Monday 24 December 2018

Glimmers of Goodness.

It's Christmas Eve and at this time of year I always get sick. I do to much and get run down and then end up in bed for days. You would think I would learn that this is not a good plan and change my choices... nope, not yet, was sick in bed all last week with a nasty stomach bug. Luckily I was the only one to get it.

While I was laid up for a week I spent a lot of time binge watching TV and thinking about the past year of my life. 2018 has mostly sucked in so many ways but there are little glimmers of goodness that stand our amid all of the really, really hard parts.

The fact that Kate and Randall spoke up about what happened in our home, that they broke the silence and we are dealing with all that is now happening is a good thing. It means that they can now heal and move forward rather than living with all the secrets hanging over their heads. It has been hard, impossibly hard to navigate but it was going to have to come out eventually and we are moving forward.

The dog, we got a puppy in March of this year and she brings me joy and love on a daily basis. I was never that person who doted on their dogs and took them everywhere and in fact I was rather judge of those people. I am no longer judging because I have become that person. The dog is so genuinely pleased to see me each and every time I come home and it is so nice to be loved so unconditionally by her.

My therapist, oh my gosh I am so grateful to the universe for connecting us last year before things got as impossibly hard. She has had my back at every turn this past year and most especially this fall as my world fell apart around me. She is always there calmly supporting me while we rebuild our lives and  figure out how we are going to move forward.

Medications, oh the regulation that they help to create for my kids is so good. I hope that one day Kate will manage on her own but until she gains that a ability I will be grateful for those pills. Randall will likely always need medication and it is amazing that we have access to all the things that he needs to help make him stable.

Friends, I have some amazing friends who have reached out and held me up as things got so very hard. I do not know where I would be if it were not for them.

I am hoping that 2019 brings new things and some calm to our lives. We are starting it off with a trip to the south because a week on the beach in the sun is always a good start to a new year.


Monday 10 December 2018

Season of...

It is the season of sharing and of celebration. It is the season of hope and the coming of new things. It is also the season of BUSY!

We have a lot going on just like every family does in December and this year I am just finding it so hard. At every event, at every family tradition, at the end of a party when it is time to go home I miss Kevin.

I wonder about him, about what he is doing and how he is managing. I worry that he is not making good choices and that no one is looking out for him. I worry that the birth family he is choosing to live with is not taking the allegations against him seriously and is leaving him in situations where other kids are going to get hurt. I worry that he is not getting the help he so desperately needs.

He was my boy for so long, I thought he come so far and that he was going to get through this rough patch of young adulthood and that we would be here waiting for him when he was ready to come back. I thought that one day we would all be able to be together again.

That is not ever going to happen now.

Kate doesn't even like talking about him let alone seeing him and Randall has been scratching his face out of photos. Randall also has stopped referring to him as his brother and now only uses his name when he talks about him and acknowledges doing it on purpose.

I get it, I understand it and I am never ever going to force them to be with him but I am so torn and so frustrated because I promised him again and again I would never leave him and yet here we are. I did not close the door, he did. But, it is very closed. He has changed his last name on FB, he has blocked me from any contact via any social media and he has not said a word to any of us since the allegations came to light at the end of August.

I believe the allegations, I believe Randall and Kate and I wish with all my heart that Kevin could admit to them so that we could all begin to heal in whatever form that would take. The problem is that he is not going to do that and instead we are all going to be forever fractured because he is not ready to be accountable for the choices he made.

They were horrible, awful choices and I am not forgetting that but he is still my child and I do still love him and miss him everyday.

Thursday 6 December 2018

Self Sabatoge

Randall is working hard at failing and is beyond frustrated with the fact that we are trying to make him be successful and perhaps even thrive at life.

He falls into the pattern of listening to his own negative self talk and then when I try to get him to engage and produce the work I know he is capable of we get into a power struggle and argue which ends with at least one of us storming off after saying things we regret. The storming off is usually me because I am just so very frustrated. We have the same conversations day after day and we fall into the same pattern of him shifting the conversations to attacking me rather then accepting that he needs to make a change if he wants things to turn out differently.

