Finding Hope

This past week I visited V for three days. My first visit to see her was so emotionally exhausting that I knew I had to do things a little differently this time to make sure I took care of myself. I learned from the last visit, that when I leave V in the evenings, I have to find a healthy distraction and something that replenishes myself. I scheduled a massage in advance and it was the perfect cure.

I realized on this visit what it is that breaks my heart the most: and it isn’t that she is living in a facility away from the family (which is painful) but that so much of what I do for her, is still lost on her. My love is a vanishing act. She at times allows it to penetrate but it is short lived. I give knowing that there are still holes in her heart. V isn’t really offering anything in return but at least she’s not taking and then dumping all her yucky feelings on me.

On the second day I picked up V, she was of course anxious and already in her fortune-teller mode. She was predicting what we would be doing faster than I could even consider what the days events might be. She was actually very delightful except that she struggled to stay in the moment. I constantly had to remind her to slow down and “We are not there yet”. It was then that I realized why a connection is so hard to make with her. She is the queen of distractions. It seems like the closer she gets to feeling good or any shared intimacy, the faster her mind speeds up to move on. It’s hard as a mom. Because you can imagine, if she works so hard to avoid feeling…there isn’t much time to even consider giving.

But, the success is that there are brief moments of connection. And in spite of her inability to reciprocate consistently, I still want to give. That hasn’t always been the case; my heart surprises me still. We did have some tender moments while we went to the movies, fed ducks, tried on make up and smelled perfume in Sephora, shopped and we ended the night with me rubbing her back, putting lotion on her feet and reading a book, “Why Daughters Need Their Mothers”. As she peacefully fell asleep, without the violent rocking motion she always did at home, I recognized that although they are baby steps, progress is being made, in both of us. It took me years to touch V without being disgusted or traumatized. It has taken her the same.

It is in these moments that I again recognize the purpose of her in my life. Although she has had some very disgusting habits, swears like a sailor, and wants to convince people around her that she is unlovable there is something in her that has purified me and has taught me to love deeper. Isn’t that ironic?

As she was falling asleep she asked me to put this song on repeat. I don’t know if she knows it, but she isn’t one of the ninety and nine. She is the one. And at times I can’t believe all that God has required for her. As I looked at her peaceful face as she slept, my heart ached that she had to live in a residential facility. It is a difficult place to grow up. And I grieved, as I considered once again, what I am missing out on. She has grown so much since my last visit. But as the song indicates, she is more God’s than she is mine. I wept and couldn’t put my feelings to words, even now I refuse to attempt it.

V still is far from coming home but there is enough working in our relationship and in my heart to know we are walking a road full of hope and marked by little successes. Helping one to feel and to trust is extremely tedious. There is no fast pass. So, yes, my heart continues to break and repair. But as I’ve allowed it to, I have become stronger in the process. I realized the strength I have acquired has far less to do with my efforts than God’s grace. I’ve had to find something beyond myself-there is no way I could do this alone. And not only do I have God making up most of what I imperfectly do, I have a unbelievable supporting cast around me.

I am so hopeful. And not so much for V, because so much of her success is determined by her, but am so hopeful that I will be able to continue to do all that is required of me, for her, the one.

by Vanessa Deffenbaugh

I don’t know if it’s the hint of spring, the approaching end of my final semester, the reprieve of Victoria, but my mind is finding clarity that has been illusive for…months seem inadequate but I don’t want to believe it’s been years. But the truth is, the past few years have weighed heavy on me as I sought for answers for Victoria and within myself. I have been going to school taking full loads for two years straight. I’ve had to navigate through financial crises and wake up to family fragments that Victoria left in her aftermath.

The sun seems to be rising on a wider perspective and a cleaner slate. It’s the first day my schedule and the outside temperature has permitted me to sit on my deck and write. The warmth of the sun on my skin is nurturing and envigorating. I feel like I’m writing a journal entry instead of a blog post.

