Author: Kim

Hello! It’s Been a Minute

~ Kim

Well, it’s been a hot minute since I posted on this website. This is actually my fourth blog I created since 2005. Three of the four have disappeared into the abyss. I am not sure how to ever get them back but it’s no matter. I think this blog actually came into existence in the time between the second and third blogs I created. I just didn’t do much with it. Then I just stopped writing. Not just here, but everywhere. I lost my muse, my mojo, my creativity, and just couldn’t write. However, whatever black hole of non-creativity I fell into, I seem to have climbed out because I desire to write again. I have had some important life shifts in the last few years, and I rather than a bizillian Instagram posts of ridiculous length, I thought resurrecting my blog would be easier on my readers’ brains. I am going to need a little grace from you though because I have forgotten a lot about how to use WordPress, and a lot has changed in the intervening years. Has it really been since 2016? Probably not. I think I wrote on another blog site as “recent” as 2018 or 2019. However, I couldn’t say for sure since I have no idea where those blogs are located on the interwebs. Thank you in advance for being here! I hope we will become reacquainted soon.

~ Kim

Adoption Attachment Resources – Websites

~ Kim ~ 1 Comment

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This is part to of my Adoption Attachment Resources series.  Read Adoption Attachment Resources – Blogs here.

***So, I totally blew it and the “few days” I mentioned as a timeline for my next post, became 23 days.  Mea culpa.  I am a terribly inconsistent blogger.  A situation I plan to remedy soon.  I hope you will find this worth the wait.***

As I alluded to in When Love Is Not Enough, my late husband and I knew in the very early days of my youngest son’s joining our family, we were in over our heads.  We began to look around for a practitioner who understood attachment disorder.  So three months after returning from Ch*na, we found ourselves sitting in the office of a psychologist who had some experience in attachment disorder.  It was by no means his area of expertise, he didn’t claim it, but he was the father of two boys adopted domestically.  He spent a few sessions observing our son’s interactions with us, and proclaimed, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. He seems to be attaching to you well.” I don’t really blame him for thinking this way.  My son absolutely manipulated the whole situation.  My son, who never once came within two feet of me willingly, spent one entire session leaning on my lap.  He gave total eye contact to the therapist.  At home he would barely deign to answer our questions, yet with the therapist, he chatted with openly, freely giving answers to questions.  False answers, but answers.  We couldn’t refute the behavior because our son had the therapist completely bamboozled and we knew it.  We left our third session frustrated and dejected.  We had not found the right professional.  And thus began a three-year journey to try to find the right help. Continue reading →

Adoption Attachment Resources – Blogs

~ Kim

 

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One of the biggest challenges for me as an adoptive parent has been finding the right resources to meet the needs of my children.  I mention in my previous posts When Love Is Not Enough and When Love Is Not Enough Part 2 what some of these challenges are which we have faced.  When we began our adoption journey we spent a tremendous amount of time researching our children’s special needs, which are cleft lip and palate (two children) and congenital missing ribs resulting in tethered chord syndrome and scoliosis (one child).  We interviewed doctors, researched hospitals, talked with other parents raising children with the same special needs.  I spent a lot of time researching language acquisition, cultural traditions and holidays, and what it would mean to be a transracial family.  The latter was the topic of an entire course we were required to take before adoption #2 to ensure we were sensitive to our child’s birth culture and not raise our child “too white.” You know what really wasn’t on our radar? Reactive Attachment Disorder.   Continue reading →

When Love is Not Enough Pt. 2

~ Kim

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My first post “When Love Is Not Enough” started to get really long and wordy, so I split them in two separate posts so readers could tackle them at their own pace, or maybe decide after they read the first, they have read enough.  For those brave readers who have made it here to this post, and are willing to read to the end, thank you.

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It is really hard to admit my love wasn’t enough to help my son.  It is hard to admit I wasn’t enough.  The other night I had a conversation where it was pointed out to me that I am “mom and dad.” I can’t really be dad but being just mom doesn’t seem enough.  I woke up in the middle of the night crying because I know whatever I can do, it will never be enough, I know God has to fill the void yet it is so hard to let go of the guilt that I have to be more than I am.  This is especially necessary when dealing with a hurting and broken child. Many people have the mistaken notion that kids who are adopted older are somehow so incredibly grateful they were “saved” that they would bend over backwards to show their gratitude.  We labor under the belief that of course every child just wants a family of their own – a mother and father. First of all, we didn’t save or rescue our son. OK, maybe in the most rigid sense of those words for his life was not exactly fabulous, and his future was bleak at best as a child with no family and a serious medical condition. It doesn’t matter.  It was the life he knew and as far as was concerned, we took him away from his life.  My youngest son was almost seven years old when we brought him home, and he was all the more angry.  About 18 months ago we were in a therapy session in a local in-patient hospital for children with RAD, and the therapist was kind of taking my son to task because as she told him, “your mother loves you. She brought you here to the States where you have had a loving home, a good education, medical treatment for your special need, and you are spitting in her face.” Now, let’s set aside how shocking this is from a therapist who is supposed to be experienced with RAD kids.  That can be addressed in another post.  However, let me tell you, my son’s reaction was truly eye-opening.  He erupted and said to me, “I hate you! I hate you! I never asked to be adopted.  No one asked me.  I didn’t want to leave.  I liked Ch*na,” and on and on for the next 10 minutes. The “I hate you” wasn’t a shock to me, he said that often.  What was eye-opening was his anger he was not asked.  Wow. I wonder how many other children are made to feel they should be grateful and happy they have a family, yet feel hurt and angry because it is not what they wanted.  Although I know the future he would have faced had he stayed in Ch*na, he did not know. He’s right.  He wasn’t asked.  All he was told by the people in the medical healing home was how lucky he was to be getting a family, but all he could think was “I never asked for a family.” I heard this over and over from him, “Nobody asked me.” On the one hand, it was incredibly hurtful to hear he resented me for “ruining” his life. What could I say to that?

