This post has been 33 days in the making. Well, actually quite a lot longer than that. Please bear with me in what will probably be a long post, and expression of my heart on several levels, and an invitation, of sorts. Grab some coffee, or a cup of tea…. Or even a beer. Settle in. I know it’s long, but I’m asking each and every one of you to read to the end. It’s important.
I’m going back to the beginning for a moment. Most of you know that I made the decision to adopt a child from Guatemala after being a part of a mission trip with our church to the Guatemala City garbage dump back in 2005. Obviously the experience was life changing in so many ways. In a nutshell, I went there with adoption, much less international adoption, NO WHERE on my radar. And I left there, a week later, with almost complete certainty, that I was being called to adopt. That significant realization in that week that changed my life, is a very cool story for another day. Trust me. It’s a cool story! And the 10 month journey TO Maya Grace is another really cool story, for another day. This is where today’s story starts.
Maya came home at almost 6 months old. I got her referral when she was 6 days old. Good Friday. I was a MOM! I remember that somber Good Friday service, seated with my small group friends, jumping out of my skin in excitement and joy, while having to “play the part” of being somber and reflective. Strangest Good Friday service ever! 😊 She lived her 1st 6 monthsin a foster home with several other babies (that was typical in Guatemala at the time). I received pictures of her weekly (and some videos too) which were such a blessing…. But so weird to become a mom, and to fall in love with a child, MY child, through pictures. My OT brain looked for signs she was meeting developmental milestones. That she was being loved and nurtured. That she was receiving the necessary sensory input through touch, that was so necessary for proper neurological functioning in childhood. That she had opportunities to explore her environment, in a developmentally appropriate way- in tummy-time on the floor, in supported sitting, with visual stimuli, etc. I had not yet developed my expertise in how we, as humans, optimally process sensation in our worlds. But I had my OT educational background and experience in school-based pediatrics.
I met Maya when she was 3 ½ months old. Ah. The scene was the Guatemala City Marriott, where lifetime friendships were forged. And when I really FELT like a mom. I got to have her with me in the hotel over the Memorial Day weekend. My mom was with me. Maya seemed to “take to” us immediately. She was asleep in my mom’s arms just hours after she was placed in my arms. She had a head full of crazy hair that I was totally intimidated by. She was a chunky ‘lil munchkin, …. And she smiled and smiled and smiled. All the time. She was sleeping through the night. At 3 ½ months. Wha???? I made the HUGE mistake of bragging about that to some of my new friends. Never brag about things like that, friends. NEVER! She would sleep all night and wake up smiling! My mom and I would stand over her crib, willing her to wake up. And she slept and slept and slept. Until she woke up and smiled. And smiled and smiled and smiled. Ahhh. It was love!! 3 days later I had to give her back to her foster mother and return to the US . Hardest thing I had ever done to date. So so hard! But a few months later, the call came! AHHHH. El Paso friends…. Remember the floods of 2006?? That’s when we were traveling. Literally the freeway closed shortly after we traveled it to get to the airport. It took us an hour and a half to make what would’ve normally taken us 20 minutes. The flight left on time. I felt like the US postal service. Nothing was going to stop this momma from getting to my baby. It was another amazing trip to Guatemala to pick her up. My dad and his wife Louise joined my mom and I. Oh! Such fantastic memories. She was the 1st grandchild. My parents were with me as I adopted this precious one as a single mom. I felt certain I had been called to this, despite my being single. I just knew God had equipped me to “handle” whatever this was that He had called me to.
We arrived home to a large, waiting group of family and friends at the El Paso airport. That is STILL one of my most favorite days EVER. To me, that was the day it was official. The day we arrived. The day that this community of friends and family, who had been praying her home for the 10 months prior, got to meet her in person. IT. WAS. INCREDIBLE.
