Heather's Story

When Heather was younger, we spent countless hours having long talks on my bed. She had a huge gaping hole in her heart.  She had this strong, impossible to ignore feeling that she had been abandoned by her birth family and the one failed adoption and all the families in between.  She felt unloved. Unworthy.  Like she was too much trouble for anyone to endure.

She also had questions about whether she had ever been physically or sexually abused.  She had no specific memories, but she was so young she didn’t expect that she would remember anything.  Over the years, lots of experience with other sexually abused children in our family led us to believe that her conduct was consistent with a history of sexual abuse. But the adoption records weren’t clear about the time or circumstances – just vague allegations.  I had read her adoption file and asked lots of questions during the adoption process, but no one had any clear answers.  So we were just left with the thoughts.  These thoughts haunted her for most of her life. 

We did know that she lived with her birth mom and dad for the first 15 months of her life.  Her mom eventually was placed in a mental hospital for the seriously mentally disturbed where she stayed for many years, but the adoption records gave us no diagnosis. Nonetheless, I think it is fairly safe to assume that if Heather’s birth mom was mentally ill enough to be institutionalized for a long period of time, it is unlikely that she was capable of providing for Heather’s basic needs in a way that we could say was normal during those 15 months. 

In between, Heather lived with at least five other families –mostly family members who attempted to keep her in the family.  But in each home, there was a problem.  Another child was too jealous of her.  The family wasn’t really prepared emotionally or financially to raise another child for the long-term.  Heather was too challenging. Her grandmother adored her but she was too old to raise her.  Family conflict in the extended family was disruptive.  It wasn’t a lack of love for Heather that caused the problems, but nothing was ever quite right.

Heather’s memories of those moves from house to house are conflicted.  She had some very specific memories of certain incidents that she attributed to her leaving.  In every case, regardless of the actual reason, Heather somehow believed that she was abandoned and unloved because she did something really bad that caused her to be sent away. 

           

Heather was not a model child and it’s natural for her to assume she was to blame.  Having talked to most of her family over the years, no one ever said it was because Heather was a bad kid.  But that’s what Heather always thought - she was bad and they didn’t love her enough to keep her.  Those thoughts consumed her most of her life – until her 18^th birthday, when she and I took a trip to visit her birth family – primarily so that she could ask the tough questions she had always needed answers to. That was the first trip back for a visit that seemed to give her some much-needed resolution to her internal conflict. She discovered that she was loved and there was a place for her in her birth family.

We also know a little about the first adoption, which was disrupted following a psychiatric evaluation after a few short weeks.  I never spoke to the psychiatrist, but the first adoptive mom told me that he had diagnosed Heather with Attachment Disorder, which is the diagnosis given for children who are so abused or neglected in their first three years of life that they fail to form a human bond with anyone.  They never learn to trust.  And for many, that failure to trust lasts a lifetime. 

The psychiatrist’s prognosis was grim.  He said that children with Attachment Disorder are the kind of kids that grow up setting fires, hurting people and animals, and eventually committing murder. He was serious.  His words were compounded by a made for television movie called “Child of Rage” based on a true story of a six-year-old girl with Attachment Disorder that did horrible things to her adoptive family without remorse or the appearance of a conscious.  The movie was also about the then new idea of “holding therapy” which was designed to recreate the child’s early life and teach the child to trust.  His recommendation to the adoptive parents was to get rid of Heather as soon as possible. 

And they did.  I don’t blame them for following the advice of the psychiatrist.  They were young and inexperienced.  They had no children.  They were taking the advice of a seemingly well-meaning professional.  It seemed logical to listen to a man who told you that if you kept this child, your world would become a living hell.

I doubt that when they decided to adopt, they thought they were signing up for that.  They were looking for a child to love and lavish.  I’m guessing they thought love would be enough.  They were enamored by this adorable little blue-eyed girl who knew exactly what to do and say to make someone fall in love with her. 

