Many of you have been asking how my little (okay not so little) WonderGIRL has been doing after a rough end of middle school and through this summer transition into high school. Thank you for caring about her and us and our household enough to ask these questions knowing that the answer might not be (and most likely won’t be) the coveted “miracle” transformation of a young girl saved by her adopted forever family.

I don’t share a lot of WG’s personal story on here because it is HERS and hers alone to share. But I will share my own story and that is one of struggle on how to help, when to not help, when to step back, when to step in and all the decisions and doubt about these decisions creep in to my brain and camp there for days and nights on end.

The beautiful and messy thing with kids with trauma is that when you DO dive into their story and find a counselor/coach/intervention that will help them, all the feelings and all the triggers come back into your world stealing your lovable little person away from you and inserting tantrums and hurtful words around every corner.  While stuffing those memories and those feelings is often the EASIER route….it is not often the healthy one. So I sat back after WG’s 4th counselor moved onto a different career away from a community agency and waited for the RIGHT counselor and a specifically trained counselor in attachment, as my Mama gut knew that THIS piece was so much more important than just talking about her past abuse. Even though that meant our daughter wasn’t involved in every professional’s most urgent suggestion to have her in counseling after she ran away….I knew in my heart this was what needed to happen.

And two sessions in with an amazing new counselor that included lots of tears and attacks toward me but with someone that WG finally trusted…..I am so grateful I did this because we have REAL feelings now people! My once overly numb WonderGIRL is feeling things in a new way and actually talking about them…..these feelings being unveiled right now sound like verbal attacks on me and comparisons to her biological mom and I am sooooo okay with that because I feel like they are memories being dug up within the magical garden of her heart. I don’t garden and I don’t know anything about it but I do know you can’t grow a successful and beautiful garden without dealing with and taking out the weeds.

So to answer your well-intentioned questions about how WG is doing…..we are okay. Tomorrow we might not be and that’s okay too. We’ll do some weeding and then we’ll “water” the garden with love and laughter and watching silly teenage shows together and start again. I am equal parts anxious and excited for her to start her high school career….if for nothing else, we get to insert more trusted adults into her life to teach her lessons about caring adults and felt safety wherever she goes. No matter what classes she takes and what grades she gets in her high school career, this is the most important thing she needs from education right now.

This picture above is what I returned to after a particularly ugly interaction while running around our neighborhood. She left mad but obviously turned a corner and was willing to talk about it when we got home. Love this…..

And when in doubt, turn the camera around and take some silly selfies. The true way to a teenager’s heart…..