Today your system caught fire and it broke both of us as we fought for you to find calm ground.

I’ve learned what sets your amygdala on fire, I’ve studied the forming + developing of your brain, I’ve researched ways to support you during some of the hardest pieces of your life...which started before the day I became yours.

Trauma is a beast that comes to steal, kill, and destroy and today it got the best of you for what felt like forever. I held you close, soaking in your stress like a sponge, singing the song I’ve sung to you since infancy...the words I strung together just for you in the early days of walking with you through the terrifying hours of dysregulation. 

I began slowly naming the things I saw in our view, pointing out present realities in between the repeated chorus of Your Song. Slowly but surely you fell asleep in my arms, exhausted by the fire set to your system for more than sixty long, sad minutes.

Life can be so hard. So cruel.

“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb.” Psalm 139:13.

You are perfectly and wonderfully made, and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise."

The more I learn about adoption, the more I see trends of oppression. The voices of adoptive parents — like myself — are the voices most often heard, uplifted, and shared while the voices of the adoptees and biological/birth families are often silenced, manipulated, abused, or changed.

In my experience, if someone is saying something that makes other people squirm uncomfortably, it is something I need to listen to intently. Usually, when other people are defensive or uncomfortable when hearing about another’s experience or journey, it is convicting and confronting something inside of them. That discomfort is worth giving voice to, worth listening to, and then worth silencing enough so you can hear the heart of the hurting person.