A Quiet Week – A Quiet Heart
My Learning Curve: As Soon As rather than Not Until
Refreshed
A New Song
Honeybee’s First Email
Tell it Well, Part 5: Bitter
Grandparents
Sunday Visit: Mark Schultz and His Adoption Story
Doing my Best to Tell it Well
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
I was driving through Seattle last week, when this familiar verse came to mind, and as it flowed along, three words jumped out at me.
“…in their distress…”
Distress — how had I missed that?
This made me smile this morning.
My plans for an Independence Day post faded away last night as I lay next to Dimples stroking her head as she fell asleep. I was discouraged — honestly, I was much more than discouraged. As she drifted off, I whispered, “You’re going to be okay.” Her eyes shot open and she said, “No, I’m not!”
In the course of one week I heard two attachment specialists say things that made me think about the diagnosis of RAD or Reactive Attachment Disorder. The first was talking about attachment and she said, “All attachment disorders are rooted in trauma.” Hmm….that made sense to me.
Later that week I heard a speaker say that it has been proposed that the new DSM-V (the diagnostic manual for psychiatric disorders) add the diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder. This could significantly impact the way children from “hard places” are diagnosed and treated.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the topic; it's just a rare and calm moment.
It is 3:00 in the afternoon and I am finally putting up today’s Tuesday Topic. It’s a good one, so even though it hasn’t been up all day, I hope you will take a moment to leave a comment. Stacy wrote,
What looked like an initial easy first 6 months home, one of my new four is now constantly lying to me (never to my husband). She will look right at me, lie then say, “Mom I promise I am not lying!!” This happens over and over for sometimes hours on end, in the meantime she is screaming like a small 2 year old having a fit. She is around 8 years old. I started rocking her in the rocking chair two nights ago and then instantly had two great days, but WHAM, today she is back to not listening to anything I say and lying…
Thursday night, Forever Day, was a disaster. Let’s be honest, while we were celebrating adding our children to the family, we were also fully aware of the losses they suffered that brought them to us. Forever Day has been a good day in the past, but this year it seemed to trigger sadness which, as you know, doesn’t really look like sadness. It was a grueling afternoon and evening.
Dimples has a hard time going to bed. Memories, bad ones, tend to come flooding back and she just can’t settle. Deborah suggested that I make a tape for her to listen to as she tucks in for the night. I’m excited about this project and I’m already thinking about making recordings for my other little ones.
Today marks my 28th day of rocking Honeybee! We began on December 20th, so clearly, I didn’t manage to rock for 28 consecutive days, but we carved out the time every day we both were home and there was even a sliver of time to rock.
Our 15 minutes have often been taken up with Honeybee talking, she is an 11 year old girl after all, and she has lots to say. Because we’ve worked hard to have our time alone, she has told me more about her life at the orphanage, about her friendships, and other memories. It has been precious.
(read part 1 here)
July was the extremely exciting month when Mimi and Andrew got married! We hosted the reception at our home, which was an incredible highlight in our lives – as well as an incredible amount of work.
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of A Bushel and A Peck at this new website, www.OneThankfulMom.com. I started with a small blogspot address on June 19, 2006 having absolutely no idea that I would still be writing today. I figured that once our children had been home for a short time, I would have nothing more to say.
Apparently that is not the case and most days I think of numerous posts to write — if only I could find a few quiet moments.
Thank you so much for being part of my life through A Bushel and A Peck — I am honored that in the midst of your busy days, you take the time to read my humble offerings. Even if you don’t have time to read this post, would you please skip to the bottom and read the last bit? It would mean the world to me to hear from you.
In honor of this day, here is the first half of the year in review. The second half will follow tomorrow.
My guest today is Life with Mamita
“You bit off a big chunk, didn’t you?”
“Wow. You’ve made quite a commitment.”
“Oh…well… I don’t know how much I can help…”
“I can’t offer you much hope.”
These were words that professionals spoke to me as I looked for help in the months after Cupcake came home.
