Can Suffering Make You an Introvert?

 Long... hard... exhausting... roads change a person... completely and to the core.

 Once upon a time I was an extrovert, but that feels like a distant memory. The change begun as a slow draining away as we dove into parenting kids with lots of trauma. I’m not the person I was before.
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Maybe it’s grief, fear, sadness for what we used to be - I’m not sure. I’m so bad at small talk now. I have little use for shallow chatter.
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But I love people. I pray more, think more, write more. I fight my enemies of worry and anxiety. I think this may be the new me - no longer an extrovert but still a lover of meaningful relationships.
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I’ve been changed by trauma and grief - I think about it every day. I know God has me in the palm of His hand. Nothing in my life, my mind, or my heart surprises Him. My world feels so much smaller now.
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Suffering may have come as the family you once were raising, loving.... disappeared in the wake of parenting children with early trauma.

Suffering requires us to reach deep into our souls, and for many of us, to fall desperately at the feet of Jesus. Pain and fear drive us to seek strength and comfort.

This costs us everything, living everyday life seeming trivial. Who can think about anything extra when it takes everything you’ve got to get out of bed and muster the courage to be the mom you want to be?

So many things fall away as your life is pared down to the essentials.

Which leaves me with the question of how this seems to have changed my personality. I used to love being with people and would choose going out for coffee with a friend before staying home alone any day.

Now I crave time alone. I would never have dreamed I would need and want (almost covet) so much time alone. I find it disconcerting sometimes – who am I?

Things I used to love like painting, women's bible study, and bible journaling moms group seem too hard now. I avoid going to the grocery store as long as possible and find it hard to answer when the phone rings. Thank the Lord for texting!

I still love having a friend or two over sometimes; I want deep conversations. I just don’t have energy for much else.

My Husband and I are exhausted every single day.... over 6 years later we are STILL exhausted, It's not better and we honestly know the only way we're making it through each day is because of God. We have nothing left in the tank, we're just hanging on wondering is this as good as it gets until they are finally moved out of our home? Will we make it that long?

I miss "Us".... I miss time just being with my hubby when someone isn't demanding, screaming, bickering, arguing, yelling, needing, needing, needing.... Tears well up instantly in the wee hours of the morning, or late hours of the night when I'm alone.... when THEY are finally asleep and I'm alone with my thoughts. I miss "us", I miss "US"... I miss what once was... before them. I'm sad that I feel that way... I didn't want too, I didn't mean too, but that's honestly where I'm at.

Finally posted almost a year later.... 1 in 4 adoptions disrupt... We became a statistic today... this is our story...

I requested to be put on the stand last Friday (Nov 15, 2019) at our TPR (Termination of Parental Rights) hearing. I wanted one last chance to tell all of them just how devastating they've been to our entire family and especially our son over the last 2 years. I didn't know they would clear the court for TPR's, probably for them to save face and not be scolded in public. Only the social worker, head of CPS (Children's Protective Services), lawyers, judge, GAL (Guardian Ad Litem) and JO (Juvenile Officer) remained. Our son was not there. I turned and looked each of one of them in the eye from the stand and told them they'd failed. That they failed us and they failed our son.That we had done everything and more toward reunification with our son only to watch helplessly as they systematically tore our family further a part since day one. I told them none of the services/placements they'd offered were truly trauma informed. I told them they should be ashamed for denying ever single service we requested for our son that we knew would help like EMDR, brain mapping, neurofeedback, SSP... I went into details about how they had falsified records, failed to protect our son, and villanized us WITH PROOF IN HAND. I told them I didn't know how they slept at night. I told them I would remember each and every one of their names FOREVER. The Judge said that sounded like a threat. I told the Judge it wasn't a threat, it was a warning. A warning to them that they should think long and hard about the job they draw a paycheck for as "champions of children". How they live a lie. I told them I hope their consciences are pricked at night when they tuck their children into bed, and they remember my son... the one they failed, and his brothers and sister that have to live with that now. I told them our only comfort is knowing that there is a God who will hold them accountable with unavoidable justice where we can't.

