OK, where shall I start with my review of An Unlit Path? Cindy Bodie blogged about it here. And her stellar review prompted me to get the book off my shelf, where it had lain since I received it last fall, in the midst of the complete and utter chaos of a household move.


I hardly know where to start… and I am so rarely at a loss for words. Deborah captured the roller coaster ride of living with emotionally disturbed children in a way I have not seen anyone else accomplish. She articulated and defined so many of the emotions I have felt this past two decades. Hope, and then sadness; hope, and then despair.


Deborah describes how her betrayal by these children whom she had loved and nurtured so completely challenged her own views of herself as a mother. She writes:

I grieved the loss of my children, but I also grieved the loss of my purpose. I felt that for so many years we had given these children the opportunity to succeed. We had worked so hard for so long, and yet in the end we had made no difference. I often wondered what would have happened if we had not chosen to adopt these children and how their lives would have turned out. In my sadness I often believed that all of it, all ten of those years, had been for naught.

I shared that passage with my husband when I met him for lunch today. I reflected on how I had felt exactly the same way, about Amy especially. Tommy wasn’t in our home for years and years… and the day to day dealings with him preempted any thought about it... Amy, on the other hand, was the day-in, day-out Chinese water torture… and had we accomplished anything?


My husband’s comments paralleled Cindy Bodie’s thoughts as mentioned in her blog. My husband said he certainly didn’t think our struggles had negatively impacted our bio kids who grew to be healthy, caring, wise-beyond-their-years young adults. And my husband didn’t think we had made Amy’s life worse… and Tommy always said if he had stayed in Ecuador he'd be dead. (The question, my husband asked, would be if Tommy's life now is better than being dead??) Furthermore, he said, if we had adopted two “normal” kids and had given birth to two “normal” kids, we never would have found Beth. Last but not least, if we had not taken the path we took, I wouldn’t have started ADN. So, I have to believe that Deborah’s efforts and those of her awesome family were not in vain, although she may not be able to measure her “success” in ways that are obvious to her now.

More coming on this…