow emotions I wasn’t even fully aware of, spilled down my cheeks. As I drove toward the city, I wept. I drove around looking for a place to eat for dinner but I couldn’t pull myself together. I was struggling to figure out where it was all coming from. It was a painful release, I wasn’t finding much solace. I made two phone calls for insight. It got me to Subway for a sandwich and I didn’t know what else to do but go back to the hotel and climb on the treadmill and just run.

I still don’t know all the painful places that manifested that night but I know my inadequacies, the injustice, and limited influence were exposed. Even with the comfort of knowing that this is the only place V could be, seeing her there was heartbreaking for me. I don’t know that it gets easier because even now I have to hold back the tears.

There may be many that question or pass judgment on the way Jay and I have chosen to help V. I’m okay with that because there isn’t a manual or a drug that can make it all better. But there is something no one can ever question and that is my love and dedication to Victoria. I have wanted to quit a thousand times and I haven’t. Even as she slowly self destructed and nearly simultaneously brought the entire family down with her. Again, an intensity one would have to live to truly understand.

I am still learning and growing. There is so much I don’t know but what I do know, I passionately want to share with others. I will be offering another lecture series in January, more information can be found here.

When I returned the following day to visit V, it was a little easier. And then the last day, I went to visit for a few hours. A connection was felt and as I prepared to leave, V’s vulnerability could no longer hide behind the fortress. She cried. It was the cry you would have expected when we left the first time after dropping her off but she couldn’t. This cry was anguish. I knew it was painful. I was comforted to know she trusted me but sad to know the pain doesn’t end for her. She continues to find creative ways to conceal it. We all, to some extent, do that. I held her and she fell into me and I tried to comfort her. I was leaving, my offering so limited. One of those painful things from the first day. But I didn’t leave the way I came. I was hopeful for what could happen for her and the comfort she received there. It was the only facility I visited that understood the need for nurturing.

I look forward to blogging more about what the center can offer for V that just could never have been replicated at home. I hope to blog about progress, her’s and mine.

I’m not sure what to write about anymore. It’s been a month since V left and it honestly feels like six months. On the drive home from school this evening, I broke. I never know when it’s going to hit me but I know it’s so close to the surface.

When people ask me how I’m doing, my first response is relief. That’s what I mostly feel throughout the day knowing I don’t have the huge responsibility of regulating V and keeping everyone safe. But there is a bigger part of me that feels a larger loss than that of responsibility.

On the drive home tonight I reflected on how far I’ve come. I considered those days that I was held captive by hate, anger and acute loneliness. I was so inadequate. I thought about my effort and hours and hours of therapy to not only purify my heart but fall deeply in love with my daughter. There isn’t another soul on this planet that truly knows what I, and Victoria, had to endure to share an intimacy that is so genuine and vulnerable. I can’t compare it with any other relationship in my life. This could hardly be a called a reciprocal relationship. Most of what she has offered has been superficial and destructive. But the few moments of V’s clarity and sincerity are enough to have forged a bond that is stronger than the trail of destruction. However, those same few moments are what makes it so hard to have her gone. What I worked so hard for is the very thing that makes this hurt so much. I wish she cared enough to feel this.

Tonight’s watershed of tears is not only a beautiful and necessary release but was made all the more difficult with the holidays upon us, especially Christmas. It will be one more memory that we didn’t make and she wasn’t in. I don’t think justice will ever settle this debt. I can’t imagine how mercy will make amends? One of many things I don’t know.

Although I know having V gone is the right thing, it is painful. I am missing out on being her mom. I realize that most of the time she was here, I wasn’t valued but I so value being her mom. And I guess that’s what I’ve said all along, even if she doesn’t get better, I am so much better because of her. And I do think she will get better. And I don’t think it will be when she’s out of the house or has a baby of her own which is the only hope I hear from so many. My hopes are so much bigger than that and I can’t wait for her’s to match.

V’s desire for a better life is still stuck in some crazy fear so I have nothing new to report.

(Quotes taken from “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” by Philip Yancey)

As I was thinking about what V’s experience has done for me, I considered the word forgiveness. Before I could even begin to have the strength to forgive V nearly every day for her behaviors, whether they were intentional or not, I had to let go of a lot of other pain that I had carried for many years. “Not to forgive imprisons me in the past and locks out all potential for change” (Yancey, p.99) That change could come only with an understanding of what forgiveness is. “Forgiveness offers a way out. It does not settle all questions of blame and fairness-often it pointedly evades those questions-but it does allow a relationship to start over, to begin anew” (Yancey, p.98)

Letting go isn’t something arbitrary; it’s very purposeful and focused. And I had to have someone to “give it to”. There is an enormous amount of comfort that I’m giving to Christ something he has already taken and had no intentions for me to hang onto. Yancey says, “We forgive not merely to fulfill some higher law of morality; we do it for ourselves.” Sometimes the only healing comes to the one that does the forgiving. Just because I have chosen to forgive in my relationships doesn’t mean they are restored to some perfect form. The other person has a choice, feelings and responsibility as well. All things I have no control over. Sometimes people will respond to our willingness to forgive with increased generosity or it simply allows us to move on. Forgiveness makes no promises of reciprocity, justice may still be illusive and pain, present. But it does allow us to see the other person as human and not an object of anger and blame. Revenge gives way to a charity that can only be found under the construction of mercy. We really do begin to see the person in a different light. Again, one that may not illuminate a path where the relationship progresses but we both become free to do so. I can’t find the quote but it says something to the effect, “One act of mercy does more than a lifetime of consequences.”

Offering that one act takes far less energy than never-ending resentment but yet, we often choose the more exhausting road. Because the one act takes more courage, strength and faith, it will always be worth it. We will gain far more than justice could ever and may never serve.