Today I’m grateful for feeling…

Very sad, bittersweet, to be leaving everybody, as I always do when visiting home. When I moved, I couldn’t quite put my finger on WHY I was moving, which was obviously alarming but felt right to be doing. With hindsight, I know I was moving to survive. Nothing less powerful could have been compelling in the face of the community and family I had at the time. I don’t regret it, not even when Ludvig died and I wondered if I could have helped him. But I now recognize the desperation I had at the time and feel grief for that version of myself. 

So tired I feel sick. My lack of boundaries and self-care is so painfully obvious today. 

Nostalgic and sad after visiting the condo I spent years 10-22 in. Not that I have many happy memories there, but I loved our “house” that wasn’t an apartment, that had a lawn. I loved my bedroom and the view of the trees in back it had, the bird songs I was familiar with. The new family seems to have improved it, or at least show it more love than we ever did. They did cut down my climbing/reading tree’s lower branches though, that hurt to see. The only evidence of my decade there is a faint spray painted leaf I made on the sidewalk. I might not have believed it was my house otherwise, it looks so different. I guess it’s sad because that was the last place I could convince myself I had a family, even if it never felt very true. And the last place my family spent any real time together since everyone moved to different parts of the country. 

Grief because today is Father’s Day. Today is Father’s Day, I’m in the state, and I had the time. But Ludvig’s wife doesn’t want me there and I have to respect that. I spent the day partially huddled under a gloom of thinking of their family suffering, of my parallel suffering, and how we aren’t together anymore. 

Helpless, frustrated, and very sad when I think about one of Eliza’s foster kids. She spent way too long neglected and abused with her natal family. When they took her away she had matts in her hair, cat poop all over her, and was completely non-verbal at the age of 2. She needs serious help, and that was always obvious to me. But Eliza’s family doesn’t believe in therapy, they believe in God. Flash forward 4 years – that girl is now nine with the emotional maturity of her five-year old sisters. I saw her knee-jerk bully them a handful of times with a “stick your foot out just to make someone trip with no remorse” kind of cruelty. I can see her manipulating the adults around her, see her try to manipulate me. She is so very much how I was as a child, and I knew that when she was 5 but hoped they were right, that God and a wholesome community was all she needed. But I was wrong and she NEEDS professional help. The worst part was they kept blaming her behavior on her, which definitely triggered my past of hearing those same things. No one blames the parents for taking her out into the jungle with none of the intense psychotherapy she would need after the abuse she endured during her first formative years. And I resent my friend for not getting her help, because I know Eliza sees it too by now. I know it isn’t my place to judge her parenting, I have no kids or obligations so it’s easy for me to say this stuff. I just hate to see that girl suffer, and her siblings suffer. Witnessing her pain and not being able to help strikes too deeply at my wound of all the adults blaming me rather than helping me at that age. 

Helpless, frustrated, and in a dread sweat when I found out about another girl that lives in the compound Eliza now lives in. They live in an isolated Christian community with maybe 40 adults and little outside influence. Eliza was telling me about another 9 year old girl that acts up like her daughter but is an angrier, meaner version. Eliza was saying that they look down on that girl because she has no reason to be like she is because she grew up in that wholesome community, whereas their daughter does have a reason. I could. not. breathe. I’ve thought several times about how there are statistically at least a handful of predators in that compound. That, because of the way they shift kids around to different houses, those predators could likely abuse several children without being found out. And here she is, one of those victims, spoken about nonchalantly by a friend of mine in plain daylight. If I have learned anything in my two years of research into psychology and developmental traumatology it is that unabused kids *do not* act like that. They aren’t angry for no reason, bullying, and dramatically emotionally underdeveloped at such a young age without a reason, that’s not a natural state for a child. I was devastated for this girl, for anyone else in the house that lived with her. And angry at my friend for blaming a 9 year old for behavior that’s out of her control, for not seeing the cause. Do I say something? I can’t NOT say anything. What do I say? How do I say it? There must be some way I can leverage my friendship to help this child. But HOW.

Feelin’ good…

• I’m grateful to have gotten to celebrate with my foster family yesterday, and to participate in their cozy, family-only, post-party breakfast this morning. I love how they have folded in Cubu as easily as they did me, it feels like how it should feel with my natal family. Seeing my worlds collide and get along is so precious, I cherish these visits immensely.
• I saw my first lotus today! After months of working on a lotus-themed blog, half a year of wanting a lotus tattoo, and years of reading Buddhist texts that mention lotuses all the time, I finally saw one. And I know the hype was real. It was so elegant and simple, seeming to glow from somewhere inside and standing out against the mire of the pond it was growing in. I’m so grateful to have eyes that work so I can be in awe of nature every day. 
• Cubu played with Eliza’s kids so we could have a brief 15 minutes alone. I had time to explain to her why I hadn’t come to Brazil yet, and she had time to tell me more about her life that maybe she wouldn’t have in front of her family. We connected like we used to – with ease, familiarity, and the comfort of knowing the other person loves us for exactly who we are. I’m grateful she was able to get away so we had that chance, and I’m extra thankful for Cubu’s thoughtful gift of alone time.