Fiona's news

Of late there has been a positive flurry of email communications between myself and Fiona's clinician Jane. (I finally remembered her blog name!) She is a very very nice person if her emails are any indication. She has told me that Fiona is emotionally fragile (which I knew) has exhibited behaviors that make it clear she can not function in family settings in the long term. (sad but validating--part of me always wondered if it was just us, if we didn't try hard enough/long enough/creatively enough.) She also said that Fiona feels very conflicted--angry (perhaps nebulously,perhaps at us specifically) at whoever she perceives caused the removal of her from our home. She also loves us and wishes she could have been adopted by us. The reality of course is that in so many ways, I feel exactly the same way as she does. Except that I don't have cognitive disabilities, a history of trauma and neglect and all the other alphabet soup diagnosis that she does.

Jane has been trying to piece things together and more or less get a chronological picture of Fiona and of our family's participation in her life. I have been emailing trying to fill in the gaps for her. She was missing information on our interactions with various members of the bio family, and of bio-family interactions with Fiona and with us. I was able to put those pieces of the puzzle in place for her.

In turn, she had a bit of information for me which was sad. Dee, Rob's older brother is now in a residential placement, though I don't know why. So very sad to me. I don't know Dee well, but he seems a bright, caring and amazing young man with a lot of potential. It does explain why we never heard anything about future visits. Still, it just kills me. I hope he is able to attend the art school he had planned to be at . . .

But back to Fiona. We are working toward a phone call with her the week of Thanksgiving. Jane is amazing because she is putting so much thought into this. Prepping Fi with topics, checking to see if I have anything I don't want discussed. The reality is that I am pretty open about that. There was only one brief period years and years ago when Fi had some issues with saying inappropriate things to Rob (like "do you want me to come and get you so we can go away together?") Unless this type of magical thinking has resurfaced, I am pretty okay with just about any topic. Jane said Fiona wanted to give advice to Robbie. Jane didn't want that. I suggested that if the advice was sort of that "work hard at your school work" "keep your room clean" and "listen to Mom and Ooma" that it was okay with me if she wanted to do that. Most older sibs consider themselves fountains of advice to their younger siblings. Jane thought that sounded pretty good and if those type of things will meet Fiona's needs, they are not going to bug Rob to hear them.

What I needed more guidance with, was what would be a good topic for US to share with Fiona. Rob's experiences are pretty typical for a young teen but I don't want him to inadvertantly make Fiona sad by sharing something he thought was "fun" that she hasn't been able to do herself. (i.e. Rob going to a concert in December is not a cool topic to share with his sister.) Jane agrees that some extreme sensitivity is needed in this regard.

So we are moving forward with a list of possible topics and hopefully in a few weeks, we'll hear Fiona's voice again!