He lives in a fantasy world where his lack of commitment and follow through doesn't apply and he thinks that even though he has done the bare minimum at school for the last 4 years and barely passed that he should now be accepted to a college program that he dreams about with zero understanding of the fact that it will not happen because of the choices he has made. He lacks the cause and effect thinking he needs to be a successful young adult but no one seems to see that except his Dad and I.
We keep trying to get people to hear us and to understand that he needs a lot of support to manage the most basic of tasks and yet no one can or will hear us because he presents as so together.

It is such a frustrating experience to try to help be successful when he fights so hard to be a failure.

Wednesday 28 November 2018

A moment...

Kate had therapy today and taking her has become such a struggle for me because every time I have to take her I am brought back to the fact that I did not keep her safe. Today while I sat there waiting for her the radio was playing Christmas Carols and that just about put me over the edge because hearing songs about families being together for the holiday season made me really sad.

I tried so hard, I was so careful and yet she was still hurt by a boy who I told her was going to love her and keep her safe too because that is what big brothers do. It has come out that he hurt time and time again and that

But her big brother did not keep her safe, instead he hurt her and she tried to tell us that and none of us believed her because she kept changing her story. I know that I believe her now and that we are getting her help but if I could roll back the clock and change this for her I so would. Her story before she came to me was one that tragic and I thought that we would be her safe place, a place that taught her that she could trust others not to hurt her and instead she just got hurt again and again.

I feel the same about Randall but it is some how a different process in my brain and I am not sure why. It could be because it did not happen to him for as long. It could be because his relationship with Kevin was already pretty complicated and this is another layer of that. To be honest I am not sure exactly why but I am sure with time it will make more sense in my head.

Guilt, shame and sadness are the dominating emotions of my life and I wonder if we will ever all be happy again and how we will ever get on with our new version of normal.

Thursday 22 November 2018

A Story called Shame

I have been listening to The Moth Podcast to fill my long days of trying to keep myself busy so I do not have to much time to think which is helpful until it's not.

I have hit that spot where busy is not helpful because my grief is to overwhelming and once I wade through the grief I find myself deeply entrenched in shame.

And then my shame keeps me silent for long stretches because to speak of my life is to speak of the fact that even though I tried so very hard to keep my children safe I did not. They were being hurt by their brother who was also very clearly hurt and my home was not a safe a place for them.

But I can't tell this story, I can't call into The Moth and leave it on their story line. I can't tell them that even though I had video cameras and door alarms my eldest child sexually assaulted his little sister while they walked the dog together or played in the yard while I was int  the house making lunch. He violently assaulted his brother while they were sharing a room on the second floor while the rest of us slept downstairs. When I had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and I woke him at 15 years old and asked him to get his siblings off to school if I wasn't back and instead of going back to sleep he waited till I left and then woke his brother to sexually assault him again.

There are so many stories. I know I am not to blame and yet the shame takes over and I retreat inside myself. I hide from my friends because I can not bear for them to know that this happened in my home. That I , the Mom who was on top of it all missed this. That at the end of the day I was not a good enough Mom for my kids and now as we wade through all the trauma and grief I am not a good Mom because I am constantly triggered by their stories for they are so very similar to my own. I too was not safe in my home growing up, I to was sexually assaulted by a sibling and although I thought I had done the work I needed to around that time in my life when this happened it all came crashing back and no matter what I do, not matter how hard I try I can not shut down the movie playing in my head of my own assaults and the fact no one listened or kept me safe either.

We are so broken and I am not sure we are ever going to heal. I am not sure we are all going to make it through this. Randall and Kate were both suspended last week and then this week Randall was removed from school for the rest of the semester. He can go back in February if he gets all 4 of his classes done online between now and then. Which means he is home with me, all day, everyday for the next 10 weeks.

I am barely holding my shit together most days and now I have add teaching and arguing about school work to the long list of things I do not want to do each day. I will put that right under get out of bed and pretend that we are fine.

Shame, she is nasty voice that creeps in and makes you wonder why you even bother trying.

