Still in my heart, but no longer mine.

This is the story of a child who was ours for little while. She will not be named for privacy purposes, but I will just call her "C." I would appreciate understanding when reading this to know that the things that happened were not any fault of hers and that sometimes we just can't be the person we want to be. I still believe that for every child there is a family, however I also believe that not every family is for every child. I pray that this girl finds peace and happiness within and that someday she will realize that what we did, was out of love and not because we gave up.

Some time before Armani joined our family and after his adoption we began searching online for another child to adopt. By now the two older girls had settled in well and we felt we could offer another child an opportunity for a family. Prior to our call on Armani, I had received a call from an adoption worker in RI on a young lady in RI. Apparently at a Northeast seminar Social Workers gathered to present children whom they were having trouble placing. A worker from our local agency felt we would be a match for this young lady and in turn her worker called us. She had physcial disabilities and was stated to have CP and PTSD due to trauma experienced with the birth family and borderline intellegence, but very articulate with a sunshine personality. We talked for a long time but at that time I just wasn't sure if we could pursue it. I was caring for two disabled clients in my home on a full time basis and physcially I wasn't sure I was up to the challenge of a third. I let it drop...we got the call on Armani and this was forgotten...for a while.

During the year and a half that passed, a lot happened. We adopted Armani and one of my ladies passed away (health issues.) We began to look again for a child to adopt and I remembered the young lady we had discussed a year or so ago. I began to do a search to see if she were still out there and low and behold, she was! I was SO excited. I sent the worker off a message to see if this girl was still available and within seconds I got a return mail saying "Yes." A couple weeks went bye. We met with the Social Worker and the placement worker. I asked many questions relating to her health, emotional being and personality. I also spoke with her therapist who had spent the last 4 years while she was in care, preparing her for adoption. Everyone felt she was ready to finally have a place to call home.

Our family went to RI to meet this young lady. She was definitely engaging, polite, and had a smile that would light up the world! She was sort of demanding in her need for attention and she and my oldest daughter (whom we thought would get along) actually clashed. Their personalities were pretty similar, but they were far from being alike. Lindsay was quite jealous of her and in turn this girls need for attention (both physically due to her disabilities) and her ability to talk and take attention away from others was a stressor. However, we still felt that this was something that we could overcome.

They brought the young lady up to see us and within a short period of time (I think a total of 2 months from the time of our call) she was moving in with us. Things were moving fast and looking back I now know I should have put the brakes on. I just felt that the push forward was due to the child being so excited to come home to us...that I overlooked warning signs that something was not right.

Our girl came home to us in August of 2007 and by November we had finalized her adoption. Those 3 months flew by and all the while we kept in close contact with the placement worker. A few weeks after she moved in we noticed a huge change in emotional stability. I called the worker who in turn sent up the therapist she had been seeing in RI. The meeting between the therapist and this young lady was private but in the end we were told that she was just experiencing "normal" feelings of apprehension. They said it was nothing to be concerned about and that she wanted to be adopted. They then told her of an extravogant ceremony planned for her adoption day which fed right into this young lady's desire to be center of attention. This pacified her for awhile. The excitement of being adopted...the cameras and news coverage from local television...were all part of a bigger plan to convince this girl that adoption was what she wanted.

Adoption finalization occurred November 18th, 2007. Things went "okay." When the judge asked this young lady (who was 13 now) if this was what she wanted...she burst into tears with a high pitched siren wail. All went quiet with the exception of this, and the judge said, "I will take this as a yes" and moved that we were now the parents of this child. We had a wonderful ceremony after and all seemed "okay" but still I just felt something was off and I couldn't put my finger on it. I brushed it aside thinking it was just my excitement/nerves from the emotional day.

Not more than 3 months after the adoption was finalized, our daughter seemed to go into a deep depression. She talked about feeling abandoned by her foster family who had not wanted to adopt her, yet adopted an infant while she lived with them. She spoke of her birth family often and she told us that her foster family would never let her speak about them. Being who we are...we encouraged her to talk. I spent many MANY nights in her room talking about her life, her family, her feelings, however it did seem the more we talked, the worse she became. We noticed that her behavior declined and she became snappy and rude. Worried we pulled her aside and asked her what was bothering her. She told us that she did not want to be with us. She had made a big mistake in agreeing to being adopted and she didn't want it. I was crushed but also expected that this would happen. After all the hype and excitement that was given to her, she now was just part of a family, without people coming and going...therapists to talk to...and outsiders to listen to her. It was just us and her need for attention and drama were great. She LOVED controversy. I spent a lot of time talking to the foster mother whom she had lived before and discovered many untold things about her. We learned she was quite a manipulator and would constantly do little things to aggrevate the other children in the home. She also accused her foster family of neglect on medical issues and stated things to people in order to get sympathy....like that her foster mother didn't provide her with clothing so the school nurses would send her home with bags of clothing.