She came home sleeping through the night. Until she wasn’t, about 2 weeks later. She never really even started off with good naps after coming home to El Paso. She took these 20 minute cat naps almost from the start. I totally understood how new moms had trouble getting a shower and getting dressed on some days. But this was every day. And it was exhausting. She would wake up SCREAMING in the night. Often. I had lost the 1st 6 months of bonding so I did what all the parenting books said not to do (and I’d do it again!)…. I rocked her to sleep with her bottle. It was OUR bonding time. And it was special. And important. Necessary, really. I remember trying to tip-toe every so gently and quietly, to veeeerrrrrryyyyyy slowly lay her down in her crib so she wouldn’t wake up. Because if she did, she would SCREAM. And it might be another several hours before I could settle her down to sleep again. I remember telling my mom, before I knew what I was talking about, that it was like she was sleeping with one eye open. Like she was always on high alert. Like she was ready to “pounce” into action at any moment. It was HARD. I had no idea this was a nervous system response (think fight, flight, fright nervous system responses that we have WHEN WE NEED THEM). I had no idea this was trauma manifesting itself. And then, as my career continued to evolve, and I was trained in sensory integration and sensory processing, I learned that the words I was using- “high alert”- were the words I was reading in the scientific literature about sensory processing/integration. I also learned about that pesky little hormone called Cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone. It’s what allows us, with some of it’s hormone friends, to run, not walk, when in danger. To be ready to be on the attack if necessary. I learned that new research was showing that babies who had been adopted were being born with elevated levels of cortisol. AND, that elevated levels of cortisol were persisting…. For life. Yikes. Cortisol is not really the hormone we want hanging around in our bodies at high levels. I was learning that researchers were finding that when a birthmother makes the decision to give a child in adoption, that the bonding essentially stops with the child in their womb. That there are chemical and resulting neurological changes that are happening IN UTERO to the developing child, that cause them to be born in a disadvantaged state from the minute they take their 1st breath.
As I was specializing in this area, and understanding this fascinating research, I was better understanding Maya’s behaviors. Why she always seemed so quick to react and respond. Throughout her earlier childhood, she was a hard kid in a lot of ways. She was reactive. She was volatile at times. We fought. A lot. Her anger was hard to handle. You all are saying, “Maya????”. Her teachers. Her friends. Our friends. They saw a very different kid than the one that lived in my house. My mom and I had sold our 2 houses when I started the adoption process and bought one bigger house that we shared for the 1st 12ish years of Maya’s life. So my mom also saw it. And was the recipient of the aggression, the harsh words, the anger. Maya was diagnosed with ADHD when she was 8. I had suspicions about ADHD from when she was a BABY! I asked preschool teachers. Kindergarten teachers. Church caregivers. Her pediatricians. But the idea was always dismissed and pushed aside saying it was “too soon” to make such a claim, she would grow out of whatever behaviors this overly concerned mom was having. I felt the guilt for even feeling those things. Felt guilty for feeling so frustrated with my own child. Frustrated that I couldn’t fix whatever it was. And maybe I was just crazy for even thinking those thoughts and feeling those feelings.
We moved away from our support system in 2010 so I could spend an incredible year working at the world-renown STAR ( Sensory Treatment And Research) Institute for Sensory Processing in Denver. I learned more and more about the nervous system response. I learned about the role of trauma on the body, I learned how we can use certain specially prescribed sensory inputs to actually change the nervous system’s processing. Somehow my OT brain turned off though, as I parented my child. Not sure why but it did!
We came back to El Paso a year later to be closer to our support system and to help my mom who needed back surgery. Life was still hard with this kiddo of mine. More of the same. MUCH more of the same. She was in counseling. She was seeing a psychiatrist. She was on meds. And more meds. I never did feel like we had the meds perfectly right. She was developing her identity. As a transracial adoptee, as a child with a single mom as a parent and NO father- not a divorced father. Not an absent father. But NO father. Having to answer questions from other kids about why she didn’t look like her mom, why her dad never came to her school performances etc. I was coming to terms that I had zero info about her birth family- genetics, health history, prenatal history, developmental history etc.
Sixth grade- she started at Lincoln Middle. Middle school sucks. Period. Just such a hard time for many kids. She was no exception. She was VERY boy crazy. Actually. She has ALWAYS been boy crazy. She flirted with the boys even as a baby!! She never did go through that “Boys are gross” phase. She was seeking after things that all my love couldn’t fulfil. She ruined friendships with dear girlfriends, over her chase after the boys. She was looking for love in all the wrong places. In fact, toward the end of the year, the group of people that would accept her unconditionally, was the gang kids. Seriously. I gave her some boundaries and expectations that she was not able to abide by, and so I yanked her from 6th grade with about 3 weeks left in the year. I was in the process of accepting my current job as program director of a developing doctoral OT program in Dallas. There was no building to work out of, so I was able to work the 1st 8 months remotely from El Paso. I attempted to homeschool her using an online curriculum (maybe a prep for Covid??) for her 7th grade year, while I worked a full time job. It was a family effort- my mom, my dad, Louise- we all played parts in trying to give Maya her 7th grade year. It was a disaster. She did not do well with online learning. I couldn’t oversee her as much as I needed to. It was essentially a loss. We headed to Dallas on March 1st of 2019 where we attempted to finish the year of online homeschool with the help of a nanny I hired here. Better but still not good. There were some more cool God-things that happened and she ended up at a great middle school in a great school district (why I chose to have us live in Flower Mound). It was a relatively good 8th grade experience…. Until March 2020….dah duh duh. Covid. Online learning. Disaster on so many levels. The isolation that Covid forced took a huge toll on my girlie. You all know how social she is. She started finding opportunities to socialize with others online. Stupid social media! It was really the beginning of some of our hardest times and our darkest days. She was dealing with depression and anxiety. She was looking for social interaction wherever she could find it. She was impulsive. Making some really bad choices. She really struggled with being able to think about consequences before acting.
