Part of my job as writer of this blog is to bring to your attention articles like the series I posted over the last few days. I have access to all kinds of articles like that. But you know, those are my least favorite blogs to write. Sometimes they seem boring to me, and yet there really is a great deal of pertinent information out there that could be shared.


Isn’t it interesting, though, that the comments generated by those types of blogs are not about policy or procedure (those blogs generate few or no comments) but instead often center around the lack of services, the daily stresses—off the charts stresses—of living with “our” kids, and the constant reality of how few people really get the lives we lead. And I think that is why I am least enthusiastic about the “read this article about policy” type of blogs.


When I was in the throes of parenting a really challenging child (or two or three) it was a huge challenge just to remember my own name, much less learn anything new or find an article addressing national policy relevant to my daily life. Not that I didn’t know it was relevant, just that I couldn’t process or absorb one thing that wasn’t in my face at that moment.


That is exactly how it was in veterinary school. I vividly remember coming home on holiday breaks and during the summers with my brain so fried it defies description. And often my parents would try and teach me Bridge! I used to be an avid card player (Canasta and Cribbage especially) but I haven’t been much interested in cards since vet school. My husband thinks it was because of my resistance to being asked to absorb anything else when my brain was on complete overload already.


The blogs I most enjoy writing are the ones where somehow I express to you how much I get your daily lives. The blogs where I bare my wounded soul and show you that you are not making this journey alone. The ones where I rant about the lack of services available to families like ours, and I complain about how hard many (perhaps not all) foster and adoptive parents work to heal very traumatized kids, all the while getting stymied at every turn by the very system that is supposed to be part of the solution.


I get all kinds of phone calls and emails on a daily, weekly, monthly basis and I often go to bed at night with my head full of thoughts of parents across the country that are in crisis. And I feel impotent and angry and helpless to offer much in the way of services. Sure, I can hold your hand, but I can’t really fix the big problem. And I know first hand what a huge problem it is for some of you, because I lived it.


What I most wanted and most needed when I was in the heat of daily struggle was validation that I was not the root of all evil and that my troubled kids were a huge part of why my family was imploding. And the other thing I most needed was good respite care. I generated my own support system—literally—but the respite care piece was much tougher.


Even though some of you can't absorb the policy information, others of you can, and the reality is we can't fix anything if we don't become informed and vocal. So even though it is not the most exciting of blogs, I still feel compelled to periodically address policy and procedural issues that, if changed, could make things a bit better for those of us in the trenches. But I fully understand that many of you hanging on by a thread have no ability right now to address anything but your own imploding family.


One of the comments made recently talked about surviving until the child turns 18. “What a way to parent!” the reader laments. No joke. It is most definitely not what any of us signed up to do.


I can’t remedy the dysfunction that permeates your daily lives, but I can assure you that you are not alone.


Stabbed in the back

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