Friday 9 November 2018

What can I do?

How can I help you?
What can I do?
Do you need anything?

These are the questions my friends and family ask me each and every time I tell someone new about our lives or fill someone in on the chaos that happened this week or last week or today. There does not seem to be any end to the horribleness of all of this and Kate and Randall constantly share new things with us.

I know they mean well, I know they want to help but there is really nothing that can be done. I am completely overwhelmed by my emotions most days and the day to day things like getting groceries and making dinner get me moving everyday. They keep me from curling up in a ball spending my day crying as I stroke the dog and feel sorry for myself. There is definitely a place for that and I know that but I need it not to be my everyday.

I know I am depressed, I feel the ebb and flow of the overwhelming sadness gnaw at me most days and if I do not get out of my house I am afraid it will take over as it once did before.

When I was in university I struggled with serious depression that was brought on by my recollection of my own sexual abuse as child. It was a very dark time in my life and although I had a great therapist and doctor who saw me weekly for years I went through cycles of being seriously suicidal.
Getting back to that place terrifies me and yet I have not called my doctor to ask for meds this time because I am not the girl I was then. I have moments of thinking that would help and then I have a good day and think to myself that I do not need them.

I will be fine is my mantra on the hard days. 

Except when I am not fine and I am afraid that if I go back on anti-depressants it will be forever. I also do not want to deal with telling doctor after doctor why I am on them because they will ask. I see far to many medical processionals for it not to come up again and again.

Like so many things in my life right now there is no easy answer and navigating these new waters of my life will get easier with time.

Tuesday 6 November 2018

There is no instruction book...

There is no instruction book for managing your emotions when you are trying to figure out how your family is going to function when one of your children is not allowed to have contact with any of you by court order. For now it is easier but with time it will be harder.

Kevin is unwilling to admit that he has done anything wrong and I am reasonably certain that this is going to go to trial. The thought of that terrifies me for myself and for Kate and Randall.

How did we get here. All I wanted to do was parent kids who needed a family and instead of being a safe place for them it has been a further nightmare. They are safe now but they were not for so long and as careful as I was I wasn't careful enough.

I don't think I will ever forgive myself for that.


Thursday 1 November 2018

Just thoughts

Time seems like an illusive thing right now, the days are all running together as I move from one crisis to another with barely a moment to recover from the last one. It is exhausting and some days I don't have the energy to organize a meal let alone find time to sit down and formulate coherent thoughts into a blog post. Writing is useful for me as it helps me to process but at the same time there are days when I do not want to process because that would mean actually acknowledging the profound grief I am feeling and my complete powerlessness in the outcomes of the situation for my kids.

I miss having an intact family and being able to hug my oldest kid even if he is not living in my home. I have not seen or even spoken to him since the disclosures of his siblings and although there are good reasons for that it is still a struggle. I want to talk to him, to ask him to acknowledge that the choices he made are horrible and that he also needs help. Kevin has refused to acknowledge that he needs to work through his early childhood in order to be a functional adult. He refuses to admit that he too has been hurt by people who were supposed to protect him and instead just pretends that he is fine and that the problems are not his but instead ours.

It is all so freaking hard and there is just no easy way out. We must go through and at the end when there is some healing we will never be the same as we were before and that makes me so very sad.

Thursday 25 October 2018

In an age of #metoo...

Given the current climate in North America regarding sexual assault I am often shocked at how many people do not believe survivors. Kate and Randall are constantly not believed and it astonishes me every single time it happens. How on earth would a child make this up and why would anyone put themselves out there like this if it wasn't the truth. There is just no way that a child would tear their family apart from the inside with these sorts of allegations unless they had happened.

I so wish I could stand on a rooftop and shout out that survivors are the not the ones who should be put on trial and yet that is exactly what happens. Again and again survivors have to prove that it was not consensual, that they were assaulted and that they are telling the truth.

When is it going to change? When are we going to begin to believe the stories that women, children and men tell about how they were assaulted without trying to blame them? When will we not longer need the tag #metoo?

When will we be believed?

