Below is a letter to Christian Workers and Pastors. Please use as you feel suitable. Mail or email this to your own church or a church you know struggles in this area. Christians want to be welcoming. Jesus was. But sometimes they fall short. Many people do. They’re no different.
Dear Fellow Christian Workers and Pastors:
Where is your mission field? Have you ever encountered an adoptive family or an adult adoptee? Perhaps not. Many adoptive families have stopped going to church; not because of their lack of belief or anger at God, but because they find they aren’t understood and that can jeopardize the success of the adoptive child. We need to surround ourselves with people who understand us and if we cannot find those people, we do life alone, and speaking from experience, that’s not fun. I now specialize in helping these families be understood.
My husband and I have adopted thirteen children. We adopted from the foster care system, adoption disruptions, internationally and privately. Our youngest child transitioning into our family was newborn and our oldest was sixteen years old. Each of our children, whether from a sibling group or coming by themselves, have their own story. Their story consists of their background, why and how we chose them, their life with us and their life now as adults (in some cases) as well as their perception of it all. When our children walked into our home, we had big dreams for each of them, just like any good parent has for their children, but these dreams were clouded with unimaginable difficulties, and in my opinion, preventable difficulties.
I wrote and published PHOENIX BOUND: An Adoptive Mom Shares Her Struggle Raising 13 Traumatized Children to share with everyone willing to listen to the struggles associated with adopting children burdened with rejection, fears, insecurities, RAD (now renamed DTD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, attention disorders, attachment issues and mental health issues. My greatest dream is that my book be part of a curriculum or used as a reference tool for students at the being educated for helping professions such as yours that find themselves working with the adoptive family dynamic. “Why?” you ask; because it can be the difference between an adoption surviving and an adoption disrupting.
These precious children have been brought into a chaotic world of abuses, neglect and trauma and have learned to manipulate and lie as a survival technique. Often, by the time the adoptive parent realizes they need help, their child is in crisis mode and the adoptive parent feels lost and confused. The lonely adoptive parent desperately seeks help, often looking as crazy as the child feels. They are desperate because of the deep love and concern for their hurting child, their frustration with the process of seeking appropriate help, the responses they often get from professionals, and the fear they have for their child. Yes, sometimes they fear the child due to their child’s uncontrollable anger and trauma that has reached a level of Fight or Flight mode, but more so, the parent is afraid FOR their child. When children get to this point, they are capable and willing to destroy everything they have ever loved and worked for. This is when most professionals enter the picture. It looks like a mess, but the real mess is deep inside the child’s heart. Compassion, understanding at a deeper level and a supportive approach would be invaluable to the child as well as the adoptive parent. PHOENIX BOUND shows the reader that support and help for these hurting children has not improved through the years, despite our growing knowledge and understanding as a nation of adoption issues and struggles.
If you care about the future of these hurting children, take a look at my book, PHOENIX BOUND. It is a must read for anyone currently working in, or going into, the helping professions. It is an investment in the lives of children that should be healthy enough to give back to their world but often too crippled by their perceptions, challenges and lack of educated trauma-informed support to offer the world much of anything except a continuation of their chaotic world.
My children WANT to be understood.
Adoptive parents and professionals need to come together as one to aid in the healing process for these precious children. They didn’t ask for this pain.
Check out these videos, and more, that I created to help others understand.
Save our Adoptive Parents at https://youtu.be/Wo-Aw9nJwGg
It’s time to take RAD seriously at https://youtu.be/ex9BtZGUtWc
Thank you,
Angie K Elliston