I’m reading “The Language of Flowers”. I’ve had far too many experiences to relinquish these things to chance. This book and the timing and the orphaned girl named Victoria is not lost on me. In fact, there are more discoveries within me than I could begin to compose.

I don’t even know where to begin. This book seems to capture the essence of Victoria. The sum and the substance of things that have never seemed to add up. The conflicting messages and the sincerity that was hidden beneath friction. It is a tribute to the volatility of human existence. Adults whose strength invite acceptance and rebuff judgment. But also those adults whose own souls haven’t healed enough to begin to repair another.

In the book, Victoria puts pieces of cactus in her foster mother, Elizabeth’s shoes. Elizabeth tries to tell Victoria that cactus means ardent love and Victoria replies,

“I told you before school,” I said. “Cactus means I hate you.”

“It doesn’t,” Elizabeth said firmly. “I can teach you the flower for hate, if you like, but the word hate is      unspecific. Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can also come from dislike but also from fear. If you tell me exactly how you are feeling, I’ll be able to help you find the right flower to convey your message.”

“I don’t like you,” I said. “I don’t like you locking me out of the house or throwing me in the sink. I don’t like you touching my back or grabbing my face or forcing me to play with Perla. I don’t like your flowers or your messages or your bony fingers. I don’t like anything about you, and I don’t like anything about the world, either.”

“Much better!” Elizabeth seemed genuinely impressed by my hate-filled monologue. “The flower you are looking for is clearly the common thistle, which symbolized misanthropy. Misanthropy means hatred or mistrust of humankind.”

“Does humankind mean everybody?”

“Yes.”

I thought about this. Misanthropy. No one had ever described my feelings in a single word. I repeated it to myself until I was sure I would never forget.

The similarities with my Victoria and the Victoria in this book are remarkable. Victoria’s eloquence in the book give insight to my relationship with V. It’s another perspective changer; a paradigm shift; an acquisition of wisdom. There are blessings to be found in this challenge. Mostly unexpected ones, I’ll admit.

Another insight into the book from Victoria:

But when Elizabeth opened the door and I looked into her surprised face, I started to cry. I could not remember ever having cried, and the tears felt like a betrayal of my anger. I slapped at my face where tears ran down in streams. The sting of each slap mad me cry harder.

Elizabeth didn’t ask me why I was crying, just pulled me into the kitchen. She sat on a wooden chair and drew me awkwardly into her lap. In a few months I would be ten. I was too old to sit on her lap, too old to be held and comforted. I was also too old to be given back…. I sobbed and sobbed. She squeezed me. I waited for her to tell me to calm down, but she didn’t.

I love this exchange because the vulnerability of sadness stemming from V’s immeasurable hurts really does feel like a betrayal of her anger. While she doesn’t always allow me to comfort her, I now have a better understanding of why her anger escalates when she is hurting. The anger has less to do with me and more to do with the anger she has for herself.

Victoria’s thought process of being too old to be held and comforted is a testament to traumatized children’s shield. A caregiver’s patience not to insist an upset child calm down is a testament to their sensitivity. We are never too old to be comforted and healing requires that we hurt through and not be stopped short.

One last excerpt from Victoria:

Elizabeth had been as wrong about the language of flowers as she had been about me.

Sometimes I think we give ourselves too much credit for knowing our children better than we really do. Their behaviors become predictable but I think this gives us impossible license as mind readers. Big difference. We become brilliant at anticipating behaviors but it’s not fair to our children to think we can explain away every reaction.