Wednesday 24 October 2018

I ran away

I ran away last Friday to friends house for the weekend so that I could gather my wits about me to get through this week. Kevin has a hearing today and I am not going but just thought of my boy in court having to answer for some of the things that he did to his siblings is killing me. For all of us this is an impossibly hard journey that I wish none of us were on.

I have so many mixed emotions and there really isn't a way to find resources to help me and the rest of my family through this. There is no book, no support group, no manual on how to recover from "when your son sexually assaults his siblings' and then gets away with it for years until one day one of them tells by accident. We are very much alone even though friends try to be supportive there just really is no way that anyone who hasn't lived this can even really begin to get it. I know that we are not alone and that others have been here to but no one talks about it.

Therapy helps but that is one hour a week and I have to live this life very much alone for all the other hours of all the other days and find the energy to support my kids because they need me to have my shit together and to help them through this.

The reality is though I am not holding it together even though I look like I am. I lost it at yoga yesterday because this is all just so freaking hard and how on earth are all of us going to get through this and figure out how to keep living.

Randall is on edge all the time, everything in his life is colored by his disclosure and he does not see anything positive that will come of it. He has no control and no power in this situation and that is exactly what Kevin did to him, took away all of his power and control. He was already really struggling and now he is so close to the edge all the time that I am terrified he is going to kill himself because he really does think that it is his only choice.

On days like this I just want to go back to bed and not get out. Instead I packed up my computer and headed to a coffee shop because sitting around at home felt like a really bad plan today.

Wednesday 17 October 2018

I did it.

Today I got out of bed.

That might be my biggest accomplishment for the entire day. I did not want to get up this morning and in fact I contemplated driving Kate to school in my pj's and then coming home and going back to sleep.

Depression can be like that, it come take over without warning sucking all the air out of the room and leave me breathless trying desperately to get enough air to survive. Today is hard because yesterday was hard and I didn't want to admit that I needed hep. I was challenged to look at why I am feeling the way I am and challenged to do something about it and to allow myself to acknowledge that I need help to find the light.

Sometimes it is important to sit in the bottom of the hole you have fallen into and just be in the darkness. Other times it is important to grab on to the rope that is being thrown to you and allow others to help you to begin to climb out.

I have been ignoring the rope for awhile now but it is time to grab on, to be supported and to be helped because I can't get out the darkness on my own.

Although the last 6 weeks have been horrific I had been in the dark at the bottom of the hole for a long a time. If I am honest I would say it has easily been a year and although there have been glimmers of hope and light in that time I am aware that the darkness consumed them time and time again.

So hand over hand I am going climb up that rope and work at moving forward in this new version of my reality and hope that it is not so hard that I have to let go.

Tuesday 16 October 2018

Grieving the Living

We went away last week on a much needed break from reality to enjoy some sight seeing and time together. I was struck by how very much I missed Kevin while we were gone. He has not lived in our home for over a year and we have traveled without him many times before but this time felt different.

I felt like I was grieving the loss of someone, he is gone from our lives but he is not dead or missing, instead he just minutes away but is not longer part of lives. I have no idea how he is, if he is safe and if his needs are being met. I have have not spoken to him since early August when we unexpectedly saw him one day. I have heard from other kids that he is denying his guilt regarding the charges that have been laid but that doesn't really tell me anything.

I miss my boy. I miss his red hair bobbing up and down as jumped for hours on the trampoline. I miss his laugh and his arguing. I miss the cuddles and the stories we would read together as we grew to know one another.  I miss the boy that grew in my heart and that I came to love after only meeting him at 8 when he had already seen and experienced far to much.

I miss the boy that I could not reach, the one who was broken by a world that taught him he did not matter and no amount of love, therapy and consistency could change that.

He hurt is siblings, he crossed the line and needs to be held accountable for his choices but that does not change my love and my sadness over the situation we are in.

How do you come to terms with this? How do you forgive someone who refuses to acknowledge that they have done something wrong? How do you find peace in a situation where there is no good outcome?