We are getting to part of the story that is not mine to tell. But there are parts of “our” story that I need to tell. As in so many other households during Covid, there were kids who were struggling mentally socially, academically. All of that was wreaking havoc on our relationship at home. At some point I became concerned enough about her mental health that I had her admitted to an inpatient mental health facility. It had great reviews, but was a disaster of an experience, and I took her out 3 days later. On another occasion, after some VERY questionable and scary choices on Maya’s part, I took her to the ER at a local children’s hospital. But they wouldn’t admit her because she was not a current and active threat to herself or others. I begged to disagree, but it didn’t matter. The next day she started an outpatient program at a local adolescent facility. She spent partial days- for most of the fall 2020 semester (her freshman year)- in first a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) and then an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP). I was working from home still, so I would take here there, go home and work, pick her up sometime early afternoon, take her to school for part of 1 class, and all of another, go home and work, pick her up after school, go back home at work some more, while she did online classes for the courses she missed while in outpatient care in the mornings. I was feeling thankful I was able to work from home so that I could do all the shuttling, but it was all still very challenging logistically. And it was hard. For both of us. Maya made some improvements mentally, but still struggled with the social challenges of covid. She still seemed to be seeking and chasing things that I just could not provide for her. I often referred to a love bucket. I could pour an endless amount pf love into her bucket, by the bucket had a leak and I could never keep her bucket full, no matter how hard I tried. Spring of her freshman year, and the following summer, and into this fall of her sophomore year, she continued to deal with some mental health challenges. Living in our house was hard. She continued to make some bad choices. She started to numb the pain and her challenges, first with nicotine and vaping, then with other substances. I’m still not sure what.
This fall I was becoming increasingly concerned about her choices, her safety, her mental health, even her physical health. I felt that we had done what we could do with outpatient care. I was ready to take her to an inpatient hospital if she did become a danger to herself or others. I was concerned with some of the people she was hanging out with. As I parented a sophomore in high school, I was struggling BIG TIME with how to parent things that I knew I could say no to and set boundaries around at home, but that she would go out and do as soon as she left the house. We had a few more situations that threatened her safety and even her life. I knew I had to do something. Again, like I had done multiple times in the last year or so, I started researching residential treatment facilities. I was looking at places all over the country. I was looking for places that would take my insurance because how in the world was I going to be able to afford something like this. I was worrying about the effects of her feeling like I had abandoned her…. Just like her birthmother had, in her mind. But knowing in my momma hart that what I was doing was trying to SAVE her life. We were finding places that were for adolescents- girls and boys. That concerned me because of her boy craziness. I found places that were for adolescents AND adults. That was concerning too. I found place after place after place that had allegations of sexual abuse. How in the world can a parent find a place to get their child the help that they need when that was all I could find. It was destroying me. I desperately wanted to reach out right here, on social media, to ask if anyone knew of a place. A safe place. A good place. A place without allegations of sexual abuse, for goodness sake. But I didn’t. Because we have stigmatized the hell out of mental health challenges, About teenagers using substances. We just don’t talk about it. Lest we be judged. Lest we be ostracized. I couldn’t possibly ask for advice around all we had going on, on facebook. Gasp! So I didn’t.
And really quite by accident…. Or maybe in yet another one of God’s little “Steohanie, I’ve got you’s”, as I was researching places across the country to send my child, I found out about a brand new place that was opening the next week. Only for adolescent girls. On a ranch. In Argyle, Texas. About 25 minutes from my house. I visited the facility the next day. I knew, like a momma KNOWS, that this was exactly where she needed to be. The people who started this organization did so in response to their brother’s fight with mental health and substance abuse challenges over a span of 20 years. He had been in and out of jail and various treatment facilities. They learned all the things that worked and didn’t work with each different stay. This family knew that they had to take all they had learned to open this amazing facility for adolescent girls. As they started really planning, their brother relapsed. He had been sober for several years at that point. He passed away from a relapse a year ago last month. So almost as they were approaching the year anniversary of his death, they were opening their doors to Maya and other girls struggling with mental health challenges and/or substance abuse. Many of you know about my sister. She’s my hero. And she’s a miracle. My parents had to make the most difficult decision 22 years ago, to do an intervention and to send her away to treatment in Minnesota. She celebrated 22 years of sobriety last month. She has made it her life mission to help others on their journey. So the story of the way this organization came to be, resonated so deeply with me. On November 3, I made the hardest decision of my adult life- to admit her into a 90 day facility- to save her life.
