Trauma and Healing in Adoption

I mentioned in my post last night a profound experience with Owen. I've decided I'm not going to blog anything specific about it because it is too private. It may seem to you, in reading this blog, that my/our life is an open book. It is not. I do blog about many things and I don't like "hiding"-- but there are also many, many things that I purposefully and conscientiously do not blog about. One of the categories of things that is off limits is anything too sensitive/private about my boys' histories. Before we even met Kyle and Owen, Braydon and I made a decision together that we'd protect certain parts of their life histories so that when they -- Kyle and Owen -- are old enough, they can choose whether or not they want those parts of themselves to be shared. It is a fine line. On one hand, we don't want to put a veil of secrecy over anything --- it seems to imply that there is something shameful to hide. We don't want our boys to feel shame. But on the other hand, we don't want to make public things that our boys may feel, or come to feel, should be kept private. And importantly, we do not want people to look at our boys through the lens of their traumatic past; we want people to see our boys through the lens of their transcendent present. It is tough. Not everyone who adopts has such complexities. But everyone who adopts from Haiti (or a place like it), probably does. We, Haitian (and others like us) Adoptive Families, are special cases. It is different for us because with only rare exceptions, our children suffered trauma. Deep trauma. Unthinkable trauma. Part of living our family lives is knowing that trauma and living a process of healing. In the Johnson-McCormick Family we are always conscious of that. Even though our boys were only 8 months old when we brought them home, their trauma (and their post-traumatic challenges) are very, very real. For Kyle and Owen it is still vivid. They have always expressed it to us in various ways. But now that they are so verbal, they have both begun to articulate that to us with words. Last night Owen told us about a memory that he has from when he was in the orphanage in Haiti. There is no way on earth my three year old boy would even have the knowledge to make something like this up. He's telling the truth. That takes guts. I'm so proud of him. In my pride for my son I've decided to not write about the specifics here. I'll let him tell that story someday, if he chooses to. Yet it is important to be real -- for the sake of all the other adoptive families out there who struggle in some of the same ways that we do (and in many cases, who struggle in ways so much more extreme than us)... so I want to say this: there is trauma and there is healing -- all mixed up together -- in adoptions like ours. I love my babies with a passion. As you know. So, I can't help but cry deep in my soul when I let my mind ponder their past. But I am focused on their transcendence and their incredibly promising future. Adoption is a miracle. In my mind, it is the truest miracle I know of or can imagine.

Owen (on left) & Kyle (on right), exactly 3 years ago,

in the orphanage in Haiti,

August 2004, age 3 months

Owen in the hotel in Haiti, our first week together,

January 2005, age 8 months

Owen on our "Over-The-Hump" Day

(same amount of time out of the orphanage as in it),

October 2005, age 16 months

Owen on our first Adoption Day,

on the hotel balcony, celebrating in Baltimore,

January 2006, age 20 months

Owen at the pool, last week,

age 3 years & 3 months