Two months after the adoption we saw such a change that we decided to seek help from our adoption agency. They offered post adoption services and we wanted to tap into those to ensure that we could all get back on track. Our daughter had made a steady decline since her adoption and we were very concerned for her. She was not taking care of herself as she had done and would often refuse to take care of her own personaly hygiene. She had the ability but refused. We were told to simply let her her go and not to do it for her. It was hard for me to do this, but I tried. Soon she was refusing to support herself with transfers and would buckle her knees sending us to the floor in a heap. My daugher was about 30 lbs heavier than me, and eventually I needed to get my husband to help assist me in getting her to and from the toilet safely. She LOVED the extra attention and really seemed to enjoy the fact that she had both of us there, while the other children were unattended. Soon she was misbehaving at school with her peers. She was called to the office numerous times and was caught striking out at one of our other daughters. She began falsely accusing others of stealing from her (including the school nurses) and both personal hygiene, emotional stability declined rapidly. Upon seeking the post adoption services the worker who came made a HUGE mistake of telling our daughter that she would help her in locating her birth family. If it all went well..."down the road" she would talk about possibly meeting with them with a counselor. What this worker did not understand was that our daughter didn't understand what all that meant. "Down the road" to her could mean next week. "Meeting" to her meant reunification. We went from a bad situation to much much worse. We sought help of many more professionals during the next two years. Our daughter spent time in a Mental Health facility for teens where she picked up on even more maladaptive behaviors. She was seen by many MANY therapists, counselors, and mental health professionals. She had temporary stays in the hospitals mental health ward. It seemed that the only thing that stayed consistent was her desire to be back with her birth family. She admitted that by us adopting her, she saw that as a step backwards and she wanted to go back into care in hopes that her birth family would take her back. When she was at these facilities she claimed to want to be home, yet when she was home...she fought us. She began refusing to allow us to put her to bed and would spend all night in her wheelchair. She would wet herself after refusing to let us toilet her, or would intentionally throw herself off the toilet or out of her wheelchair and refuse to let us pick her up. I can't tell you how many times she refused to allow me to toilet her and she would wet herself and then strip to lay in a puddle on the floor. My heart ached and I wanted to find a way to reach her. She flipped dressers and used her wheelchair as a wrecking ball until we finally had to disengage the chair so that she could not move. She would soil herself and paint the walls. We were told to use safety straps to keep her in her chair. She spent hours on the phone with emergency mental health clinicians. All of this we were able to endure (although it was increasing difficult when we had other children that also needed us.) We tried getting staff to help in the home but she ran them all off with her behaviors and she was becoming increasingly aggressive towards everyone. She slapped at the other kids and threatened to kill them. She told me one day that she was going to kill Armani in his sleep by slitting his throat. We weren't incredibly concerned by this because he was in a bedroom upstairs, but my other daughter who's room was downstairs became so fearful she too spiked with behaviors and began sleeping on the floor of our bedroom. The other kids did not want to be near her because they were afraid. Meal times were the worst and the other kids would not eat and spend all their time watching to be sure that she did not come at them with her utencils. She was cunning and would act nice until we would get close enough and then strike us. She smacked me so hard one day it gave me a bloody nose and instead of feeling bad...she laughed. I took her hand and told her in a tight and forced neutral tone, "I don't hit you, you DON'T hit me. Hitting is NEVER okay" and I walked out and broke down. She had told her therapist that when Mother's Day came, she was going to make it a "day from hell." I could not understand the vindictiveness of her. What had I done? We began taking everything away that she could possibly hurt herself. She used paper cups, plastic wear, no shoe laces in her shoes, ties in shirts, we turned her dressers backwards or removed them from the room. Our dreams of a content family lifestyle was soon replaced with thoughts of keeping all the kids safe and keeping some sense of nomalcy in our home. We had people at house throughtout the day checking in and this in turn upset the other children who felt that they were going to be removed from the home. Even writing this all down...doesn't help me understand how we could have avoided some of the things that happened. It seemed the more help we sought..the more fingers were being pointed back at us for doing something wrong. We did everything everyone asked us to do however everyone had a different thought or opinion as to what to do. It was hard to tell others that we were not the cause...but part of the solution because our daughter was such a master manipulator (not words of ours...but professionals who evaluated her) that she convinced others quite easily that we were problem.

