Nesting

I spent my Friday night Marie Kondo-ing the shit out my spare bedroom – aka the nursery – which made the adoption process feel all the more real. This purge, as is often the case, also forced me down memory lane. You see, I prepared this room once before for an ex-boyfriend who moved in with me years ago (a failed experiment to say the least). Only, at that time, I barely moved a pair of shoes and a pencil for his personal belongings. I remember the anxiety I felt when he nailed shelves into the wall of that bedroom – it was all too permanent (and crooked – ugh). Part of this week’s readings for P.R.I.D.E. training included information about the patterns of attachment, which are different for children and adults. I’m realizing that I often exhibit signs of “dismissive” attachment meaning I “seek a great deal of independence and seem to avoid attachment across the board…suppress feelings, distance myself by rejecting others and have a negative opinion about my partner.” It’s clear a large factor in this has to do with moving so often growing up – I lived in five states before graduating high school – as well as my parents’ divorce (*Freshman psych rears its ugly head*). Now, I’ve filled three garbage bags with clothes (including my Betsey Johnson dress from college graduation – if that’s not love, growth, and commitment I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS), removed the dreaded shelves, and donated my old furniture so I can make space for baby. I wasn’t ready then, but I am ready now.

This week’s P.R.I.D.E. video lessons were tough, you guys. As mandated reporters of abuse, resource parents must be trained on spotting the difference between accidents and physical abuse, and so we had to view multiple photographs of children burned, hit, squeezed, broken, shaken, and whipped. It made me ill. It’s difficult to see those images and think I should still be supporting reunification. My mom was a Parent Advocate for many years and I remember her complaining that often even SHE didn’t think the parents (her clients) should be with their children!

I believe I have rather high emotional intelligence and empathy. I understand that drug and alcohol use are often coping mechanisms for more deep-rooted issues, poverty can lead to uncontrollable neglect, and mental problems are often stigmatized or untreated. But despite also understanding that abuse is often a learned, cyclical behavior, I just can’t shake the image of a toddler whose feet had been held in scalding hot water or the child who was whipped so hard that you could clearly see the imprint of the electrical cord. It’s going to take all my strength to be supportive of an abusive parent’s reunification plan. As the learning objective states in P.R.I.D.E. training:

Being a parent is a privilege, not a right; but for children to be protected by families of their own, that is a right and not a privilege.

We ended this week’s in-class session learning about the convoluted, fucked-up journey that is the custody court system. Realizing that the group was going to be rather overwhelmed with this information, the counselors concluded with a hopeful statistic – last year, 50% of DCFS cases in LA county resulted in permanent adoption. That’s a much higher number than I’d previously discovered in my research (around 30%). However, my stupid heart reminds me that this is a zero-sum game: a gain for me is a loss for the birth parents, and as much as I want this, I think it’s important to respect the 50% of tragic endings for the birth parents and hope for their spiritual, mental, and physical recovery. Amen.