Patience

I think attachment therapist have the hardest job, caught between a parent’s expectation and a child’s hindrance. It sucks when I am prepared for that connection (which means I overlook all the distractions and the annoying behaviors that want to pull the focus off of feelings and emotions, I am empathic and validating) and she builds a wall on my bridge. And I’ve paid $100 for it or in this case $350 a day.  I remain vulnerable and open and she leaves me wanting. This is nothing new but some days it’s so defeating. It is an invitation for anger but because I’ve tried on anger in all its forms and fashions, I know it’s not a good fit. It leaves me with the worse kind of buyer’s remorse

So I walk away from this session knowing I’m doing my part- staying close. These kids are genius at coming up with ways to push away. I know I have to find something inside of me to keep on giving because it’s certainly not going to come from her…right now. I just have to hang on to what I’ve felt it the past and trust it happening again in the future. It will…it’s just hard to wait. The best cure for when you are dealing with a gephyrophobiac- while you are waiting, go find someone willing to cross your bridge. I love reciprocity.

My bridge isn’t scary…

River Odense Denmark

I wish I had more time to write. I only have 3 more weeks until I graduate and will have much more time then. I try to keep my posts relatively short but the thoughts that go into them are very, very long.

“Emotionally isolated people can’t get relationship, so they go for something else” (Cloud). I’ve watched V over the years keep going for that “something else” and there will always be a “something else”. She has tried to replace the need for loving feelings and connections but nothing she tries is satisfying. It is short-lived. At seven years old, it’s pretty benign. At seventeen, it looks very scary in the form of addictions and self destruction.

Cloud shares a story about a woman struggling with a food addiction, “I remember the first time I chose to call someone instead of eat. I could feel the strong pull toward the refrigerator, but I interpreted that as a pull toward love. So I called someone in the group. After going over to her house and feeling some real affection, some warmth, I wasn’t hungry anymore. Since that time I’ve learned to do that more and more. I’m finding out it’s not really food I want at those times. It’s love.”

This was a beautiful example of real awareness, strength and vulnerability. We work to get our kids to a place where they can experience that pause to redirect their maladaptive behaviors. But until they can do it on their own; we have to be right there giving them what they are trying to find everywhere else. It sounds easy but what that requires from me is accepting rejection, knowing what I offer may not penetrate and V will have nothing to help sustain it. It is a constant giving with no reciprocity. I have said it before, I am not an endless amount of anything. I can’t do this alone.

I’ve got to have others helping me. What does that look like? I’ve got to take care of myself. I’ve got to find nurturing relationships that replenish what V takes. I need a few people that can offer V loving feelings in a safe relationship. When I first started therapy with V all the responsibility was heaped onto me and it was a burden that I wasn’t prepared to carry nor should I have ever been expected to. “She needs to bond with your first and then she can bond to others,” I was told. And that sounded accurate but in hindsight I see it wasn’t possible. V needs as many opportunities to experience loving feelings in a safe and healthy relationship. This can be done to some extent with the therapist-client relationship. This could have been done in the small private school she attended. This could have been done w/ B, her aide at school. This can be done in respite. But we were so concerned with V getting all her love from me. It isn’t possible and placing that demand on me was completely unfair.

I can’t have V going to the neighbor or the school teacher in search of this but I did have enough people around me that could have given her more opportunities to open up and not feel like I was getting the life sucked out of me.

Allowing the emptiness to be filled is at the heart of attachment. It is painful to watch V feel numb to that need and live in constant avoidance. “Empty people can’t feel their own need for love, and they can’t feel others’ love for them.” (Cloud) See why it’s painful to live it? Which is why so many times I wanted to shut down too and walk away. But my distance only ensured V would remain empty. I never knew when V was going to let go of the fear and allow me in to fill her up but it did require that I remain close. It’s the hardest thing- running on empty.

Read enough books on attachment and you will eventually find that everyone is saying the same things in different ways. I suppose that goes for most subjects but it’s particularly true in the world of attachment. Everyone wants to be “right”. You hear the words consequences and love; justice and mercy; truth and grace; structure and nurture; and the list goes on and on. And you know what? They all mean the same thing. But what they don’t tell you, is what they mean. And they don’t make it clear that it takes both. It’s not one or the other.

