Grief and Loss

Warning: This blog post is pretty raw. I debated about whether or not to write this and just keep it for myself, or to publish it and share it with the world. I decided to post it for a few reasons: 1) some of you are reading this because you find yourself on a similar journey, and I want you to know that you are not alone in your struggles or in the complex feelings that bubble up from those struggles, 2) some of you are reading this because someone close to you might be on a similar journey, and I want to help you understand their perspective and experience so that you can be not only a loving support, but an informed and knowledgeable one, and 3) real life is messy and painful and sad at times, and it is only in acknowledging this and making it a part of the story that love and beauty have the strength to bloom.

It goes without saying that my children have suffered a great loss. Losing your first family, no matter the circumstances or your age at the time of the loss, is a traumatic event. And with loss comes grief. People grieve in different ways, so this process looks unique for everyone (there is no normal, here!). In fact, I was driving back from horseback riding lessons with my son the other day when he asked, “Why doesn’t A have all of these problems that I have? Why doesn’t she think about our birth mom?” I assured him that his sister did think about their birth mom, but she did not have the experiences and the memories that he had, and she expressed her loss in different ways because she is her own unique person. I went on to dig a little deeper into the “problems” he was talking about and asked if he felt that the difficulties he had the prior night with going to bed had anything to do with birth mom – I was doubtful, but it’s always worth the ask. He exclaimed, “Well, ever since my transfer I have had problems, so, yeah! All of it has to do with my birth mom!” [While his use of “transfer” here makes it sound more like a prison sentence, what he is referring to is his removal from his birth parents and subsequent placement in foster care…maybe that is the same thing to him…] This underlying current of loss and grief shapes how my children interact with and respond to the world.

My road to being a mom was also defined, to an extent, by loss, and it is during the most difficult struggles with my children that I find myself having to navigate my own grief while at the same time navigating theirs. This is the reality that is sometimes overlooked as we focus most of our attention on helping the children. But we need to acknowledge that adoptive parents have suffered losses in their lives as well, and these become magnified when faced with helping a child through his/her own grief.

As most people do, I envisioned what it would look like to have a family one day, and I can assure you that it did not look like the need to be hyper vigilant – locking up sharp objects, constantly checking on whereabouts, and coaching play dates, constant power struggles (not just daily, but hourly…sometimes minute-ly), spending half of any given week in a car driving to multiple therapies, holding my breath everyday waiting for the school to call to tell me to come pick up my dysregulated child, slowly watching my career slip away as my children’s needs became too great to juggle, or crying myself to sleep. And so I grieve the biological children I lost…those I could not have. I grieve not being able to look at my children and see my personality or my husband’s and know how to relate to them…instead I see intense anger (so. much. anger. lately.) and sometimes cold indifference. As an extrovert, I grieve the fact that I shy away from group activities as public spaces can often be trauma inducing…for all of us! I grieve that it takes tremendous planning to have a night out with my husband, and even after all of the planning, we are bound to come home to stories of intense struggle and have to do damage control. Naming this, I realize that I run the risk of sounding whiny, selfish or unappreciative of what I do have…but that is NOT what I hope you take away from this. I have two beautiful children who are smart, funny, creative, insightful, loving, and gorgeous. And, believe me, I thank God for them everyday. Some days I just wish I could have a little break…a segment of the day without arguments…an opportunity to let my guard down and just enjoy the moment without always holding my breath and waiting for the other shoe to drop…a day that doesn’t bring my own losses so close to the surface.

At this point, you might be inclined to tell me that what I have just described is what all parents experience to a certain extent. This is, after all, what I wanted. I wanted children, and with children comes chaos, the unexpected, and a little bit of heartache. Hmmmm…yes and no. If you had a friend whose child was just diagnosed with cancer or type I diabetes, and they were coming to terms with what this diagnosis meant for their family, for their hopes and dreams, for the road ahead, would you “comfort” them in their grief by saying that after all, this is what they wanted and what they signed up for when deciding to have children? I would hope not. But similarly, my children have multiple diagnoses between them some of which include: ND-PAE (Neurobehavioral Disorder associated with Pre-Natal Alcohol/Drug Exposure), Developmental Trauma, ADHD, Sensory Integration Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, DMDD (Developmental Mood Dysregulation Disorder). These diagnoses have a huge impact on who we are as a family, on our hopes and dreams, and on the long road we have ahead of us…this is not necessarily “what we wanted.” But somehow medical diagnoses that manifest in ways that impact mental health aren’t regarded in the same way. Somehow we want to find where to place the blame for mental health based diagnoses, but we want to uplift families who are faced with other types of medical diagnoses. I grieve navigating a world that doesn’t understand – and sometimes doesn’t even acknowledge – my children’s disabilities just because they can’t “see” them.

Let me be clear…none of this is meant to imply that I regret the decision to foster/adopt. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that these children were always meant to be mine…though we all had to suffer some losses to find our way to one another. But our story doesn’t end there with rainbows and butterflies and unicorns and hearts. It is just the beginning…the beginning of constant negotiation…the beginning of navigating the rough waters of loss together…the beginning of healing.

For those of you out there who watch “This Is Us,” there was a powerful exchange between Toby and Kate regarding their son who is blind. Toby says something to the effect that he cannot look at his son without feeling sad. Our first reaction is to be appalled by this, and Kate was. Toby is his father… how can he not feel anything but love and a desire to spend as much time as possible with him? It is Kate’s friend, Madison, who suggests interpreting this comment in a different way. This was Toby being “brutifully” honest – laying bare his grief and naming a loss with which he is trying to cope. When someone hands you their grief, don’t minimize it or dismiss it just because it does not fit with your experience of the world or because it makes you feel uncomfortable. Let it sit there, honor it in all of its prickliness and ugliness, hold it gently and lovingly in your arms, and provide the space for it to be a part of that person’s story. Our children need this…and we need this.