I’m Erika, mom to 8, three children through adoption and five via birth. My life changed forever the summer of 2010. As a young 20 year old full of hope and grand ideas, I said “I do” and became a wife in May of 2010. My new husband and I then embarked on a wild adventure with plans to travel the world. We used all of our savings and took a trip to Uganda only two months after our wedding. That’s when life as we knew it forever changed and we met the boy who would become my first son. After a rocky and uncertain adoption process, much of which was spent with myself and husband living on two different continents, we were able to complete our first adoption process and our son was no longer an orphan. The process of adopting him shaped and impacted my entire world view and opened my eyes to the deep impact of trauma and a need for people to step into the hard places of hurt and pain and offer their hands to help in anyway possible. I spent much of that one year adoption process living in my son’s orphanage guest house, seeing first hand the devastation that comes with poverty and lack of first family support. During my time there my mother heart grew and I learned what it was like to love the “hard to place” children. Children with illness and disabilities were always in my arms and I learned the sacred and heart wrenching reality of what it was to hold children as they stepped from this world of living into the arms of eternity and death. Even now, 12 years later, I still grieve for each little soul lost during my time there. I was awakened to the great need of family preservation and orphan care and the crisis that is hurting children and families all over the globe. It was a reality I couldn’t just leave behind once my own son was safe and sound in a family. So began my journey into motherhood and adulthood, stimulaniously I was thrown into parenting and trying find my purpose in the midst of this hurting world.
Now I can skip ahead to today, 2022. We have walked through 3 international adoptions, two children with significant physical and medical needs, and 8 children in all who have very individual and unique needs. We were foster parents for 7 years and had 9 temporary children in and out of our home in that time. We learned what parenting deeply rooted trauma looked like and hung on through the rough and stormy seas of attachment disorders. For the most part, we got to have a front row seat at witnessing miracles. We watched as our youngest adopted son has lived through multiple brain surgeries and hospitalizations that almost claimed his life, watched as vision and mobility was restored when we thought is was lost. We’ve seen healing of the invisible scars of rejection and hurt and fear. There have been times that the past decade has felt empowering and holy as we watched families restored through foster care and children accepted and loved through adoption. But for one of my kids, the battle to healing those invisible wounds from orphan hood has been long and hard. It has felt overwhelming and lonely to weather the storms of mental health struggles that can’t be healed with a pill or a simple fix. For years and years, this child who we’ve prayed for and poured love and acceptance into has been raging an internal battle called Reactive Attachment Disorder. This disorder has often been harder to manage and effected our child more negatively than the physical disabilities she has. It’s created turmoil for our other children as she has inflicted harm and caused hurt in both big and small ways. Daily behaviors began to mount and the level of stress in our home was immense. Every area of our life was being overshadowed by the behaviors of our child who we all longed would experience the deep inner healing that she so desperately needed. Things came to a head in the spring of 2022. Our special needs son was still recovering from an extended ICU stay, I was pregnant with our 8th child, and our child with Reactive Attachment Disorder was struggling with feelings of anger and sadness that overwhelmed her. We had already been living on high alert, she required constant supervision to keep her self and others safe due to previous incidents. She had already killed some of our family pets and voiced the desire to do harm to others. It wasn’t until she snuck into a siblings room at night and tried to stab that sibling in their sleep that we truly realized the danger our other kids were in and the need to protect our children from our daughter. We had been in every type of therapy under the sun, taken classes on attachment parenting, had social workers in and out of our home. For years we have tried to manage our child’s behaviors on our own. We have installed security cameras and door alarms, we have tried every parenting technique known to man, but I’ve had to accept the fact that our child’s needs are greater than what I can provide. Coming to that knowledge and realization has been the most painful and gut wrenching experience in all my years of parenting. When we walked into our daughter’s adoption journey, all I wanted was for her to feel loved and wanted and to see the value she has as the cherished and precious daughter that she is. I found myself 7 years after she joined our family, walking her into a hospital to be evaluated by a mobile crisis team. She spent 3 weeks there, while a psychiatric team tried in vain to get her placed into a residential or inpatient facility to help treat her homicidal thoughts and behaviors. Unfortunately, none of the facilities that are covered by insurance in the entire US would take our daughter. Her needs were too much, her behaviors combined with her physical disabilities proved to be a need that is higher than any facility would take on, or the few places equipped to take her were too full. When she was discharged from the hospital, the social worker suggested we place her into foster care to keep our other kids safe. That meeting cut me deeper than I can explain, but also solidified in me the need to keep fighting for our daughter and seeking the treatment and help she needs. I was committed to getting her help, not giving up on her and making her an orphan for a second time. This is when we finally started seeing some miracles in our daughter’s story. We found a place that specializes in treating reactive attachment disorder, but it’s not covered by our insurance and the price tag is steep. We finally found a place that is willing to partner with us in seeking healing for our child and they have seen great success in helping other kids who also have RAD. We need safety for all of our children, and finding a program that offers that has been a burden lifted off of us. Now, we need financial support as we walk through parenting and seek healing for our child’s hidden hurts. I’m humbly asking you to partner with us as we hope for the storms to cease and for our child’s life to be turned around. We are still holding on to the hope that beauty can rise from the ashes of pain and brokenness, that our family can be restored. It’s a sad reality that statistically adoptees are more likely to suffer from addiction, suicide, and other debilitating mental health disorders- we are asking you to step in and help us keep our daughter from becoming another sad statistic or tragic story. We are so thankful for each person who has already stepped into our story and any gift, big or small, is greatly appreciated. We are receiving a $7,500 matching grant from LifeSong, so your gift will also be multiplied to go even further. I stepped into motherhood as a young, naïve girl who hung on to big hopes and dreams… while it’s been more difficult than I ever imagined, I’m still holding on to the hope that all things will work together for our good and God is still holding us in the storms.
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