When Parenting Spirals

In the here and now. A month ago. A year ago. Four years ago. Twenty-eight years ago.

I doubt my parenting. I doubt why I am doing this. I doubt the decisions I made as I followed the Spirit into this life. I am so worried that my own self-righteous ego has brought these children into a journey that is all wrong… for them.

These past few weeks have been very hard. A month ago was very hard. A year ago was very hard… Life is hard today. And beautiful. I have been doubting my parenting lately (again). It’s hard to know where to put my attention when so much is spinning and spiraling. But then, a minute of quiet. Followed quickly back to a space of not knowing what the heck is going on. Day by day, spinning and turning — out and back to faith, again and back to love, another turn and back to hope.

Change

The end of the school year is upon us. Any transition sends my children into days of heightened triggers. Not anything specific, but their internal neurological systems sense danger in having their lives change… again. Even fun, growing, summer-time transitions are destabilizing. Anger is quick. Frustration is ever-present. Tears fall often.

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All of that — times seven. Seven young people right now who are living out heightened danger and fear reactions. “You are not my real mom.” “I hate her (name any sibling) and can’t stand to live here anymore.” “What’s the point? I’m going to flunk out anyway and be just like my mom.” “You have never loved me. You just have us here so people think you are this perfect person.” “I’m trying to talk to you (with a bright red face, mouth wide open, screaming two inches from my face).” Another door off the hinges and another bowl of cereal thrown across the room.

And I miss the cues, over and over again. I want to discipline out of my own frustration and worry. “We don’t treat people that way.” “If you can’t calm down, you need to leave the room.”

What I should be saying is, “You’ve been really angry lately. It’s not fair to hurt other people with it, so let’s figure out what’s going on. I don’t think you really want to hurt your sister, so it must be really confusing inside of you about why those things come out of your mouth. I think I know what might be going on. Can I share with you?”

Some days that IS what I say. A lot of days, I miss my chance. Over and over again, I miss my chance to offer healing and growth words, and love. Then I doubt whether I am the right parent to be handling so much trauma. Then I start spiraling into stinkin’ thinkin’… I am alone. Poor me, trying my best and no one appreciates it. When do I get to stop taking care of EVERYONE?

Faith

Each afternoon, for this entire school year, I sit on the front porch and wait for Isabelle and Eli to get off their buses. It is cold or warm, still or windy, raining or not. And I just sit for 15 minutes and see the weather happen without me. I am NOT IN CHARGE of what is happening with any of it while I sit there and just experience it.

And I breath.

And breath again.

And again.

My thoughts turn to how much of the world I don’t have to manage. I lean back into a Faith that tells me I am actually not in charge of ANY of it. I have been gifted with these beautiful children for more than half my life. The foster care and adoption journey is more my ministry than nursing ever was. And I find my Faith again that I am not in charge of ‘fixing’ any of it, nor of ‘saving’ anyone. I am only called to bring my gifts and my skills and my love into these young lives and to be the safe, steady place they can lean into as they heal and grow.

My faith is restored… at least for 15 minutes.

Trauma

There is a new CPS (Child Protective Services) open case for my three youngest. I worry about these little girls SO much. Their momma (my Alice) is in prison after an awful night with her abusive husband. He somehow managed to escape any responsibility for what happened and then to get custody of the girls. He is equally as emotionally abusive with them. They live this out with behaviors and, recently, with words.

At 6 years old and 4 years old, their behaviors are hitting and kicking and spitting. They swear. “Daddy says that!” And they fight to sit on my lap and get the first hug. Some days, it feels like all three of them are trying to crawl inside of me to feel safe and protected.

I came to an arrangement with the girls’ dad a couple of years ago to let the three Littles be with me during the week while he works and I can manage school days, etc. He picks them up for weekends when he wants to. We live about an hour from each other, but I know, with his extreme narcissism, if I play up to his ego and make him look like he is doing a good thing, I can help him make the decision for the girls to be with us as much as possible. I know they are safe when they are here. It does, however, impact our family in many ways. I am more tired. My older kids sometimes lose time they need with me. And this dishonorable man supports the girls financially at a minimal level. He gives me barely over 50% of what I spend on them (including expenses for clothing, food, extra utilities (bathwater), and extra things like swim lessons. So we live with less financial stability.

There have been multiple CPS calls from me and from teachers over the past 3 years about bruises and things the oldest has said. But all have been unfounded cases because the girls have just been too young to reliably tell what happened. Without witnesses, there is no way to prove that bruises, or whatever, happened at my home or at his. It’s SO frustrating because stories from my daughter (in prison) recounted how manipulative and scary this man can be. I live with a constant knot in my stomach when the girls are with him. The twins are starting to try to refuse to go with him.

This week, Isabelle, the 6-year-old came back with a big bruise on her leg and told her teacher that she got it from jumping into the hot tub from the edge of the deck. With further conversation, Isabelle told the teacher that all three girls were outside in the hot tub while Daddy was inside playing a video game. Teacher called CPS.

A social worker came to talk with the girls here at my home the next afternoon and Isabelle told the same story again and also said that she didn’t tell daddy she had gotten hurt because he would get really mad at her. She then imitated Daddy by screwing up her face and screaming, “F**k you” very loudly. The twins didn’t have a whole story to tell, but corroborated the story that daddy is inside the house sometimes when they are playing in the hot tub. 

Will this be the time that Child PROTECTIVE Services will actually take action to protect the girls? I have no idea. And each time someone fails to take action or fails to err on the side of caution or doesn’t take the word of the child, I lose patience with the system. I have worked, as a foster parent, within the system for more than 28 years now. And it is a hot mess! Yes, I hold anger and I hate it!

