In my next post I’ll get back to my vision for ATN, but for now I want to share a conversation I had with Beth today before we both crashed for a much-needed nap. Bear in mind she was exhausted so she was even more emotionally fragile, but still, what she said was incredible …


She attended camp last week with a neighborhood friend and classmate. Apparently they had some difficulties, as they discovered that living with someone (actually 7 other 10-year-old someones plus a counselor in a 12 X 12 cabin!) can alter a friendship or change a perspective. I suspect the realizations that were made were inevitable, but accelerated by their closeness for a week.


Beth is, as I have often stated, much like me. Which is to say she is opinionated, a strong presence, deeply emotional, very giving, and harbors strong expectations for those around her. It is who she is inherently, but her personal experiences have only fortified these qualities. (She disrupted from her first adoptive placement and joined us at almost age three.) She is emotionally more mature than many adults, much less other 10 year olds. (Emotionally in terms of what she expects from relationships as well as her ability to read other people’s emotions; also her ability to empathize with others is amazing, as was noted by a neighbor just last week.) So here’s what happened—her push for an on-the-table, up-front, tell-me-right-now-how-you-feel-about-everything relationship blew her neighbor friend away and caused the opposite response … she was ignored and rebuffed. Her friend’s emotional response, as noted by her mom and as modeled by her dad, is the exact opposite—she stuffs her feelings and doesn’t show any emotions. This neighbor girl’s mom and I have talked numerous times about how much my daughter needs to rein in her emotions and how much her daughter needs to uncork hers. So Ying met Yang this week!


Poor Beth was holding the view that her friend was choosing to respond that way, and was choosing to rebuff her and not explain her feelings. I told Beth how many years it took me to realize that just because someone responded differently than I did, that didn’t make them wrong or make their behavior towards me purposeful. We looked at a glass of water on the table and I said, “That glass is half ____” and she said, “Full.” I said, “Yes, but if you had said 'Empty' would you still have been right?” She said yes … and I pointed out how both answers were correct. We talked about how much I admired and valued her willingness to share and express her emotions, and how she had made the choice to open her heart to relationships when she had offered me her heart at age three. But that unfortunately, if our hearts were open to relationship, they were also vulnerable to being hurt. We talked about how Amy has chosen not to be vulnerable, and how many people with “normal” histories still have a great deal of difficulty in acknowledging and expressing their emotions to themselves, much less others.


This aspect of Beth’s personality is one of the many qualities she possesses that so endears her to me. I love how honest, open, caring and sharing she is. The pain on her face was so evident as she described her fierce desire to have a deep friendship with this neighbor girl, and how Beth couldn’t grasp the idea of a friendship that didn’t go deep. We talked about that, too--how she could enjoy a more superficial relationship that was safer for this other girl and Beth could find her depth in other relationships. One such other relationship is with another adoptee, an 11-year-old swimming buddy adopted from EE at age 5. She’s a really neat kid and she, too, "knows more" than the average kiddo her age.


It was an amazing conversation and it only reinforces what power there can be in relationships … the power to wound or heal.

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