Category Archives: radical attachment disorder

Reflect the sky 

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some things remain dark

Obsidian dark

No matter how much you try to put distance between

The two of us

The video footage cannot, will not excise your presence

Obsidian dark

Is not your chicken-scratch handwriting

The horrible story I made you write down

Or the things you left out…

That so many people helped to…diminish

None more than you

The damage which will always be

dead dog on my chest

Ghosts of dogs should haunt us both

But let yours bark incessantly outside the grainy film of your transgressions

While mine 

Returns whole, resurrected even,

To the cement driveway by the old house where the children played with the water hose and the blue plastic wading pool 

Joy

They fill the screen with joy

For a moment even you could see

The way the thinnest layer of water poured out on rough cement

Reflects the sky

Reflects the light from the endless sky

Reflects the glory of this endless day we

…walk toward the sun, my one-time-child

Before the night 

Falls forever

What if 

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What if 

Words in a bottle were

Worlds in a bottle

What if 

You and I 

Were strangers in a room

Filled with people

Just as broken as me

What if

There really was

A connection between

Calvary and cavalry

And one could be used

To summon the other

What if you had a child

You loved very much

Who would be raised by

One kind of

Monster or another?

What would you do

To save her?

What would you

Do to bring her Home

?

Rape Case in Brooklyn

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The case shocked when it was first reported–a man sought help for his daughter who was being sexually assaulted in a Brooklyn park.

The story began to break into pieces within a week of its appearance.  The victim was consenting?  The victim had been having sex with her father!?

Ugh.

Most of us are done by this point in the story.  Too much creepy. 

The young woman refused to “do court” and the charges against all of her sexual partners fell apart.

Which leaves several salient questions–

How safe and child-friendly are parks in Brooklyn?

Why were no lesser charges pursued against any of the principals? Public lewdness?  Indecency? Incest?

And last–(the one which concerns me the most) what will become of these people? 

Especially the young woman.

The explanation of her behavior includes a life of foster care and group homes, a fundamental disconnection from her biological family–a father who could be called predatory at best.

With no more pieces of a biography than that I would hazard that she has attachment disorder, a syndrome caused by neglect and a lack of attachment bonding in babies and young children.

The question of what happens to the adult victims of attachment disorder plagues me because my adopted children have it.

None of us may want to face what happened in that park that night, but we should all question what will happen to her?  

How do you teach a woman her own worth or the value of a father who protects his daughter instead of exploiting her?

And what of the men in this story?  Each put a biological function of his anatomy over the last shred of his humanity.

My adopted daughter complains that I am not to be trusted because I judge people for things like this.

I would argue that one can only trust those who are willing to judge these things.

It ain’t love if you don’t keep all the little girls (lost or otherwise)…

Safe

At night 

In the parks of Brooklyn.

When the rain comes

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In the years of this drought I have questioned–what if the water does not return?

Sometimes we have gone months and months without a drop.

There are people in my life whose lives are desert-y lives. Not just sit on the couch desert, full-blown felony and addiction desert.

They challenge my faith. So I tell God–I believe, help my unbelief.

And He says–

It is unfair to the desert to judge it definitively when there is no rain.

Rain changes things. Rain brings life and washes away the dust. Rain makes rivers in the desert, streams of water where nothing could grow.

So I pray for rain.

Jesus says he is living water. Living water poured out for us. He does not just bring the rain, he is the rain.

That Sinking Feeling

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For years, and categorically for the first nine months, I awoke each morning and lay in my bed wracked with dread.

Because the children were so punishing.

Trips to parks, grocery stores, the pool, church were all fraught with the certainty of sturm and drang. Sometimes interchangeably.

I remember waiting in Philadelphia for my husband to return after a medical conference. We had to check out of the hotel so for several hours I walked in downtown Philadelphia with the children.

One would begin to wail and would do so for blocks, eventually losing interest. Then the other would commence. Their verbal displeasure was noted by all who passed us.

Normal people.

I found a square and planted us there. The wailing planted itself with us.

The only pictures I have of them as babies–before foster care, before I met them–survived a fire.

All that remains of before.

Do something (brave)

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My blog is littered with drafts. I haven’t published anything for awhile because I struggle with–why bother?

In the aftermath of what happened to my family, a lot of people let us down.

It could have been because I was too vocal. It could have been because we were too risky. It could have been a lot of things.

