Simple Rules

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Elea Lee

The day I found out my adopted son was a pedophile was a rough day.

It remains with me with the grim clarity of a plane crash.

As I moved past simple shock and devastation I sought advice from Jesus.

How do I do this?

His advice was simple–the truth will set you free.

We all have the right to tell the truth, and yet there is such an extreme pressure from other humans to hide it.

We are afraid to acknowledge our monsters. As though they will befriend us if we just pretend they are not real?

There is a dark side to adoption. Not only are we adopting parents sometimes a rum bunch, we also are trusted with children who have been profoundly changed by their own biographies.

And the result can be quite difficult to parse.

“Normal” people may not get it.

But Jesus has never been normal, so he does.

The injunction to let the truth set us free can be terrifying and lonely.

But truth is the seminal condition of heaven.

And what is heaven if not the cure? The safe haven? A place where hiding things will be impossible and unnecessary forever.

An old story for a new friend

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Elea Lee

I sat on the beat up couch and told my mil the story that had just unfolded with heartbreaking force–years of sexual abuse perpetrated by our adopted son Charles. Stopped as soon as it was uncovered but not soon enough to obviate years of damage and pain.

She looked stunned (of course) and managed something about God blessing our family.

At the time I thought, does she see what I cannot?

God has blessed me. God has blessed my family. But she did not know what she was talking about. She was a woman on the mainland of “normal” and I was drifting in the dinghy of “messed up life.”

Attachment disorder will do that to ya. It will put you out to sea with issues so devastating that Richard Parker starts to look like a tabby cat.

Love, if you hear adults, professionals, “experts,” tell you things that do not make sense, learn from my lonely voice.

Your children all have an equal right to live in peace, safety, and love. If one of those children threatens the safety of the others…

Yell loud at anyone who will listen. And don’t stop until you get the help you need.

You have a right to live free from the constant threat of harm.

And so do your wee ones.

Matthew 25

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Elea Lee

First, you should know: I believe in a literal hell.

Not so much because the Bible alludes to it as because the world displays its existence in broken children, enslaved humans. Sudanese women getting whipped while men stand by and laugh.

There are pictures of hell within easy reach. To not believe in it is hubris.

And then there is the time I have spent there myself.

In the fall of 1996 I sat across the table from two small faces and watched them munch down the first of thousands of peanut butter sandwiches at our table.

We did this because of some rather poetic injunctions in the Bible about helping “orphans.” None more poetic than Jesus in Matthew 25.

He says “the righteous” will take in strangers and feed them peanut butter sandwiches. He says they will share of their safety, abundance, and nourishment with people who are the riskiest and least able to pay back such snacks and beverages.

He says they will give themselves. The cost is implicit in the risk.

But at the time it was just a couple of sandwiches. The humiliation, rejection, exposure, assault, and duplicity would take years to fully unravel.

The emotional cost remains steep.

And the words of Jesus still echo in my head–the least of these…you did unto me..

And if the least of these punch you in the stomach? Take your trust and abuse it?

The sorrow is a badly drawn tattoo along the sternum. And hell comes in the vertigo of watching those you cherish hurt.

Back to the table…

I must return to the table and find someone else hungry and thirsty and lowly like me.

It is a gift to know I am the least of these.

And your attention to my grief, a cup of clear water.

Thank you.

Attachment Parenting/attachment disorder

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Elea Lee

The descriptions are eerily familiar–children acting out violently and relentlessly, tearing at the fabric of the home they have been placed in. Making life hell for years on end.

No cure in sight.

I think about this–the things we find cures for: flabby skin, erectile dysfunction….

But I doubt anyone is even looking for a cure for RAD.

Anyone who matters, that is.

Sure, there are the people impacted by RAD children. But we are not exactly powerhouses of charitable financing.

It is hard to raise support over the din and chaos.

Like so many scourges the easiest, simplest cure is prevention–babies need to be held regularly, fed regularly, nurtured consistently.

There are places we say this out loud. But often we don’t. We don’t have the guts to break through the uncomfortable silence that surrounds the abuse and neglect of children.

Tragic.

The Hole in my Chest

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Elea Lee

Four years it’s been since I knew I had an invisible arrow lodged in my ribcage–what comes of adopting “damaged” children.

We are all damaged somehow. Who can repair us?

I knew the answer–arrow or no. I knew the power of my salvific God.

But the arrow remained.

Sometimes it would hurt me less. Sometimes more–the ache rising with the deep regret of the past or knowledge of our frailty.

And then I began to wakeboard.

I learned that having this thing I could throw myself at would keep down the ache of the wound. I had let my children down. I had lived with a costly illusion for years.

Who else would he harmed before he was done? And who can fix such a broken soul?