This last month has been so so hard. This temporary new normal. The worry that I am doing more damage than good. But also the understanding that I was doing this for her life. She is doing INCREDIBLY well. She receives group and individual therapy, art therapy, music therapy, yoga, meditation, spiritual counseling. She will start equine therapy soon. She started EMDR this week- a therapeutic tool to address deep-seeded trauma (see www.emdr.com for more information). She will have a neuropsych evaluation and neurofeedback therapy. She’s doing some hard work. She’s digging deep. Uncovering old and hard, primal wounds. I’m trying to do some deep and hard work while she’s gone. My body is struggling to handle all that its dealing with, as you can imagine. I’m finding out that I’m dealing with some of my own wounds from childhood. It’s painful and hard. I’m dealing with my own trauma I’ve endured as I’ve parented a child who came from a hard place. Let’s face it. We all have our own stuff.
Why have I just written a novel? Because it has been heavy on my heart that I have to do my part to de-stigmatize mental health challenges. And even substance abuse. We have to get rid of the shame and embarrassment that goes along with this.
As I have started to feel some courage to share my part of the story, WITHOUT exception, EVERY SINGLE PERSON I have told, has responded with some version of “ we had to do this with my brother” or “I had to do almost the same with my child last year”, or “My dear friend is going through almost exactly the same thing.” It feels like everyone knows someone who is struggling around these same issues. And yet, when I needed to find a safe, wonderful place for my own child, I had no one to ask for advise. We’ve got to stop this madness. We have to be able to talk about it. We have to lose the shame, embarrassment, and fear of judgement, surrounding mental health. Friends, our country, is in the midst of an ENORMOUS mental health crisis. We have a generation of kids who is going to be in a world of hurt into the future if we don’t get a handle on this RIGHT NOW. It’s crazy but my church has been offered an opportunity to partner with the local YMCA to develop some pediatric mental health programs for the DFW area. I was asked over the summer if I would be willing to lead this effort on the church’s side. They could sense my passion about addressing pediatric mental health issues in the community. And I’ve got students that will have the opportunity to be involved at the grass roots levels of this. Ironically, it has not gotten in motion as quickly as I had hoped because I was so immersed in my own personal mental health battle at home. The need is enormous. And it will take a village- parents, teachers, churches, community partners, doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, OTs. I believe there are spaces at the table for artists and musicians and health and exercise educators. And so many more!
Would you do me a favor and try to find your voice? Would you put away any notion of judgement and shame of yourself or others, in order to be a part of the solution and not part of the problem? Would you think about how you might be involved? Somewhere. Somehow. Would you think about how you can be a part of being the change we want to see in this world? Our kids are depending on us!
I’ll end this by telling you I am in a really fragile state right now. I’m finding that at any given moment, the tears may start gushing. People who know what’s going on ask me, what’s happening right now. Why are you crying? And I don’t even have an answer. My sister told me it is grief. I am processing grief. And trauma. I’m struggling. The tears are flowing as I type this. This is risky to be so vulnerable and put myself “out there” like this. I’m risking judgment. I’m risking feeling shame. And guilt. And all the things.
One of the dear people I shared with last week said something to me so very profound. I wasn’t sure why I had blurted out that my Thanksgiving had not been a time of rest and peace and joy. That it had been a really hard day. My kiddo was not with me- that she was in a 90 day residential program. That I got to see her on Thanksgiving, but it was a really hard day. And here comes Christmas. Same. Hard. Blah blah blah. Why had I just said all that??? She had just asked how my Thanksgiving had been. Geez. Overshare much, Stephanie???? I quickly apologized for the over share (why did I apologize?? Clearly I NEEDED to share it with someone, and I guess it felt safe to do so there). She put her arm around me and said, when we are not willing to share our lives- in the beauty and the ashes, WE ARE DENYING OTHERS THE BLESSING AND OPPORTUNITY to walk beside us. To share life with. To pour into us. And that others DESIRE to walk alongside and pour into and “do life with” us. We deny them the opportunity! Wow!
Sharing this had been on my heart for weeks. I struggled with how and what to share, while honoring Maya’s right to tell or not tell, her story when she’s ready. But I knew, after those profound words, that I needed to share. And that I needed to not deny others their desire to walk beside me. To share life with me. To pour into me. And hopefully to open the door so that I can walk beside, share life with, and pour into others when they need it!
So there it is. My novel of a post. Yikes. This is really long. I was afraid of that!
Be kind to one another. You never know what is going on behind closed doors or under the surface of people who seemingly have it all together. I am totally convinced and convicted that the
illusion of people having it all together, is simply that. An illusion.
If you made it this far, and you’re still awake, THANK YOU for listening!!
I Love You, Always and Forever, No Matter What 