Love

When the Littles come spilling out of Daddy’s car after a visit (almost every weekend), they run to me as fast as they can with happy shrieks of “Grandma! Grandma!” I gather them all in with hugs and kisses and they ask questions about what they want to do… “Can we go to the park?” Can we get a snack?” Can we watch ‘Frozen’?” They barge into the house without a hug or a goodbye to their dad. That makes me incredibly sad. I grieve each time.

It is not much different than the moments each of my kids have asked (and still do), “Why didn’t my mom fight for me?” “Why didn’t someone help them.” “Why did Uncle hit me all the time?” The betrayal from their first family seems to be the biggest grief of all.

The older ones have eventually changed the questions to “Why am I even here? Why did they have me if they didn’t want me?” They translate the loss into questions of their own self-worth and their own loveability. Oh, my heart!

I have had all these years to try to grow an answer to this level of grief. Only the kids can tell if anything I can say helps… “You are SO valuable.” “You don’t exist to fulfill someone else’s needs or desires.” “You were given a wealth of gifts, some of them actually from your first mom or your first dad. You are here, not to complete THEM, but to be the only you this world has. Without you, someone, somewhere may not receive a gift or a word or a touch that they need in the moment you give it.”

Those are basically all the words I’ve been able to find. ‘You are fearfully and wonderfully made.” But whether that satisfies the questions or soothes the pain, I don’t know.

I DO know, though, that steady love in a million things I do to keep each child growing and learning and blossoming in this holy place is not lost. As much as I long to do so, I cannot undo (nor in the Littles’ case right now, prevent) the trauma. I can only be who I was called to be… the ‘right now’ mom who can hug, and soothe and build up and Love.

I can do this hard, hard thing because…. I am Loved!

Ducks

One of my favorite phrases to quote is “keeping my ducks in a row.” I try! Oh, how I try! It takes a lot of organization, planning, and late nights to keep a household running with seven kids here, one in college, one in college AND working, and one doing a job she enjoys. Not to mention my oldest in prison. I don’t need to manage the lives of the 4 oldest any more, but they (thankfully) still need me for support, love and fun.

I need to ensure that ‘normal’ daily life is healthy and nurturing for all of the children. Bedtimes, wake-ups, meals, laundry, bedtime stories, teeth, baths, homework, grocery shopping, and mama time for each kid for all normal, regular family things that need to be consistant and stabel.

I am also trying to keep balls up in the air between 5 schools, counseling, doctors, eye doctors, dentists, IEPs (special education plans) for 5 kids, dance, swim lessons and swim team, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, visits with bio families, and the never-ending birthdays (with 11 kids total, there is ALWAYS a birthday around the corner). Let’s add in a couple of broken bones here and there, the above-mentioned drama from trauma, trips to visit Grandpa, occasional CPS social workers, a flat tire. It is a rare day that all those ducks are still swimming in a row. I am usually lucky if they are even swimming in the same lake.

Seriously, the amount of detail I must keep track of every day, sometimes every 5 minutes, is numbing. I have calendars and charts and reminder alarms. I have sticky notes everywhere and lists (oh, so many lists) and sometimes, I start with a to-do or project at 6 am and fall into bed at 11 pm or 12 midnight with new lists running through my head.

And I do my gosh-darndest, best effort to be nice to myself regularly. My favorite right now is a bit of a nap every day!!! But I try to throw in writing, reading, knitting, quilting, or just plain old crossword puzzles.

Hope

One of my favorite images (shapes?) is a spiral. Back in grad school, I wrote a paper on the journey of health and likened it to a spiral. I took the image and concept from one of my favorite books at the time. It is “A Spirituality Named Compassion and the healing of the global village, Humpty Dumpty, and us” written by Matthew Fox and first published in 1979. In it, he describes life as a spiral and explains how a spiral keeps moving out and around, but always back to us, except on a different plane.

I have grown in my own spirituality and understanding of life since that time in the mid 80’s, but I continue to use the spiral as a reflection of my journey. We are who we are, but every time we circle out into the world, we gather new experiences, new sights, new people and often keep them with us as we spiral back into ourselves on a new plane. The new things we have gathered help determine the direction of our spiral. A circle goes around through cycles of experiences and is very useful as an image to understand how many things work… the cycle of generations, the cycle of abuse, the cycle of the seasons. But a spiral, while it is also cyclical, is also directional.

I like to envision that the things we gather as we cycle out and back in can determine the direction of our spiraling. We can spiral downward when tragedy, grief, abuse, anger touches us during the cycles. We can spiral up when joy and new life and healing occurs. We can’t always control the experiences, but we CAN control how we use the experiences to influence our directionality.

Because of how I have seen this work in my life, I live with hope. Always hope. I spiral out with the emotions of a lot of kids and come back having learned more about them and about myself, so we can spin out again in a new way. I spiral out with fear and worry for my Littles and spiral back in with them for more hugs and more grounding. I spiral out, sometimes with skids and tumbles through days of crazy scheduling and details and turn back in, knowing I that I live in grace and am surrounded by a world of love and support.

The spiral is the shape of Hope for me. It helps me believe that I will always come back to the center of Love and the core of being who I was called to be.

Spiraling

My doubt is often thick enough to cut with a butter knife. It feels like I am plodding through waste deep sloppy mud. Then, with a turn, I spy the center again and I am lifted up into the place of Faith and of Love and of Hope.