Honestly I was thinking of ALL the families I've come to know in the "underground world of DTD (Developmental Trauma Disorders)/RAD (Reactive Attachments Disorder)" as I spoke to the court. ALL of the families & children across the country, across the world that are being failed EVERY single day by a BROKEN, CORRUPT, dare I even say evil system that's supposed to protect children, and makes a living drawing a paycheck in the name of "protecting children". All of it... the RTC's (Residantial Treatment Center) facilities, case workers, case managers, juvenile officers, judges, therapists, lawyers, CASA workers... ALL of it FAILING families & children everywhere. Villanizing foster parents, adoptive parents, and parents to cover their backsides. In the last two years I have learned so much by what we've gone through with our own son while he's been "in care", and what THOUSANDS of others have gone though with this broken, corrupt "system" of foster care and adoption. Things that would make you sick, things that would make you uncomfortable, things you would find hard to believe, things that shouldn't be happening in this country...

We have families that live in fear, FEAR of the children they're fostering or have adopted. Families that are lied to about the complexity of early childhood trauma. Families that are abandoned by the system that's supposed to help them, then villanized when they fight back for help on their childs behalf, and finally... criminalized when they can't go on any longer and need to disrupt in the courts. 

These poor children through no fault of their own suffer from severe early childhood trauma... they were abandoned, starved, neglected, beaten, poked with needles, given drugs and alcohol, had guns held to their heads, were raped, molested, tortured... and guess what... this isn't just children from other countries, these children come from OUR country too. They come with a whole myriad of behaviors from these traumatic experiences... they lie, steal, make false allegations, self harm, hurt pets, molest other children, urinate and defecate everywhere but the toilet, they destroy homes, marriages, & families. They do everything possible to push away anyone and everyone that would try to get close to them because they trust NO ONE, attaching to another human being is PAINFUL for them. Their whole being goes into FIGHT, FLIGHT, OR FREEZE! 

The tricky part is you would never know that. You would never see what their families see... in public they present as the perfect child... sweet, excellent manners, polite, delightful, helpful... because they have become masters of manipulation. They are accessing resources when interacting with the people around them... they are exercising SURVIVAL skills they learned while being traumatized in childhood. Therapists, doctors, social workers and facility staff more often than not triangulated with those same survival skills against the parents who are trying to help them, trying to attach to them. Parents show up in these "professionals" offices frustrated, angry, depressed, suffering from secondary PTSD and short tempered from dealing with behaviors and feeling helpless over the lack of helpful resources. They take one look at us and assume we are the problem and start trying to fix us!

I live outside of this VERY small town, and these people I scolded court, are very prominent "pillar" type people in our community. I'm sure they are not used to being addressed in this way. But they need to hear the truth! They participate in a evil corrupt system that harms children and their families. When I went to these "professionals" for help with our son, that's exactly how they looked at me. They focused on me, offering me and my husband parenting classes, county paid psych evaluations etc... The focus should have been on my son and the services he desperately needed. Our son who was born into an extreme life of trauma with a meth addicted mother involved in gang life. Our son who after we'd adopted him and presented a LONG honeymoon period, before starting with trauma behaviors... stealing, lying, threatening to kill us, threatening to kill his 3 siblings who'd we'd adopted 2 years earlier. Our son who would not accept correction or redirection of any kind, who began to destroy our home and possessions, who threatened to harm himself. HE needed their focus, but the truth is that they had nothing... they had no trauma informed staff, case workers, therapists or facilities. 

They had "holding pens" where children from trauma like my son were put and given everything they didn't need. What I call "Disneyland experiences" like trips to Six Flags, Silver Dollar City, Bible Camp, and swim parks. Where he was allowed to play rated M video games and watch rated R movies, listen to rap music with every kind of vulgar message and cursing. Where he was rewarded for minimal good behavior with junk food, soda and "good boy bucks" that earned him more screen time. This pipeline of junk and violence to these facilities is what OUR hard earned tax dollars pay for! The more we called/texted/emailed (pleaded, begged, screamed, cried and hollered)  at the facilities asking them to PLEASE not let our son have this diet of junk & violence we knew were not good for him, the more we were villanized, cut off and ignored. We emailed them link after link after link of trauma informed research supporting our requests. They dug in and continued to ignore us, undermine and belittle us to our son, make sure their schedules didn't coincide with ours for therapy, family meetings & FST meetings. In 25 months we had less then 10 family therapy session offered to us, although we requested them WEEKLY despite the 4 hour round trip to get there. We had therapists and staff manipulated by our son, telling him that "he just might not be able to live in our home, we were too conservative/strict for him". We argued repeatedly with CD providers in FST meetings over our stance on video games based on trauma informed research which we shared with them, We repeatedly told them how neither they, or our son were going to bully us into allowing them so he could be happy at home. That attempting to "wear us down" on this was not the right message to be sending our son.

