Loving Wounded Children

I have been reading another blog for a while now. It is a blog about 2 women who have worked hard to adopt their daughter but now in fairly short order one of the two may be feeling that she can not love and parent their daughter. I probably won't continue reading the blog; it is too painful to me. Partly because everytime I hear of a disruption I grieve for both parties. Partly because it brings the loss of Robbie's bio sister Fiona back to the forefront of my mind.

However, I remind myself that Fiona's situation was different from the one i have been reading about. She was ultimately diagnosed as unable to live in any family setting. There is truly no family set up where she can receive the amount of supervision she needs to remain safe. We are still in her life though. And that is the only part of this that makes me glad. In fact at this point, we have been in her life with consistancy longer than any members of her biological family.

When she lived close enough to us for physical visits we were there twice a month or more. The state in their brilliance moved her a considerable distance from us which meant that we could not continue to do that. But we have continued phone contact and I write to her every week. I make a card on the computer with a picture of one of the kids doing something goofy. I have been told by her therapist not to write about details of our family life because it depresses her. So I usually write a joke, tell her we love her, draw hearts all over the card above where I write our names and mail it off. Fiona is cognitively challenged and not able to write much but she does occasionally draw pictures to mail back to us. Despite not being able to write much to her, I have been told she saves every photo and loves the cards. Once in a while she gets a therapist who is savvy enough to write down Fiona's thoughts as she dictates them. I wish that would happen consistantly; the thoughts are there, she is just unable to write them.

I worry for Fiona. I hope the Dept. of mental health and/or dept of mental retardation are able to provide long term services for her. She is 16 and could not ever live on her own. The current placement has an age out at 22 which sounds a long way off, but really isn't. and that is assuming that she doesn't have another decompensation requiring hospitalization. There is a significant history of this and if she is out of a placement too long she loses it and they have to start all over finding a place for her.

If there had been a way for Fiona to be safe in our home and for the other children to be safe, she would be there today. The meds she needs are not of concern to me. But it is of concern to me that she so terrified her younger brother that he was hiding, curled in the fetal position. That my eldest, autistic son, was so alarmed that he picked his chest bloody due to his nervous anxiety. Had she been my only child, I would have I think argued with the powers that be and tried to keep her in our home. In my heart she is still and always will be, my daughter.