The arrow remained
Lodged in my chest.

Last week I fell wrong off a kicker. I confronted the fear that had kept my mind off the arrow, and landed in a fast tumble.

Panicked, my son said, but I knew it was just speed and my characteristic lack of control.

No one tells you how much it hurts to hit water fast.

I think it is a cartilage injury to my left chest cavity. It makes some things harder.

But the arrow in my chest
Joined by a real wound now
Seems less intractable
Less lonely

With each small, survivable ache
I remember
The spear lodged in His chest
Eternal wound/God of resurrection.

Contemplating Evil

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Elea Lee

We knew that the abuse had happened, he had been caught in the act. Because he was (and is) a child predator, he was very good at masking evil.

He was not the first child molester I knew who did this. They all do.

All do what? They all do unbearable, unspeakable things to children and then call those things by ordinary names.

It was an ugly conversation.

We went around in circles. He would say he had put his victims on his lap. He would say they played “house” or “husband and wife.”

He subverted the ordinary.

So finally I got a placeholder–an ordinary piece of luggage. In exasperation I gave it to him and said, show me what you are talking about.

He did not want to. Reenacting the facsimile of abuse was too close to the truth for both of us, but it put the lie to his words.

The devil in the details.

He grooms everyone. And he looks for weakness and opportunity the way an addict looks for drugs–relentlessly.

That night I realized how close his words and descriptions were to another child molester who had described sexual assault as “holding” on his “lap.”

Their “innocuous” descriptions of unspeakable evil were the same. The devastation and pain they created in the lives of innocent victims were also the same.

And yet we all look away. We plug our ears and turn away.

If we were brave and faced it straight up we would see the patterns in the lives of child molesters. We would be forced to face how much they rely on adults not intervening.

They count on us looking away. Because when we do we give them all the opportunity they need…

to abuse again.

What makes you mad?

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Elea Lee

Twice today I encountered people who expressed their extreme annoyance at service people.

The first situation involved late food and lukewarm fries and the second involved prescriptions at a pharmacy.

The workers of the world were having a tough day.

I was struck by the gumption it takes to tell a stranger off.

Which led me to remember who we do not confront:

When was the last time you berated a pedophile? When was the last time you raised your voice against a rapist? When was the last time you made a stink about child abuse?

I ask because over the last few years I have watched a lot–lots and lots of people be very polite to some pretty bad men.

It seems to be easy to rant at a waiter or pharm tech, but much, much harder to confront real evil.

…at some point, being so very polite to evil might be a sin of its own. A grievous sin of omission.

5% You

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Elea Lee

In the end I decided to meet you
In the same place I found you
A waiting room near bridgewater

I squeeze myself into the Fisher-Price
Playhouse
And wedge myself into the picnic table alcove
Has your life always been this small?

You were Thing One
He was Thing Two
And you whirled in
Nonstop noise

Your first foster mother
Expressed infinite relief
In the space around her eyes
At the imminent prospect of
Handing all 200% of you
To me

I am handing it back.

But since 95% has been
Yours for years now

I give you all that is left:

An expression about turtles and hope
A song about going to town
All the way to town
A pocketful of french fries of indeterminate age and origin

And telling the truth on the one day it mattered.

Goodbye Baby

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Elea Lee

If I had the picture still
I would be sure to send it to you
The one that survived the fire, your father’s wrath

I know
It is all mythological
Just Zeus
Arguing about what he had for dinner
Who,
Who he had for dinner

Her first words
Carefully recorded by the state of Pennsylvania–

Charles, I am going to kick your ass

Hardly appropriate words for a lullaby

Ask him how your mother lost her
Teeth
Children, like soldiers sewn in a field

You cannot redeem
Yourself
Your life
The smallest act of violence

The crickets and amphibian victims
Of your pitiless mind

Mind your manners broken boy–

Lung cancer is the last stigmatized
Cancer

You say you smoke too much

Too many
Too many victims

Goodbye baby
Read Dante or John
The Beloved for how this will end

Without me.

The Girl in the Cage

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Elea Lee

The catalyst was an unsolved burglary–a nonviolent crime, and one that some police departments would not even bother to pursue.

Perhaps it was the gold bullion that saved her. You can imagine the home owner’s sense of violation and loss.

But in this case a pedestrian break-in and a bit of decent detective work revealed an unspeakable evil.

To think of the suffering of the little girl and the other children these two hurt is a burden to the psyche.

So the quotes about Mr. Gore are worth pondering–he seemed like a nice guy, went to church and everything.

Went to church and everything. Until we face the monsters in our own hearts we cannot face the monsters that walk among us.

And the scars, terrible scars in the heart of a little girl.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: radical attachment disorder