Finding Hope

Jay and I had a Skype therapy session with Victoria tonight. She is often so hyper and unfocused. Tonight was a bit different. V wants to come home so badly for a visit. We try to help her understand what it will take to make that happen. It isn’t about earning her way home. It really is about feeling her way home. As we explained to her that as soon as she is comfortable with their rules and expectations at the center she is in, we can trust that she could come home for a visit following those same rules at home. I think when she realized it was all up to her, it felt like climbing Mt Everest, without a guide.

I could see it in her face. I can feel her…even so far away. I asked her if she felt like she could do it. She shook her head no as the tears began to fall. I already knew what was happening inside her head-what she tells herself and then begins looking through the negative lens. We remind her that she doesn’t have to do it alone. There are many people there helping her along the way and SO MANY other people that care so deeply for her. We have her name some of those people. She names her family and her Heavenly Father and the lens begins to clear. She is missing her family. And we are missing her.

And yet, once again I am convinced and certain, V is the perfect place for her. The model, the support, the environment is exactly what she needed. Raising a child with a mental illness is so very difficult. It is a journey of hairpin turns, back tracking and very slow progression. As I consider the difficulty of this relationship…it isn’t so different for any other kinds of relationships that struggle for a connection.

It requires sensitivity, empathy, forgiveness and so much patience. I love my paradigm shift that no longer is waiting for my expectations to be fulfilled, but instead really allowing her to become. And I don’t know what that’s going to look like. I’ve had glimpses and I have a feeling she will one day exceed any expectations I may have had. And I know it all has to do with allowing her to transform in her own way and her own time.

I no doubt frustrated and hindered that process. We all do at times, even in our most valued relationships. And these sentences are so easy to write with her hundreds of miles away. But it confirms for me that she must be in the right place if we are both as healthy as we’ve ever been since she has been home. I am more hopeful than ever even though she still is struggling to let them meet her most basic of needs. But it is a process that they know can’t be forced. They have the time, manpower and an environment conducive to allowing V the time she needs. It is true grace. It’s hard for V to see it as such. But someday she will.

So I hope you look at the people in your most valued relationship and recognize that there is no met expectation. We are constantly evolving and growing and becoming. And we can be a positive and influential part of that transformation. We aren’t perfect and for some of us, we wear those imperfections on our sleeves. And pants. And shoes. Instead of becoming a source of frustration, we can look at it as an opportunity to support, serve and truly love without conditions. It really is a journey of beautiful lessons. It certainly didn’t feel that way in the beginning and for a very long time afterwards. It’s true some days I am not interested in learning one more thing but tonight I am grateful her humility and mine.

Humility does not mean

you think less of yourself.

It means you think of yourself less. ~Blanchard

I’m reading Dr. Bruce Perry’s book, “The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog”. In the book, Dr. Perry writes about how the brain craves predictability. “The brain tries to make sense of the world by looking for patterns. When it links coherent, consistently connected patterns together again, it tags them as “normal” or “expected” and stops paying conscious attention.” Traumatized children don’t ever seem to get a break; that predictability is so illusive because their stress response is so active.

Perry, in writing about a child says, “Her attention and impulse problems might be due to a change in the organization of her stress response neural networks, a change that might have once helped her cope with her abuse but was now causing her aggressive behaviors and inattention to her classwork in school. It made sense: a person with an overactive stress system would pay close attention to the faces of people like teachers and classmates, where threat might lurk, but not to benign things like classroom lessons. A heightened awareness of potential threat might also make someone like Tina prone to fighting, as she would be looking everywhere for signs that someone might be about to attack her again, likely causing her to overreact to the smallest potential signs of aggression.”

This is part of the reason V couldn’t survive in public school. There were no patterns of consistency. There were no real efforts to provide an atmosphere of safety to minimize the fear of threats. And when V did overreact, the school administration had no idea how to regulate, calm and reassure her.

V is still struggling in the school setting at the RTC but it is such a relief to have people in charge that know exactly how to respond to her. It’s not only their response that is so great but also their constant efforts to encourage a healthy relationship even though V is constantly trying to sabotage it. They recognize her behaviors for what they are: mostly defense mechanisms. They do a beautiful job of looking beyond her behaviors and if they need to address them, they do so without inducing shame.

“Ultimately, what determines how children survive trauma, physically, emotionally or psychologically, is whether people around them- particularly adults they should be able to trust and rely upon- stand by them with love, support and encouragement. Fire can warm or consume, water can quench or drown, wind can caress or cut. And so it is with human relationships: we can create and destroy, nurture and terrorize, traumatize and heal each other.”

They must be surrounded by adults that can create consistent patterns.

“A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south, because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo but he’s not marked.

Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE…” Shoulders Naomi Shihab Nye

While I was listening to The Writer’s Almanac, this stanza of the poem “Shoulders” stood out to me.

It instantly made me think of my children but especially Victoria. If ever there was a requirement for marked cargo, it certainly is her. “Fragile” would be stamped right next to “Strong”. It is this dichotomy that would leave the postal worker confused which pile to place the package. V carries around a bravado that demands express shipping but she really only feels worthy of packaged services, junk mail.

Being able to determine the care without fixating on the package is often difficult because that is the part we see most often, the outside. But we all are so much more than what can been seen and heard. The most valuable part of a person, is also the most sensitive part, that can only be felt.