                                                                                                                            

Tuesday 2 October 2018

Allegations and Reporting

So I just came back from therapy. Therapy is a good thing and we makes sure we can afford it because we know it matters.

We spent a good chunk of time talking me down from the ledge I was on because Child and Family Services called today because they want to run a parallel  investigation into the one the police are running. Needless to say the conversation did not go well and I  was not very excited at the over zealous worker who seemed to think that our children needed to be interviewed again and they wanted to come inspect our home as well.

We reported our concerns about Randal and Kate ourselves, we reported what needed to be said and they came out and interviewed our kids a month ago. The case was handed to the police and charges were laid. outside of working with the police as we move forward we thought that was all we were going to need to do.

Until they called today. There is nothing that frustrates me more then a system that does not work.

There are real situations where they are needed out there, real kids in need of protection and they are calling us a month later to dot some i's because their checklist says they must.

My children have been through so much in the last month and the last thing they need is someone showing up at their school unannounced to question them and then send them back to class and expecting them to cope and make it through the rest of the day.

I made it very clear to them that anything that happened would be announced and done in a way that would not traumatize the kids but I can't even believe that I have tell them that.

Seriously. What about the kids who are dying in foster care or the ones being abused by people who are supposed to keep them safe.

Yes, my kids had something horrible happen to them but the person who did it is not in our home and we are doing our level best to help them regain some control. I am hoping someone is listening at the office and we can go away on vacation knowing that we will not have to come back to a gong show.


Thursday 27 September 2018

So Strong

I am often amazed at the resilience of Randall and Kate. Their lives have thrown them so many horrible things, they have lost out on so many things and the people who were supposed to love and protect them failed again and again.

And yet they get up everyday and head into a world that is so very hard for them to navigate and they try again.

I often don't want to try again. I want to stay in my bed and hide from the world overwhelmed by the journey that is my life. In fact, there are days that once I get the kids off to school I go back to my bed. I hide there for the day eating crappy food and binge watching TV feeling very sorry for myself and pretending that this a totally effective coping strategy.

I dream about what life would be like if I hadn't done this or that, if I could go and change things what would I do differently?


Wednesday 26 September 2018

Kicked out

I brought Kate to therapy today. We come every two weeks and usually I stay but the therapist and I had conversation last week about Kate potentially not wanting me in the room and me not wanting to be in the room because my own trauma is so triggered by my kids current trauma. That being said being asked to leave today makes me so sad , not because I want to be there  but because I don’t want my kids to have to do this. I don’t want them to have to heal from the trauma that their brother caused because I wish it hadn’t happened and I feel so bad that it did.

Bad that I didn’t pay more attention.
Bad that I didn’t keep them safe.
Bad they are now blaming themselves for what he did even though it is definitely not their fault.

Trauma on top of trauma and it is all so complicated and heartbreaking for all of us.

Tuesday 25 September 2018

Landslide

It has always been one of my favourite songs, it makes me cry now because it hits that spot in my heart that is so very raw and painful.

Well, I've been afraid of changin'
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older, too
Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
Time has indeed made me bolder in so many ways but I am still so very afraid of changing even though the universe is dragging me kicking and screaming into another place. Some of the changes are ones that come along with life as your kids get older, some for my body which is not the same as it was when I younger and some are the result of the choices Kevin has made and the impact that has.

Before the sexual assault charges we were skating around the issues with him, we were putting up with his behaviour because we felt like keeping him in our lives was important for him and for us. We ignored so much of what he was doing and how he was treating us just to keep the peace. We can't go back to that place now.

It's such a hard and painful place to be.

Monday 24 September 2018

Skipping Ahead 10 years

Randall texted me today while he was school to tell me that he was feeling overwhelmed and that he had nightmares about Kevin breaking into the house and shooting all of us.

 Last night Kate asked me if I still loved Kevin. She asked me if it was ok that she didn't feel like she loved him anymore.

This is not unusual for us in a post-Kevin world.

Kevin moved out in the spring of 2017 against our wishes after 2 years of complete chaos where the police often brought him home and where he called Child and Family Services on us every chance he got. He eventually put himself back into foster care and in the time that led up to that created a lot of chaos for everyone.

