From Riches to Rags, and the Glory I Found There

  My daughter doesn't call me Mom. There's a brutality in that that doesn't seem to fade. Because it's not just a name. If it was just a name I'd be okay with it...with not being Mom. But it's so much more, and in this season of life, my heart is seemingly constantly being broken in the wake of a daughter who does not want me to be her mother.  I have held in secret deep hurts and brokenness in the life of my teenager's adoption. Partly because it's not only my story, but hers as well. But this year has been so very heavy...and I have so often felt so very alone in that heaviness. Who understands the rejection of RAD? Of ODD? Of ADHD? Of Adoption? Of a child who is so very loving and kind to everyone except their mom? I've read post after post of mothers, of fathers, of siblings, of children who have faced or are facing the exact life we are living, and they a balm to my weary soul. Comfort in the knowledge that we are not alone...that I am not alon...

  4 years a widow... 4 years into this journey and I can say, with some certainty, that it is a whole lot easier than it was 4 years ago...3 years ago...2 years ago...even 1 year ago. So, at the very least, it's trending up, eh? I haven't sobbed hysterically over my dead husband in ages, years even. The grief is much more sophisticated now, I get choked up, maybe let a tear or two fall out. Nothing quite so dramatic as the panic attacks I used to have. It's all quite tame and reasonable...you know...until its not...and it steals my breathe by sheer surprise. And a part of me forgets that there was ever a time when it felt normal for John to be dead. Because, 4 years in, it is normal. Normal for John to be dead. Normal to not know how to fix the broken things. Normal to sleep in bed alone. Normal to wish there was just a moment where I didn't have to manage all of these things all by myself. (Because being an independent woman is ridiculously overrated...0/10 - do not re...

    Let me be the keeper of the broken things. Give me the shards of memories you hold on to that hurt so much. Show me the stitches in your scars.  Let me carry them with you...for you. Because "grief demands a witness"...so let me be yours. I want to hear about your baby that barely got to be and how they changed your entire world while the world somehow kept spinning.  I want to hear about what haunts your dreams or keeps you up at night when the world seems to slumber peacefully around you. I want to hear why you cry in your car before going inside after everyone else has run in like its totally normal that you need an extra 5 minutes just to breathe it all out. My heart aches so much for the broken things of the world that we all clutch on to...terrified that if we stop clutching them that they'll slip through our fingers and the world will forget...we might forget. So let me keep your broken things too. And I will breathe the goodness of God into the shards and...

  You know, despite my tattoos...and piercings...and partially shaved head...I never considered that my look was very "alternative". At least not until someone said it was. I just thought that I was expressing myself in ways I might not have before. *I* like how I look...and I guess, if I'm being honest, what other people might think just doesn’t really factor into anything I do. But certainly not in the sense that I expect everyone to love everything about it all. My poor mom dislikes tattoos, my brother makes fun of my hair, and lots of people have said "oh...it's not quite my thing".  I never expected people to like these things about me the way I like them about me. I am not particularly bothered if it’s not your thing. It doesn't offend me. I'm not asking you to get a tattoo...or a piercing...or to shave your head. *I* did it because *I* wanted to...you just didn't factor into it. That being said...I've never been judged so...interesting...

  If you look around my house this Christmas season you will definitely see the effects of motherhood here. You'll see school books strewn about all throughout the place. Constant reminders of frustration and fights that feel completely unnecessary to a mom and completely life-changing to a kid. I never wanted to homeschool my teenage daughter. I simply didn't want this kind of hard. But I saw her struggles and her self-esteem start to crack as she fell more and more behind her peers in school. A scar from her years of home-hopping which led to inconsistent schooling. A kid who got overlooked and pushed along anyway. So I pulled her out and we started from the ground up. And she's bright, let me tell you. She's catching up one day at a time, and I get a front row seat to see her shine. I push her more than she wants, and she hates when I do it. But I didn't become her mother because of what she could do for me...I became her mother because I knew what I could do for...

  "Is adopting her harder than you thought it would be?"      I think, when I weighed the options back in 2021, before I brought my 12 year old daughter home, I knew how hard it could be. I accepted that it could be brutal. But, honestly, I hoped it wouldn't be. I hoped maybe, just maybe, trauma hadn't sunk deep into her bones and colored everything she did.  Some people may have different perceptions on how prepared I was, since I did jump into it pretty quickly. But I think that I did acknowledge, and accept, how hard it could be. But the reality of life is that there is no real way to know how hard anything actually is until you're living it. Meaning, I knew how hard it could be...but had no idea what that level of hard would actually feel like.  Because it hurts. Raising a broken teenager hurts. It hurts my daughter. It hurts me. It hurts our relationship. It just hurts.  But just because something hurts...does that mean we aren't called to do ...