My last post was a bit raw, I will admit. I know some of you, my family and friends, are worried about me. Is she okay? Is she going crazy? Are they gonna make it? Yes, we are okay and yes, I might be crazy and yes, we are going to make it. lol Seriously, I know I scare some people when I am a little too honest, but that is one of my goals on this blog is to be honest. There is too much pretending with most people, I want to be honest and help others realize that they aren’t alone in their struggles, whatever they might be. However, honesty is not at the expense of hurting others, I will say. I don’t believe in “telling it like it is” if that means hurting others. Anyway, we are doing okay. It’s a struggle, I won’t pretend otherwise. Grafting a new kid into your household who is 11 is no easy task and it takes time. It is harder than I thought it would be and we are experiencing attachment issues I didn’t think we would face, but we will be okay. We are seeking help, looking for a counselor and also seeking help from God through prayer. God will not leave us now. We know without a doubt He brought us to this adoption and He knew the struggles we would face, and He has not left.

My struggles with my daughter are not unique to me. I know some people, my husband included, don’t really understand what this is really like to be the one that all the angst is focused on. It’s real and I am not making it up. It’s not in my head and it might not go away with time. Glenn and I had lots of talks about how I was feeling and he thought it was just me until I found a study that was done on adoptive moms of older kids. You can find the study here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmV57F5RHLiVFpIcHRZMDF5LUk/edit?usp=sharing

The point of it is that all the moms they studied who had adopted older kids were rejected by those kids due to trauma related to the child’s early life. I am not alone. It’s really common for adopted kids to reject adoptive moms, if those kids are older, particularly. I always believed that, but now I have proof. This has really changed how Glenn views our situation and he suggested I share it here so that everyone else can get a better understanding of what we are dealing with.

We are thankful that our daughter is forming an attachment to her dad and also to most of her brothers. That means she can attach to people and that maybe someday she and I will form a bond. Until then, what do we do? Well, we are looking for a counselor who specializes in attachment, we are doing our best to facilitate good interactions with her and I, no matter how much she rejects that at times. We also realized that it’s better for our family to just move forward and not focus so much on the issues we have right now. We cannot change her, only she can do that, so sitting around talking non stop about how to fix her will not do us any good. We are moving on with life and trying to take the focus off her, which seems to be helping. It at least helps us as we deal with her. This is going to take time to work itself out. Therapy takes time to work and she has had 11 years of loss surrounding women, that will not be fixed in a  week or a month. It will take years to fix her issues, so in the meantime we are moving on and finding things to distract ourselves from our issues. We did some house projects this weekend and it was nice to just live life again, instead of being in stand still mode waiting for something to change.

We covet your prayers as we seek wise counsel on how to help our daughter adjust and bond with us. Thank you for standing with us in this time.