This past summer (2018) Randall and Kate disclosed that Kevin had sexually assaulted them. Once one of them disclosed then the other felt as though they could too. Their disclosure shocked us but we absolutely believed them both from the moment it was spoken because there was no way they would make it up. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

We are still very much picking up the pieces, trying to make sense of life  and working hard in therapy. All of that does not change the fact that it happened and that it happened multiple times to two of my children and the hands of my other child. We were so careful, we had so many rules and worked so hard to make sure everyone was safe but Kevin was determined and sneaky and in spite of our best efforts it still happened.

Last week he was arrested and charged. He has a hearing in about 6 weeks but before that happens there are likely to be more charges laid as the investigation is ongoing.

 It is all rather surreal, when I am alone I spend a lot of time thinking about what might of been, what could of been and what will happen. It is a scary road to go down and I am not sure how we are every going to pick up all the pieces.


Saturday 22 September 2018

It didn't start out like this.

In the beginning I just wanted to be a Mom. I thought for a long time that my path to parenthood would be as a single person who fostered or adopted. I was okay with that, I knew that it was possible and that lots of people managed to raise children on their own.

That idea shifted in 2005 when I began dating one of best friends and a 9 months later we got married. It was a whirlwind of excitement and trepidation. Even though I was not going to be a single parent adoption was still my plan A, it was how I wanted to build a family and if a baby happened too that would be awesome. At least that is how I felt then.

Like so many things in my life adopting our sons just sort of happened. We began the journey to becoming foster parents thinking that with time we would have a placement that clicked and worked and then when it came to make a decision about adopting that child we had come to love that we would. But that is not how it happened.

One day March of 2008 while we were still in the process of finishing our homestudy our worker told my husband  Jack about two boys who were in a foster home but needed to move into an adoptive home because these boys, Kevin and Randall needed to know that this was the end of the foster care journey. They needed a forever family.

I initially said no when I learned that they were part of a much larger sibling group because at the time ( not knowing anything at all) I thought that sibling groups should be kept intact. But as winter turned to spring we kept hearing more and eventually there were pictures and before I knew it was May and we had agreed to adopt Kevin and Randall. We were excited, as all adoptive parents are and even though the boys had boatload of behaviour issues we were confident that we could handle them because I had been looking after kids for as long as I can remember and I was a teacher too. How hard could two boys of 6 and 8 be?

They could be and would be impossibly hard

The moved in that summer, I stopped teaching and agreed to stay home for as long as the boys needed me to be there. We hit the ground running and there was never a honeymoon. The first day he was in our home Kevin smeared feces all over the a chair when I left them along in the TV room for probably 5 minutes. They would not sleep, they were both up frequently in the night. Food was stashed in random places to rot, things were constantly missing, there were tears and tantrums everyday and not all of them were from the boys. I was not their mother and they made sure that I knew it.

I had no idea what I was doing. I tried again and again to use all the tools that had worked for me with children in the classroom, at summer camp, while nannying, but these kids were different, nothing I knew worked. I bought books, I read, I talked to my friends who had kids but everything I tried failed. I pushed through the rest of that summer and registered them for school. I did not know what a disaster that would be and looked forward to the daily time alone when I could get other things done.

It took a about week at school before the phone calls started and then Kevin got kicked off the bus. I felt like all I ever did was put fires but the coals lay there smoldering and as soon as I turned my back they found something flammable and turned back into a raging fire. It was impossibly hard.

Since I am not one to give up easily I rallied, I got them into therapy, I found better books, I became trauma informed and learned that I was not the only parent walking this path. I read and talked and read some more. I asked for help and found it places I never would of suspected.

Kevin was still impossibly hard but I learned better skills and when he raged for hours and tried to destroy everything he could get his hands on I knew what to do. I learned how to calm him and that his first calm down was not the end of the tantrum and that he would he need to blow up again before he actually calmed down. I learned that he needed to be touched and held when he was most upset, that wrapping my body around his in a giant bear hug helped and that sometime that could avert the rage that came with his intense emotions.