We tried for two years seeking help and professionals. We were told to reliquish our parental rights so that our daughter could receive intense therapy that she needed but we couldn't get for her while in our custody. We refused to do this right away. We knew that the things she did was not because of us, but we were just the easiest target, however, what message were we sending to our other kids? Weren't their rights and choices important too? We were tired. We were emotionally and physically drained. Where did we go from here? We decided to try one more time. We placed our daughter in an Easter Seals facility. She was to go there for a few months and then return to us. Things were going well. We felt it was a good placement for her and we kept in contact. She seemed happy for a time and spoke of wanting to come home. We however were quite reluctant and did not buy into her demands to return home. She came home for Christmas and had a hard time leaving (again...it was the drama she created and it didn't feel like real emotions.) She was to return to us permanently on January 2nd and her therapist was bringing her to the house directly from school. We had done a lot of talking prior so that she knew that our expectations for her behavior had not changed and she seemed on board and happy. However, the day she came home was anything but a warm welcoming.

At school, the day she was to come home, she began threatening anyone who came near her and said that she was NOT coming home and if anyone tried to make her she would smack them. Up until this point...she had been saying she wanted to come home. Her therapist told us of the happenings as she had been called to the school to support her. We were told that she was just fearful and that she would be "okay." We volunteered to come to the school to talk to her but we were told no. She became so aggressive they called the police who was on duty at the school to escort her to the office (something she greatly enjoyed due to the drama and attention she got.) From there through physical restraint they got her loaded into the van and brought her home. We had asked if they would just reconsider her coming back that day...and perhaps wait another week. We were told that she could not go back to Easter Seals unless we terminated our rights. (There it was again...another push for us to do this.) Why couldn't they just take a step back? Why couldn't they given her another week to adjust to the idiea? Why did they seem to fight us when we so desperately wanted her to come home and be happy? The therapist brought her home and in the driveway, she threw herself out and onto the ground. She refused to come inside and spent 4 hours on the cold ground refusing help. We went out to her several times and stood a distance away. She kept thinking we were afraid but in reality we just didn't want anyone to misunderstand any interactions. (She had falsely claimed that we had struck her before and we did not want that again.) We asked her to come inside...to get warm...and to talk to us. She refused. 7 hours went by and we finally got her up and inside but she had no intentions of staying. She was told by her therapist if she came inside we could re-evaluate what the next steps would be. Inside she flat out told us that she was NOT happy and did not want to be with us. She said she didn't hate us, but did not consider us her parents. I asked her why she hadn't said these things before...and why did she "pretend" and "use us" during the holidays and if that were to simply get the goods? She looked at us in the eye and said, "Yes." Her therapist sat with us and in the end it was decided that it was now time to let go. The following day we contacted DCYF and signed over a voluntary reliquishment. Several months later we terminated our parental rights...and on April 7th 2009 were were one less child. A failed adoption.

We have not had any contact with her since that dreadful day in court. She was there (against the judges recommendations) but because our daughter wanted to make one final attempt at drama. She told the judge that she wanted to come home and that we were the best parents she ever had and that she knew we would be able to keep her safe. It broke my heart but after the last 2 years I knew she was attempting to manipulate again. She always wanted what she couldn't have. During her time with us she was labeled severe RAD, ODD, PTSD, with borderline personality disorder.

I have often thought about her and my heart breaks for her. We only wanted to give her a life that she deserved and instead we got caught up in a whirlwind of outside therapists and counselors. If I had to do it all over again, I would NEVER have sought out any one of them because I think if she had to simply talk to us, rather than having so many others to manipulate we may have been able to make it.

May God be with you sweet girl. I hope you find happiness and that someday you'll realize how much we loved you.