Fiona Update

Fiona called us last week as usual but ended the call abruptly.  She started the call wanting to talk about the pictures of Krystal but quickly became angry in her demeanor and began to do unsafe things in the room where she was making the call to us. 

I tend to follow the lead that she and Jane set for the calls as there is a phone plan that they create weekly which has really helped my daughter to be able to stay a bit more  focussed, to be more appropriate and by and large to need fewer redirections.  It didn't work last week though!  I suggested that maybe we should talk about the pictures and her sister later and would she want to talk to one of hte kids.  She did and I put KC on. They had a happy, though brief conversation.  KC can pretty much get Fiona laughing almost anytime.  Then he passed the phone to Rob.

I don't know whether it was the fact that Rob is her bio-sibling or not but then the anger and cauldron of emotions came back. However I was impressed because instead of freaking out on her brother, Fiona asked him to give the phone back to me. She told me that she didn't want to talk to anyone else at all that night and would be ending the call. 

I said that was fine and would it be okay if we all hollered Goodbye and we love you into the phone.  She agreed that would be okay and we did that.  She giggled listening to the cacophony and hung up. 

Later I got an email from Jane apologizing. She had thought that Fiona wanted to talk about Krystal and felt responsibility for things going south.  I said that she probably had wanted to talk about her sister and just keeps getting overwhelmed.  I said that I was actually so proud of Fi because she really handled it all so much better than she has at any other point in her life. She didn't hurt anyone. She didn't even leave the room. She was able to articulate that this was not something she wanted to do and we showed that those wishes could be and would be respected. To me, it was great!

This week Fiona called as usual and was her usual, cheerful upbeat self. Topics were light and nothing intense was mentioned or discussed.  I know there will be more issues to handle down the road, and I know that her relationship with Krystal will be one of the harder ones for her to come to a place of healing with.  Hopefully we can all support her in ways that will make that happen.