Often, kids with Attachment Disorder develop wonderful coping skills and appear on the surface to be loving, lovable, happy children that will seemingly go to anyone – even a total stranger. But this is simply a tool for survival.  A way to meet their immediate needs for food, clothing, shelter and human contact without actually being in relationship with anyone.

The reality is that these kids believe that the only people that can be trusted are themselves.  But many don’t even trust themselves over time. Without trust, there can be no real relationship. And that becomes the core of all future manifestations of the problems in their lives.  

We most often hear about Attachment Disorder because of International Adoptions.  Before people really understood this Disorder, foreign orphanages had so little money and so many children that babies were rarely held.  Bottles were attached to ropes strung across the bed.  Cries went unanswered by human touch.  Babies were left to themselves.  God said it wasn’t good for humans to be without others of their kind.  And you can see the truth in that when you see the consequences that occur when innocent, precious little babies are left alone. 

It seems like the solution would be simple.  Place that same little child into the loving arms of a mom and dad who desperately want to be this child’s parents and all will be well. And for some, that is possible – especially if they are still in the life-stage where they are formulating their beliefs about trust and human relationships.  Experts say that this happens before age 3, but I really don’t know.  God is bigger than an age limit.  But he did create us in a certain way and so many times, the outcomes are predictable.

If only love were enough. But it usually isn’t.  The love of parents is not enough.  Can never be enough.  Because this child doesn’t know how to accept love.  This child doesn’t know how to give real love.  Everything is a façade.  A way to “act” to get needs met.  In a weird sort of way – kids like Heather learn to do and say and be whoever they need to be at any given moment – but it is for the purpose of getting something.  Not for the sake of the relationship.

I’m not an expert in Attachment Disorder.  I’m not here to give you a clinical definition and clinical answers.  I speak simply as a parent of an adopted child who was said to have suffered from it.  Over the years, I read and learned what I could.  But mostly, I just engaged in life with my child, knowing that an inability to trust was at the core of all her problems  - regardless of the cause. 

So, this couples’ dreams was turned upside down by her prognosis.  They contacted the adoption agency that placed Heather and told the agency they couldn’t keep her.  They wanted her out of their house immediately.  After all, they had already seen signs that the psychiatrist was right.  Heather held their beloved cat too tightly.  She wasn’t gentle enough.  She screamed from nightmares.  They had caught her in lies.  She intentionally destroyed things that were important to the adoptive mom and then pretended to have no idea how it happened.  Heather remembered all that and told me about it many times.

The truth is, Heather was not the right child for this family.  And God knew that.  But that didn’t stop Heather from feeling abandoned once again.  From feeling like one more family couldn’t handle her and didn’t love her enough to keep trying. 

I didn’t tell Heather what the psychiatrist said about her until she was about 15 and we began reading her adoption records, which contained some of her psychiatric evaluation.  She knew the diagnosis when she was six, but not what the psychiatrist said she would do.  Truthfully, I didn’t think it would help and I didn’t want to give her any ideas or expectations!

Looking back, the first night Heather was at our house, we let all four girls sleep on our bedroom floor so that we could all be together.  The next morning, we woke to find that our entire front yard had been burned in a brush fire.  Apparently, the fire trucks had even come and put it out.  None of us woke up through any of it. 

I never suspected Heather because she was in our room with us and I usually hear everything and everyone in my mommy sleep.  Not to mention, she had only been in the house for a few hours before going to bed and didn’t know where anything was kept.  We certainly didn’t have matches accessible to her.  But there was never any explanation for the fire.

It didn’t occur to me until just a few years ago that Heather could have done that.  Fire starting can be a problem in children with Attachment Disorder.  I never asked her and I will never know now.  But thinking back, I wonder if I had thought she started that fire, would I have fallen into the trap of believing she was too dangerous to be around my other kids?  I think God protected me from that thought.  It seems so obvious now to believe that Heather was the logical person to blame, but it totally evaded me then. Thanks God.