We had false documents submitted by disgruntled facility case workers give to CD social workers, who then admitted them as evidence in our court case. We were literally handed these records in court, unable to even read them until we'd left court and were standing outside in the parking lot. We asked the court appointed lawyer many times how to fix these erroneous records and were told he would look into it with no follow up. We posed many questions to our court appointed lawyer, with evidence in hand to verify what we were saying, he made copies of everything we brought and never followed through on any of it. We sent many emails stating specific "problems" we wanted fixed, that were important to us and important to our sons record. Nothing was ever addressed, or fixed. Some of our emails concerning fees were completely unanswered both by the lawyer and the juvenile office.

Our son was molested by another boy in his first placement, and we were kept away so he couldn't tell us. The facility didn't report the incident to CD as required by law. When were finally able to visit him he immediately pulled his Dad aside to tell him and I spent my daughters 6th birthday in the car calling the GAL, JO and caseworker to report it. I told them we would not return him to the facility, that we were taking him home until they could move him. I was threatened with possible kidnapping charges until they finally agreed!! A report was made in front of me by my son to an emergency caseworker documenting the incident. We took him to our FNP for an interview the next day and had the incident documented and hot lined. Later the facility changed its documents, falsifying them, and swept it under the rug... the JO, GAL, lawyer, social worker, case worker, county sheriffs office ALL knew and did NOTHING! Even the Children's Division Child Abuse hotline failed him! They closed their case due to "insufficient evidence" never having spoke to us our our son. I repeatedly left messages to speak with them about their findings, and to this day they have never returned my calls. 

Also it should be noted while our son was in his first CD placement he was never required to do school, and we were never given any academic records or health records. He was taken off site by staff to private homes for the holidays. His conversations with us were controlled by his case worker, and our son told us there were things they wouldn't allow him to say.


His next placement was a "Therapuetic Foster Home" in Lebanon Missouri. We were told Mrs. Ray had 20+ years experience.


I was actually pretty surprised no one interrupted me, and I actually got to say what I said. Especially when the GAL was asked if our son was aware of the proceeding today, and she assured the judge he understood, to which I replied "REALLY? You're telling this court that our 13 yr old son, who is documented by YOUR child psychiatrist as being at a 3rd grade level emotionally/academically/socially because of SEVERE TRAUMA understands he has just cut the only real family he's ever known loose because he wanted a family that would let him play violent video games? Really!? She just looked at me like I had three heads.

This the mentality families are up against! Or worse! Children's division all over the country is making bonuses on adoptions from fostercare. They are taking children and turning them against their families when they've been COURT ORDERED to reunify... lawyers, Judges, CASA workers, social workers and Juvenile officers are all inn the same "boys club". None of them will stand up and tell the truth because they are either corrupt themselves or afraid of the back lash from the system they're part of. 

A week after our court date, where we were forced by circumstances beyond our control to sign Termination of Parental Rights for our son I woke up really struggling and wrote this to my "underground DTD/RAD group"...
 
I'm really REALLY struggling this morning... trying so hard just to give it to God. All the unreturned emails, all the unreturned phone messages & texts, the canceled meetings/therapies when we were already half way there on a 4 hr round trip to the facility... 2 YEARS of ignoring us, TWO YEARS! costing us our son... but it took less than 7 days to get "the bill" from court. I'm devastated, we had no idea we'd be picking up the tab for the GAL that hated and villanized us from day ONE. Folks we are a LOW income family, and I asked the lawyer MONTHS ago when we got a bill all of a sudden from his office, to check with the judge about his fees because I know we meet, probably exceed income guidelines for free representation. At court I asked him if he'd spoke to the judge and he crossly told me he hadn't had time, if we couldn't pay the bill just don't pay it. Ya right, like I'm falling for that. I want to send a letter to each of them with our payment, telling them I don't know how they sleep at night, how they live with themselves...... We'll pay for a lawyer who filed a few papers, sat in a few FST meeting and never said a word, didn't return emails or phone calls, listened to me cry my eyes out WITH PROOF IN HAND about what CPS was doing to our son and our family and did NOTHING. We'll pay a GAL who villanized us from day one, literally DAY ONE because in all her "experience" she was immediately manipulated by our charming RAD. The same GAL who knew he was molested in his first placement and the facility failed to report, then falsified their documents to protect their butt. The same GAL who knew his 2nd placement was illegally going against the court ordered reunification and turning him even further away from us, documented by a provider that witnessed this first hand... they are both going to get paid VERY well by us for screwing our son and us! I'm SO ANGRY I just don't know how or what to do with it... there is just SO MUCH MORE to hate them for... God help me....