Yolie's World

Monday, June 19, 2006

Father's Day

Chuck and his Daddy (the two best Daddys I know)
Yesterday we went to church and then spent the day with Chuck's family, honoring both Chuck and his Dad for being such amazing Dads. I know I talk about Chuck like he's perfect, and the truth is, for me he is. I told him yesterday that he has made all my dreams come true. His dedication and love for me and CJ has led him to work full time at the landscape architecture firm and to start his own business doing landscape design and installation. I have never seen a man work so hard to ensure that his family have whatever they need to thrive. Because he works so hard I am able to be a stay-at-home Mom to CJ, the most important job I could have. He has helped ensure that I break the generational cycle of bad mothering left behind by my birth family. For that, I am eternally thankful. Sometimes I sit back and wonder why God chose to bless me with such a great husband. Whatever the reason, I am so grateful and my prayer is that I can be as good a wife to Chuck as he has been a husband.

The CJ Show

Notice his six Teefers
The definition of "blowing your lips out"
Bath time

Can't my baby pose?
On the picket line with CJ!

Monday, June 12, 2006

Fighting and Winning the Battle

This weekend I found myself laying in bed with one of my brothers, arms around him while he physically shook from the sobbing he was doing as a result of reading his "paperwork." Both of us in our twenties, both of us with the same huge questions, "Why didn't our birth mothers want us?" "Why did this happen to us?" "Why weren't we protected?". The pain in his face was profound, and it made me realize just how much healing (or shall I say scabbing up) I have gone through. I remember well the day I chose to read all my paperwork. Mom gave me a dusty old box filled with my life story. Sadly, it all fit neatly into a small box, in no way a representation of how I viewed those first eleven years of my life. While I has memories of chaotic and dangerous living, my life had been printed onto numbered pages, written so unemotionally and in such a detached manner that at first it seemed I was reading someone else's life story. But very quickly it started unfolding, my memories, fears, my deepest pains, right there in black and white. Documentation of DFCS involvement YEARS before I was even born shocked me. My oldest sister running away to escape the brutal abuse at the hands of our birth mother, only to be seen by DFCS and the police, totally black and blue, and not be rescued. Stories of the neglect and abuse, educational records, medical records, it was all such a blur and yet it so profoundly affected me that I ended up in such a meltdown that my boyfriend (now husband) wisely decided to walk me over to my Mom's house, as he immediately realized he could not help in this situation. I remember walking into my Mom's house sobbing. Without any thought I curled up on my Mom's lap, like CJ does with me now, and sobbed. I'm sure I soaked her clothes, I know I was physically shaking and I remember not knowing if the tears would ever stop. They didn't stop for some time, but eventually I started feeling better. It's not that I was miraculously healed, time just started to dull the raw pain. A couple of years later when my birth family reappeared it devastated me. All my scabs were torn open and I didn't stop crying for six months. Primal pain is what my Mom and I call it. Pain that hurts so much it can cripple you emotionally and can reach across generations, IF you let it. As I laid on Mom's bed with my brother, both of us dealing with the legacy of pain our birth mothers had left us, I began to think about how far God has actually brought me. Although I was brought to tears by my brother's intense pain, I felt I was so much more removed from the raw pain he was feeling. Although I still feel anger and hurt about what happened to me, I have also learned to live with it much more than I have given myself credit for. Looking back on when I read my paperwork and "reunited" with my birth family, I see how God has perfect timing. Not only was I able to work through much of my raw pain, but I was able to do it before I became a mother myself. Also, being farther along in the healing journey, I feel certain I can help guide my other brothers and sisters who have yet to face this massive, painful, intense battle. By no means am I done with the battle myself. I still face unforgiveness in my heart, anger, feelings of rejection and hurt, but I also know that I will survive. I know what it feels like to feel like the tears will never stop, like the pain will never subside, like the knowledge of what happened to me will stay burning in my memory forever. I also know that while none of those things will ever completely go away, they will mellow, they will fall into the background of life, replaced instead by the laughter of my sweet baby, the happiness of new successes and so much more that God has in store. So yes, it is painful, and yet when one goes through it they come out stronger, with God, Mom, and their sister Yolie holding them up when they feel their legs have been chopped out from under them.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Anger

I just finished watching the Primetime Special on foster children (I tivo'd it and waited until CJ was taking a nap to watch it. I am so angry I can hardly see straight. It's so weird, really, because I often think that I am beyond the angry, hurt stage and on to the healing and then BAM! I watch something like this and I am blind with fury. It scares me sometimes, as I don't think of myself as having so much anger just below the surface, but apparently I do. Just watching those birth mothers promising so much to those kids enraged me. I lost all perspective and was that little girl again, reading her birth mother's letters from prison, promising a better life and telling me that if I prayed hard enough it would all come true. How dare she? How dare that mother on TV give such false hope? I swear, sometimes it would be better if they just said, "look, I'm not going to get it together, and I give you permission to love another mother and be the best you can be. Don't hang on to me, I'm not worth it." At least then, when another person comes in and tries to be a real mother, the child has "permission" to attach and not feel disloyal. UGH!!! I am just so frustrated. It's so unfair and yet it happens every single day. Most adults can't stand being left in limbo, even over what's for dinner. Yet children are fed lies, manipulations and deceit every day by birth parents who have no intentions of getting clean and getting their kids back, they simply want to make themselves feel better by saying the words, as if words are all the child needs to feel loved and wanted. I've been there, I've visited my birth mother in rehab and left with such high hopes of reunification, only to be crushed days later when she ran from the rehab center after an old boyfriend. I still have the letters from her that I received while in foster care, telling me how much she loved me and how God had changed her. Guess what, the letters mean nothing. The words meant nothing. They were just another avenue to spew her lies out to me. It's not fair that kids are given such false hope. It's not fair that when the birth mom in the story was found she denied all allegations of sexual abuse in her house. How dare she? How dare my birth mother so the same. How dare she toss away my memories as falsehoods, when my memories are all I have of my childhood. How dare she. How dare us allow such things to continue...