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.