As I begin to get my feet wet in this world of blogging, I think it makes the most sense to start at the beginning and tell you a bit about our blended family. My husband and I started out in a more traditional way. We met at a college fraternity party and married two years later after we graduated. After waiting 5 years and working in our careers, we had our first daughter, Melissa. (I am going to use our children's middle names since many of them are tender about being "recognized"). Her brother Donny followed a few years later and I played the game of Sequencing- blending my career and stay-at-home time to meet the needs of my family. When Donny was about 6 or so and beginning school himself, I felt a strong impression that there were more children for me to raise, but by this time my career was in such a place that we didn't feel like babies would really work in our lives (I had always felt strongly that babies and young children needed to be home with their moms), and I had always wanted to give back by raising foster children and adopting, so we opted to take that life path. A few years after that, Cheyann joined our world as a 4 year old foster daughter. Two years later, Cheyann was adopted and Lynn entered the family as a 5 year old foster daughter and was adopted a year after that. Finally, and most recently, Charles joined our family just before Christmas and we hope to adopt him some time this summer.
And so our family grows. There have been many sweet and special times; and there have been many challenges. Our younger three have all been through many traumatic situations and all have numerous diagnoses. Cheyann is diagnosed with Reactive Attachment and we have had to stretch a lot to learn about and learn to live with this disability. Lynn is 'only' diagnosed with ADHD, but is struggling to unthaw from her years of neglect and learn to trust the trustworthy in the world as she enters the world of adolescence, and we are really just beginning to get to know Charles, but we can already see the very deep currents of rage he contains deep in his soul. Our older two kiddos have experienced a great deal of secondary trauma because of the joining to the family of these, their adopted siblings, a consequence we did not fully anticipate as we set out on this journey.
As I mentioned in my profile, I learn a lot through writing about what is happening, and I also learn a lot by reading the blogs of others on a similar journey, so my hope is that we might all find each other and thereby become stronger in our individual quests by bonding together. I look forward to meeting many other of you "trauma mamas."
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