Come to think of it, God always protected our family from what we didn’t need to know.  I don’t know how, but the kids especially, knew nothing they didn’t need to know – even if they were sitting in the room while it happened or while we were talking about it. 

So, I’m not here to cast blame on Heather’s birth family or the first family that tried to adopt Heather or any of the families in between.  That isn’t my job and it won’t make one bit of difference in the outcome.  My only job was to try to understand what might have happened so that we could try to figure out how Heather could learn to trust.  I’m not sure we ever fully succeeded in that quest.

Sometimes, our long conversations led to short-term relief from her misery, but nothing permanent.  I knew that her only hope was in her relationship with God.  As she got older, I knew that relationship needed to be with Him.  Directly. I frequently told her that the hole in her heart could only be filled by Him, but she kept trying to fill it with me or some other person.  And we weren’t good enough.  We would never be good enough to make her truly happy.  She hated when I said that.

When I realized that I didn’t have many more answers for Heather. When I knew that I had filled her with Truth – even though she couldn’t quite grasp it all.  I knew it was time.  I had nothing new left to offer, so I urged her to engage more fully in her relationship with God.

What I didn’t realize fully until Heather was gone and I was able to read her journal was that she started her journal when we grounded her from basically everything in her life.  We call it the Bed, Blanket and Bible Drill.  When we have run out of options and the kids get in to trouble with everything they own and every privilege and it looks like nothing is safe – we clean out their room of everything but a bed, blanket and bible.  Okay, we might leave some empty furniture out of convenience, but basically the idea is to remove everything that is cluttering their mind, tempting them, and causing them to be too busy to listen to themselves, to us, and to God.  No music.  No books.  No posters or pictures. No technology.  No TV.  No phone. No nothing.  Oh, did I mention No Door?  Yep. We remove the door too.

We leave them with their own thoughts, God’s Word, and a comfortable bed – they can keep a pillow too. As a result, if they want to engage with people or technology - they have to join the rest of the family or do nothing at all. 

We’ve done this more than one of our children -- to varying degrees and for varying lengths of time.  Sometimes, it works and helps the teen clear his or her mind and get back on track – realizing all that is lost and appreciating it all the more.

Once, after trying this with two of our 16-year-old foster children – they ran away – got caught – spent a night in juvenile hall and ultimately were removed from our home as foster children and placed in a group home.  We could have taken them back immediately, but we felt that this situation was dramatic enough that it might get their attention.  So we worked with DHR to let them go through this process, with the hopes that they would choose to return to us.  If they chose to return, we knew we had overcome a major obstacle that exists when we take in teenage foster children who really don’t want to be in care. 

The two children took dramatically different courses.  DeAnna realized how much freedom she had with us and how much we loved her.  She was gone for 6 weeks and finally decided to return to our family.  We adopted her – and although the trying times didn’t end and we had many more dramatic moments with her – she is now responsible, married and has a beautiful daughter of her own, whom she adores.   But most importantly, Jesus is the center of her life.  Although at the time it looked as if our strategy failed – after all, she ran away – in reality it was her turning point. 

The other child didn’t do as well.  She eventually ran away from the group facility where she was placed and was gone for five months before she came back pregnant.  We had been searching all over the world for her and had never given up hope that she would return.  As promised, she was able to choose to return to our home.  She lived with us during her pregnancy and we helped her raised her daughter until she was two. 

Before we thought she was ready, she left our home with her daughter and tried to live on her own. That didn’t work out as she had planned and we are now raising her daughter and her two sons.  But she is a believer.  She has a strong foundation.  She can choose what she wants for herself because she knows both worlds. But, like Heather, she’s struggling to overcome her past and make a different future for herself. 

