Random (but real) Picture Thread

Based on your most recent post, this photo causes me to feel a bit sad. I just don’t understand.
That said, it’s a wonderful photo and now currently my iPad wallpaper.

It’s just time for me to live up to my signature line, thank you though. Glad you enjoy the picture. I’ll likely post more in the future.
 
Back in October my daughter was playing in a travel softball tournament across State. She had already played four games that day, and this was the last bracket game. When we walked to the designated field she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and stared across the diamond. I looked to see what she was staring at and as I looked, the girl she was staring at was also staring at her. It was her biological sister who we had lost contact with when she was adopted. They had recognized each other years later from across a softball diamond.

siblings.jpg

Her sister is three years older than her, but my girl was playing up in age brackets due to her skill level so they ended up playing each other. Miss Parallel also has a twin brother (biological of course). In case y'all don't know the story; when she was placed as a foster child in our home and we found out she had siblings we protested saying that we would not break up a family. Over the next several weeks it was explained and proven to us that they had tried for two years to keep them together but at that time they LITERALLY tried to seriously hurt each other, so we took her in and ended up adopting her. For quite some time we kept in touch with her siblings because we knew the folks who were fostering them. But once they moved on we had lost contact. We now have her sister's adopted families contact info and the text and speak on the phone every so often. We're trying to locate her brother... but that may never happen as he is STILL in the system as far as we know has not made the physiological gains that the sisters have.
 
That was a heart warming post @parallel, thanks for sharing.
Thanks... it's been exhausting, but well worth it.

That's diabolical that the system doesn't keep those kids in touch with each other if they need to be separated...
Well... that's a double edged issue. While it breaks my heart that we've lost touch with her brother, I had noted that she only began making healing gains when the regular visits came to an end. While they were in regular contact (say... every month to six weeks) there were obvious relapses in her progress to heal from her trauma. It makes sense now that she has been diagnosed as having PTSD that being with her siblings would trigger relapses. We also heard from the folks who had taken in the pother kids that they noted the same type of relapses after a visit.

I was waiting for a major relapse after this meeting... but it seems that she has progressed enough to be able to handle it now. I hear that her sister did better than prior contact but still had some significant issues surface after this meeting. I'm told that the same can't be said of her brother. He has not made much progress at all from what I can gather and I would say that some of that could be the lack of consistent counseling. In the nearly two years it took to adopt her, we were saddled with the State mandated counselors and it was a revolving door. During that time she had a dozen or more counselors. They would just get her comfortable with them and the next thing you know there's a new counselor.

When we finally adopted her we changed to a different counselor. During the interview process we brought up the revolving door issue. It turns out that this counselor was contemplating retirement. To make a long story short, she has forgone retirement for over four years now and it has paid off BIG time. Add to that our decision to take her weekly to LSU behavior sciences center in New Orleans for a complete work up which led to the diagnosis of PTSD and she's finally making progress. Of course it helps for us to know that the normal consequences that no one would think of as a problem were the exact wrong thing to do in hind sight. Things like; she would do something that seemed o be defiance so we'd send her to her room. Well... it turns out that what we were seeing wasn't defiance, it was survival mode. When we'd send her to her room she'd spin up out of control. Turns out that, among MANY other things (some to disturbing to discuss here) .. she was locked in a room with her siblings and as long as they didn't come out of the room there was no consequences. This poor girl had to literally fight to eat... and so did they. I'm not talking about ;"I want the bigger piece" or "I want the last whatever"... I'm mean fight to eat to not starve. This is why she's ridiculously tough and THIS is why they couldn't be together (among other more disturbing things).
 
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