When I first started getting tools to help V, I was inundated with consequences, structure, truth and justice. And they were all correct principles but it was a dangerous prescription for a mother that lacked so much love, mercy, grace and nurturing. After being controlled, beat up emotionally and physically and left for crazed, I welcomed the structure and demands of justice. It gave me instant control and what I didn’t realize was, it was giving V instant shame to go along with the stockpile she had on reserve. My exhausting efforts were getting compliance but not obedience. I got “my way” while V got resentment.

“Changes That Heal” is a book on attachment but you’d never know it. And that’s the beauty of it. They use the words “truth” and “grace”. Replace it with your word of choice but the meaning is the same and it is this:

Grace is “unbroken, uninterrupted, unearned, accepting relationship”. (You can see already why justice looked so good to me…it’s so much easier). Grace does loving things and gives freely without needing or expecting anything from you. But the problem with only grace is that if you continue to fall into bad situations, you require more grace. Grace does nothing to help steer one away from trouble or repeating damaging patterns.

Say hello to Truth. Truth is very good at setting limits on bad behavior; tells you exactly what you can and cannot do. Truth has firm boundaries on where you can play and where you cannot play; what is right and what is wrong; what is good and what is not good. Truth alone, has problems: he’s mean, he doesn’t care so much about the violator, only wiping out the bad behavior. He doesn’t have the compassion, forgiveness, or patience of Grace. If people failed, he just threw them out or yelled at them.

Grace leaves us wanting structure; Truth leaves us wanting love. Grace says anything goes; Truth lets nothing slide. Truth without grace is judgment. It silences, shames, brings anger, alienates and judges harshly. Grace without Truth is directionless. We are safe from condemnation but cannot experience true intimacy. Do you see the dilemma? It’s not that one is better than the other; it’s you can’t have one without the other. “When the one who offers grace also offers truth (truth about who we are, truth about who he or she is, and truth about the world around us), and we respond with our true self, then real intimacy is possible. Real intimacy always comes in the company of truth.”

“These two ingredients together—acceptance and direction—serve to bring the real self into relationship, the only way that healing ever takes place.”

Look, acceptance and direction, two more words to replace grace and truth. And they use another key word throughout this book: relationship. Looking back, I see I was so consumed with V’s maladaptive behaviors that I missed the crux of the whole problem: intimacy and relationship. Now in all fairness, it was hard because V’s behaviors were beating me up daily, figuratively and literally. V wasn’t so interested really in accepting the truth or mercy. But just because she didn’t care…didn’t give me license not to. (I wrote a post on how it often felt like a contest: who could care less).

I tried to balance the two. I have written plenty of posts on mercy and forgiveness. But what I was missing was how the two, mercy and truth, go hand in hand in building a relationship. I wish I would have considered more: “How can I help this relationship?” and not so much her behaviors. I erred on the side of truth more often than I erred on the side of grace. And V invited justice because alone, it created distance where she could stay safe in her shame. If I really want her to find safety in structure, it has to surrounded in grace. What that looks like, is another post.

Trying to help Victoria has been challenging from the very beginning. There is no manual, there are no evidenced-based practices, there are no long-term randomized controlled trials, there is no consensus among the medical community or the attachment community. It has felt like warring factions fighting against each other and against me. And while others may not have been fighting against me, they surely weren’t reaching out. Victoria’s year and a half in public school is still such a painful memory. And not just because of the isolation I felt but because I didn’t have all the answers and didn’t feel like there was any collaborative effort to find some for her. And yet, I tried so hard. The lack of support to help her be successful in school was a driving force to put her in treatment. The school district and the state bear a fair amount of responsibility for Victoria leaving the home. They don’t realize how damaging it was for Victoria, how it impacted our family and they certainly didn’t show concern when I needed them the most. I hope someday I have the time and money for recourse.

I’m not sure where all of that came from but it wasn’t the purpose of my post. As I have attended conferences, experienced the model V’s facility works under and been able to step back and away from her, my perspectives have in some cases changed and in many cases become more clear.