It took a toll on my evaluation of humans. How could so many “nice people” run like rabbits? Or worse. There was always worse.

I battled insomnia. If a person you have fed peanut butter sandwiches can hurt children, the world feels permanently unsafe.

I wrote. I wrote and then wondered why?

Then I began wakeboarding.

I like wakeboarding because no one tells me I can’t do the things that terrify me. In fact, they show me how.

I like it because the people there are brave.

Not just spin-in-the-air brave, but also push-yourself brave.

Many of these brave people restore my faith in our broken world.

Which leads me to “ordinary brave”–

Men who are faithful to their wives are brave.

Judges who prosecute pedophiles are brave.

Health officials who fly into an Ebola epidemic are brave.

Paying your bills and your taxes on time

Holding a lackluster job to provide for your family

Befriending the powerless–

All brave.

When I see brave, I want to be brave.

The Symbols of a Broken Mind

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He used structures, barriers, doorways, linens, athletic equipment to hide his aggressions.

And lies. So many lies.

This comes back to haunt me. I try to keep it in a mental suitcase because my grief over his aggression is still so intense.

Last night I had a dream that I saw a giant tire being pulled on a barge in front of me. I knew exactly what it meant.

I used to take children to play tennis. Right next to the tennis courts the football team had giant tires they used for strength training.

Charles used the tires to hide his broken actions, distorting play schema with devastating effect.

The elliptical nature of my description is for you, not me. I know too well what he did to hurt people with ordinary things.

I wish there was closure. I don’t really believe in it. Instead I think my unconscious mind will continue to bring to the fore these devastating symbols of lost innocence.

Barriers–he uses them to deceive and harm children, yet has no legal obstacle, tag or minder alerting others to his past.

It is one thing to not know how a predator isolates and subdues his prey. It is another entirely to know, and simply look away.

A drug for love

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I pet the cat
Knowing I am her surrogate
Mama
When she was a kitten she curled
On my chest

I see the dark islands
Left on the mind

A child starved for love
Becomes a bullet
Traveling relentlessly toward its target–

Destructive force
Without anchor without tether

Nothing in a bottle
Could ever replace
The steady gaze
Of love

Koystya Thyssen

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This news story has an eery quality to it.

Because for several years now I have asked myself, what happens to children with attachment disorder when they grow up?

Nope. Kidnapping is not the answer. But the articles about the Thyssen family raise questions about what was not done.

If Koystya was known to sexual assault children or anyone, then by 22 he should have faced legal charges.

Did the family report him?

I cannot tell whether they did. But I know I did report my adopted RAD children when they committed felony crimes and was astonished to find the system did not want to prosecute and when pressed, took great pains to clear their records.

Did Koystya have a record? Had he been prosecuted in any way?

The crime here may be bigger than theft, bigger even than illegal captivity.

Koystya is a young man. What can be done for him? And what will happen if we do nothing at all?

Up Late

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There is a great TED Talk about the “museum of 4 a.m.”

Apparently 4 a.m. is the nadir of time–so late no one would chose to stay up. Too early for decent waffles.

I am up at 4 a.m because of…

Two dogs
A nocturnal animal prowling the yard
A list of unbearable memories.

Dog A barked
Dog B followed suit ad infinitum
And mom C remembered.

In the days and weeks and months after M and C were placed with us, C had night terrors.

He also had fits of unbearable rage.

His sister was no picnic either.

But the seconds, minutes, hours of darkness in which he kicked, screamed, pounded his fists against objects, slammed doors, wailed….

In the utter darkness.

They stay with me.

Day or night, a thousand times a month I longed for monkey tranquilizers to calm those kids down.

Since it was not an option, we hiked, walked, ran, and frequented parks.

It was my daily task to:

1. Stay sane
2. Wear those two out.

Now that I am older, now that I have lived through every part of the growing up story of those two precious, deeply wound people, I would say this–

I know enough of the neglect and the violence that led to their howling childhood. I know enough of the condition of their brains, concussed from the absence of love, to know that for every minute of solitary wakefulness that I endured with them–for them, every moment of public humiliation in a grocery store or restaurant, every crazy scene, all those years of lost peace.

Worth it. Worth the risk, the agony, the relentless void.

But why did no one else come to our assistance?

Why such violent, unending loneliness? No cure. No concern for the survivors.

Nothing.

Nothing at all
Alone each 4 a.m.