I say this not to condemn her, but to remember that sometimes, as parents, we do what we think is best and it still doesn’t produce the results we hope for.  But that doesn’t mean we can stop pursuing.  Stop trying.  Or simply give up.  Although our current strategy is to stop all help and do nothing but pray for this child, that is not because we have given up, but because we have done all that we can do and the rest is up to her and God.  We will assist her again when she wants our help. 

Other childrens’ reactions have not been so dramatic.  Like Heather.   I now know that she took the time to start to think and make peace with God.  She used the busyness in her life to hide from her problems.  Taking everything away left her exposed and vulnerable.  She didn’t like it.  But she clearly needed it.

I knew that we had given Heather a strong biblical foundation – not because we read and studied the bible every day together, but because we tried to live out our beliefs everyday – not just on Sundays.  The Truth was the basis for all our decisions as a family.  We intertwined God’s Word into our everyday language – but not in an obvious way – in part because we were also parenting four new teen-age girls and we tried not to sound too preachy with them, so as not to push them away from God before they really knew Him. 

A few months before she died, Heather tried to tell me that she didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.  That we had somehow failed to teach her that. At the time, I just laughed and said something like, “That’s a sorry excuse and a new one.  But I’m not buying it.  I’m pretty sure that over your lifetime, we’ve pretty much covered most things you need to know about right and wrong.  We have never made you memorize verses, but we give them to you daily.  Let’s start with the basics. Don’t kill.  Don’t lie.  Don’t Cheat.  Don’t be jealous.  Don’t put anyone or anything else above God.  Love others as yourself.  Not to say the 10 Commandments are all the instruction God gives on right and wrong – but they pretty much cover most choices…” 

Of course, she was in trouble and pulling the “I’m too stupid to know what I did was wrong because you didn’t teach me well enough” card.  Needless to say, that card didn’t work with me.  But she was desperate and looking for a way out of whatever situation she was in at that moment.  

I knew that she knew the Truth.  Her problem was a lack of trust. And without trust, nothing would really change.  And Heather didn’t trust completely.  Anyone.  Ever.  Not even God.  And many times, not even herself.  (She learned to have various levels of trust over time – but never complete.)

My motives for pushing her toward God were partly selfish I guess.  Years of living had shown me what I didn’t understand when I was a younger adult – I can’t fix every problem. And, at some level, it seemed easier to make her go to God and deal with Him directly – leaving me out of the loop!  But it made Heather feel like I was giving up on her.  That she was too much trouble.  That she had, in her words, “used up all of me by the age of 7.” At first that troubled me and she threw those kind of words back at me all of the time – as if to guilt me in to giving her the secrets to life that she seemingly thought I was keeping from her! 

What I didn’t know until just a few days after she died was that about the same time I began to tell her that I didn’t have all the answers and that I couldn’t fix her problems, she began keeping a very personal, very private journal.  On loose-leaf paper, in order by date, were over 200 letters addressed to herself and to God. Some were simply the journal entries of a wise young woman who struggled with life. Some were passionate love letters to Jesus. Raw and unedited, she wrote from her heart.  She shared with that loose-leaf paper and God what she refused to share with almost anyone else. 

A few days after finding and reading some of the journal entries, thoughts creeped into my head … What if?  What if I had not repeatedly told her that I didn’t have the answers?  What if I had not said, I’m all out of ideas – except for God.  I know He’s got the solution?”  What if I didn’t push her away from me and toward God?  What would have happened if I had continued to try to “help” Heather by giving her the “answers,” as if I could even if I wanted to?

Would she have turned so passionately to God - the only one who could offer her real help?  Honestly, I will never know that answer.  But as a mother, it teaches me an important lesson about my role as mom.  As much as I’m expected to be able to fix anything.  As much as I would like to be able to remove all the hurt and pain from my children.  It simply isn’t in my job description.  At some point, I must walk beside my child and guide her toward the real answers, but I would be a fool to think that I was the answer. I can only hope that I remember that lesson for my other 19 children.