Continue reading →

When Love Is Not Enough

~ Kim

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When I began this blog, I promised myself I would be authentic, real. Not telling everything but telling it like it is and tough luck if you can’t handle the truth. I have had to sit on this post for quite a while (like four months) because it’s very personal and it involves my kids. However, part of the reason I find myself writing this particular post is because no one really shares the truth about some less fuzzy aspects of adoption.  I think the reasons are many.  Some believe if you share some of the more unseemly parts of adopting, it will scare people away from adoption.  Some, like me, are just plain embarrassed.  We feel like we failed or are in some way defective.  I mean, look at all the adoptive family blogs on the internet, with smiling gorgeous kids who do all the fabulous things, and love, love, love them all, “we have 10 perfect kids with special needs so let’s add two more!”  I am not knocking them, I am just skeptical. There was a time when I arrogantly believed I was an international adoption expert.  Then child #4 entered our lives.

Continue reading →

Beauty and Body Image Redux

~ Kim ~ 3 Comments

I wrote a post back in 2011 for another blog. It was about the idea of beauty and body image and how it had affected me. I decided I needed to edit it to revisit the topic here because it’s has come to the fore again, in social media, and in my own home. This time concerning my 11 yr old daughter. Alarm bells go off in my head when I hear here disparage her body or how she looks.

I found this video in my Facebook feed a few times in the last month.  It has made me think about my own struggles with my body, more specifically about the war I have waged against it for the better part of my life.  Please take a moment to watch the trailer, especially if you are the mother of a daughter.

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Continue reading →

Four Years Later

~ Kim ~ 4 Comments

Today marks the fourth “anniversary” of the death of My Love, Paul.  I still don’t really know how I want to refer to that day.  I see a lot of Christian widows refer to that day as “the day my spouse changed addresses,” or “home going,” or “angel-versary,” or even “Heavenly anniversary.” All, with the exception of “angel-versary,” are true statements for me.  I don’t believe my husband became an angel.  Angels are angels and humans have souls which go to Heaven to be with God.  It is true I believe Paul is in Heaven with God.  Intellectually and emotionally it brings me comfort on his behalf, and most of the other 364 days of the year (or 365 days in a Leap Year), I do feel happy for him.  Somehow though, by adopting the cheery “he changed his address” and others like it, make me feel I shouldn’t be sad about him not being here with me.  After all, isn’t our desire as Christians, our ultimate desire, to be with God in Heaven? I feel sadness. I feel sadness about my son going to his friend’s Eagle Scout ceremony later today and his returning to the house sad he does not have a Dad to give the “Dad” pin to when he becomes an Eagle Scout.  I know every time we attend this type of ceremony it opens this wound for him and how much more so it will today of all days.  The only thing worse than my own sadness, is to witness the tremendous loss my children experience on big event days, me knowing there is no way I can or should try to make up for it.   Continue reading →

To My Brother On the Day You Marry

~ Kim

Joshua, today you are getting married. I am ridiculously happy for you and proud of the man you have become. I know throughout your life it was probably a big pain to have three extra “mothers” and a bit embarrassing to have sisters so much older than yourself. As oldest big sister, I have one last bit of advice before you launch off into your own life as a married man.  I have been thinking a lot about five things I learned while being married to Paul. Continue reading →

Father’s Day for the Fatherless

~ Kim ~ 2 Comments

Big days are hard in our family, and Father’s Day is the worst. Seriously the worst.  Of all the big days we have to endure without him, this is the day I hate the most. My kids began life without fathers.  For whatever reasons, they were abandoned by their birth families and went years without knowing the love of a real father.  Then one by one they joined out family.  Paul said, “Yes!” enthusiastically to each and every one of them. And then he was gone.  A couple of years ago, I gave up the idea of being both mother and father to my children. I can’t replace their dad, their “Baba.” I can’t be him.  He was amazing.  He was fun.  His big lap (he was 6’2″ to my not quite 5’2″) was the one every one wanted to sit in for stories.  He was the storyteller.  I remember my kids would say, “Baba, tell us a story,” and he would start “Once upon a time there was a boy who …” and every two sentences one of the kids would interrupt to tell him how the story needed to go.  So a boy who was setting out to explore became “Hot Lava Changing Boy” who saved the world from the “Red dragon of Enderling.” His was the lap that comforted kids before and after surgeries. His were the arms that held scared children whether it was on the day we first became a family, or the first day of Kindergarten.  He was a cake decorator extraordinaire and could create whatever scene the kids asked him to create. He shared his love of cycling with them, and bestowed on them a love for books.  He loved books. Most of all, he loved being their dad.  My kids are starting to lose their memories of him, especially the sound of his voice, and I have very little evidence to provide to them because he was the one behind the camera most of the time.

It is clichè to say “they have a Heavenly Father” because though we trust in God, have faith in God, there is really nothing that can replace the very important person that is our earthly father.  Paul was not their biological father, but he was their real dad.

We love you forever and always Paul, to the moon and back!