Grief ... and the Adopted Child

I wrote a post a few days ago about, The Mud Puddle of Grief.  It was about the Mud Puddle that my life is sitting in right now.  However, yesterday, as I was re-reading this post ... I realized how very applicable it is to our sweet young daughter who displays so many symptoms of RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder).

If you have an adopted child, or if you know any families who have adopted children, I hope that you will re-read this excerpt from "The Wounded Woman", and think of all of the trauma that this child went through in order to even end up in an adoptive home.  How could they possibly NOT suffer from grief, to some degree?

Hoping it brings new insights, as it did for me.

"Growing out of the aftermath of deep wounds can be a scary, steep, and rocky road.  Tough terrain.  Sharp cliffs.  Unpredictable turns.  Darkness blinds us from being able to see beyond the end of our nose.  The journey down this road includes very intense internal reactions: denial, anxiety, guilt,sorrow, and anger.  The sum total of these reactions is what we call grief.  


Grief is not logical.
Grief is not linear.


There is nothing neat and tidy or orderly about this process.  If someone tries to apply a 1-2-3 formula to where you are in life right now, they're not doing you any favors.  Grief is chock-full of irrational, turbulent, confusing, and unpredictable cycles of emotion.  It is jam-packed with troubling, intrusive thoughts that don't pass through our mind when we are experiencing brighter days.


Our temper is short.
We feel guilty over little things.
We second-guess ourselves.
We love and hate at the same time.


We want to be alone,
and yet we crave close connections.


We can move from resigned hopelessness
to bold defiance in a single heartbeat.


Grief is a time of massive contradictions.  In my own personal experience, and for many others, grief has been nothing even close to a clean, step-by-step process.  On the contrary, the sorrow that grips our life is very confusing, and feelings typically race in and out without any logical progression.  Emotions are mixed, seemingly random.  In most cases they boil to the surface repeatedly ... and more frequently than we prefer.


God has wired us so that our pain serves a purpose.  It can tell us important information about our values our beliefs, and ourselves if we take time to tune in and listen.  Our feelings are a gift from God to propel us forward in the healing process.  There really isn't a strict order to the process, but something like a loose pattern of reactions can often be observed.