pressure… {fmf}

I had a conversation this week with a fellow childhood sexual abuse survivor, and we talked about raising children. While she was able to have her own children, I of course could not. What I found fascinating, in our discussion, was the same internal pressures had remained. While I was a foster turned adoptive mother, this intense pressure to CREATE AND BE BETTER for the kids in my care, was debilitating.

Not having a context for what a normal, healthy family should look like, I constructed ideas based on the opinions and insight of professionals, books and statistics. So often, as complaints would rain down about this, or that, I would respond stating that this child was so lucky they had parents who loved them, their needs met and ___________. The reality was that while I had known a childhood that was not at all like the significantly better one I helped design for them, they had also known something far worse. In so many ways, we didn’t stand a chance.

I was killing myself, inside, trying to be the difference.

There is a lot of unhealthy information attached to adoption and foster care. Promises that love is enough, or that children are resilient. Listen, children ARE resilient, but so is trauma, and trauma leaves scars.

No one picks up the megaphone to share about the pressures placed upon both the parents and the children.

It was an odd comfort to know my new friend had felt these same pressures within her natural motherhood journey. A reminder of the scars that trauma leaves…

A realization that pressure traumatizes too.

{This post is an exercise within the Five Minute Friday writing community. To read more, go here!}