Attachment theory is rooted in the essential purpose of a secure base. Parenting makes the presumption that when men and women are suddenly transformed into mothers and fathers they have an innate capacity to do all that is required of them to suddenly raise children with very little preparation. And for the most part, nature and experience does a fair job in providing parents with the understanding of how to raise children in an environment of safety, stimulation and sensitivity. However, I think it’s accurate to say that many experiences are altering the world and moving away from what was once considered natural.

When a child comes into my home that hasn’t had a “normal” or “natural” experience in their first few years of life, the essential secure base is now compromised. Not only does the child mistrust the whole concept, but parents are put in a situation where their ability to offer security somehow now resembles a hockey puck that finds no traction on the ice. The confidence in the innate ability to parent is pounded into doubt and second-guessing. My own stability that was sufficient for my boys became weak and volatile.

I didn’t know exactly what was happening to me but I knew what I was being asked to do as a mother was so difficult, painful and often times made me resentful. I felt I was a deeply inadequate and mean mother. The complete opposite of what I had been for my boys. No wonder I felt crazy. I wish someone would have recognized the importance of making sure I had a secure base to offer Victoria in the first place.

I won’t go into all the reasons my security turned into a hockey puck but I do know that to strengthen myself it required taking a courageous look at my triggers, my warring heart and my expectations. It took a therapist, family members and friends that trusted in who I really was and helped me down a path of forgiveness, healing and so much humility. It was only then that I could do what Victoria needed with full purpose of heart (not perfect).

Experience coupled with hindsight allows me to now write Victoria’s manual. But I would never consider having a parent implement one tool without making sure their foundation was fixed.

Does the learning ever end?  Nearly eight years of living with a child with a compromised ability to attach has taught me that I have so much to learn. Just when I think I have a handle on this disorder, my mind is opened to so many other approaches and ideas. Some of them are the same ideas just presented in easier ways to understand and implement.

When parenting a very challenging child it’s easy to hold them responsible for meeting expectations and to change but parents have a very active role in ensuring progress. A parents commitment can be stated in three sentences from the book, “Creating Capacity for Attachment” which are:

1) I can take care of you.

2) I will take care of you.

3) I want to take care of you.

If you have ever parented a difficult child then you know agreeing to one of these sentences, much less all three, can feel impossible. And for me without the right preparation and education it was impossible. I’ll share my personal experience in how I came to be able to make these “seemingly” simple promises to V.

I can take care of you. For many years, I couldn’t. My best attempt at using words could never convey the inadequacy and failure I felt as a mother knowing I wasn’t providing the support and nurturing V needed. I didn’t know what to do and eventually I didn’t care. Someone had to teach me how to care for V, because it isn’t intuitive nor is it in any traditional parenting manuals. It’s one thing to finally get the information which I thought was the biggest hurdle and then came,

I want to take care of you. Suddenly getting the information became the easy part and the doing part was paralyzing. If you want to take care of a child with severe attachment issues; I realized I had to want to do whatever it took to get myself to a healthy place psychologically to provide that care for her no matter what she chose to do with it. This comes very naturally in a relationship full of reciprocity and empathy. But when rejection and selfishness were my returns on investment, I had to find a way to change my heart and be okay with a level of acceptance I never thought would be possible. Praying like I had never known, self care, my own therapy, different expectations, continuing education and support were some of the things that eventually made it possible to want to do for V, what she could not do for herself. But having the ability and wanting to care for V wasn’t enough. She had to know that,

I will take care of you. No matter what. The level of commitment that parenting challenging children takes has to made early and unwavering. This is the reason I have never given up on V even though the lack of education and my own personal demons tried to push me out that door for years. I had a strong conviction from day one that V was in the right place and although many feelings and impressions have come and gone, that one has never left me, nor the intensity even though I have fought against it, challenged it, questioned it and cursed it.

This is what my courage looked like early on:

And when I finally realized that my fear was matching her’s, I did what it took to get this courage so we could both begin live and not just survive.

What are you afraid of?

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.