In the midst of trying to keep Kevin calm and safe there was Randall, always in his brothers shadow he tried to take up as little space as possible except when his brother convinced him to do something he probably shouldn't. Oh the stories about their antics that I have.  Like the time that  Kevin convinced Randall that getting into the dryer would be like a ride at the amusement park. Randall quickly discovered that it was not like a ride at all and that being trapped inside a moving dryer really sucked. Randall was a sweet little guy who had some serious anxiety and was very used to be controlled by Kevin and because of that it would be years before we got to know who Randall really was.

As time passed and I learned more skills things slowly seemed to get better, we lived very different lives then my friends who had kids but as long as we kept the boys world small and predictable we managed to get through the day. Days turned into weeks and before I knew it we finalized their adoption and moved into our second summer together.

Months turned into years and because we thought we had this all in hand, because we thought that we were managing we decided to adopt again. In 2012 Kate joined us, she was 6 full of beans and ready to make sure that we were on our toes. In the first few months she was with us I did things very differently then I had with her brothers. I knew all about trauma, attachment and adverse childhood experiences. I had this! I read every Dan Hughes book, and I watched Carolyn Purvis videos. I had and amazing network of Mom friends who lived the same life I did and I was confident I could do this.

I worked hard with Kate in those early days to form attachments and to teach her that this was a safe place where she would stay forever. I bottle fed her at her request, I played board games and painted nails. We blew bubbles, read stories and played dolls together. Randall saw us doing these things and joined in. He asked to be bottle fed and to cuddle with me. He asked for more time with me and wanted desperately to have the same attention Kate was getting. So I obliged and held that great big 10 year old boy in my lap and fed him a bottle and sang him songs.

Kevin never looked twice at the things I was doing with his siblings. He was not interested and did not want any part of forming a stronger attachment with me as Randall did. At the time I just thought it was because he almost 12 and those things were childish. It never occurred to me that it could be about his inability to attach to a parent, in fact to attach to anyone and so I just left it. He never asked for more time with me in the way that his siblings did and so it didn't happen. I did not want to push it on him or make my pre-teen boy feel uncomfortable so I let it go.

I wish I had pushed. I wish I tried harder for him to develop true attachments. I wish I knew then what I know now and if I had we might not be as broken as we are today.

Thursday 8 February 2018

Archived Post 2018 - The Wall

I hit the wall hard on Friday night and I woke up Saturday morning just as miserable as I had gone to bed. So I  spent the entire day in my hiding in my room. It helped but did not solve my problems...

Let me roll the day back for you so you understand the wall which I hit and did not see it coming.
Friday was Kate's 12th birthday. It was also the day I took Randall to have lunch with his Bio Dad who he had not seen since he was 5 and 1/2 . To add to the day we picked up Kevin from his bio Dads (where he is currently couch surfing)  and took him with us to dinner and movie to celebrate Kate's day. Saturday was the 3 year anniversary of car accident that literally ruined my life by leaving me with chronic migraines and a long list of things I could no longer do.

When all of the events of the day were said and done I thought I was managing quite well, I had been calm and had not confronted Kevin on all of the ludicrous lies he was telling because it was not worth the fight. We had made it through the whole day without any major incidents and I was damn proud of it. As I was putting Kate to bed she said it,  she said that although my gift was good her gift from her Godmother was better. That comment, that dig from her that I am never good enough for her put me over the edge. The worst part was that she led with " I know this going to make you upset but..." It did make me upset and I told her that, I told her I had feelings to and that she knew she was hurting them with what she said. She had no response so I said goodnight and left her room.

It crushed me and she knew it would, she is a bright girl and she knows how to make someone feel an inch tall. She does it with other kids all the time and she often does it to me when she is mad but this is the first time in a long time she has done when she was calm. I have always known that the other mothers in her life are far more appealing to her then I am but damn it she doesn't have to rub it in after I worked so hard to make the day special because things have been so hard around here for all of us and we all needed a little fun.

I wish that my best was good enough for my kids.