Center For Healing Childhood Trauma

I’ve waited to write about this. Mostly I wanted to process my hurt and, honestly, my anger. Recently I presented at a conference for Christian orphan care. I was with a group of amazing mamas, women who had adopted children with special needs. 

They had lived in the trenches of adoption, dealt with the unimaginable, and were as tough as they come. Collectively we had watched children die because of orphanages, and we knew that our message, this training for adoptive parents, was literally life or death for some children.

The day before we gave our class, we were told there was a problem with our presentation. The organizers felt several of the pictures we had chosen would need to be removed, as they were ‘too graphic’ for this conference. Silently I fumed. My child’s picture was one they had chosen to remove.

“Graphic photo.” This was Israel when we first picked him up and then one year later.

I have learned something over the years. When we promote foster care and adoption without the full truth, we hurt adoptive parents and their families. Adoption and foster care are hard and lonely, and some days you will question the choice you made.

When we promote a half truth, we are not preparing or equipping adoptive parents for the reality of what we are asking them to do. This reality is not ‘too graphic’ to share.

I see so very clearly now, but I admit that my vision was once blurry and rose-colored. For many years, I drove to my job and taught the 25 in my classroom without ever thinking about their lives beyond the brick safety of my school. 

I never thought about the student who slept outside the casino in his parents’ parked car so they could gamble and drink all night. I never thought about the pig-tailed 8-year-old girl who was “visited” by “uncles” each night. I never once looked at the boy who sat silently day after day — never a behavior problem, yet also never contributing. I never thought about why he wore a long-sleeved shirt when it was warm out or why he flinched when I touched his shoulder.

Then I blinked, and things became a bit clearer. I opened my door to these same children through foster care. I held the sexually abused 6-year-old, and I walked the floors with the drug-exposed newborn. I learned how to medically treat a child with broken bones, burns, and trauma inflicted by a parent. 

I saw that every single one of these children had once sat as silent victims, waiting for an adult to notice their pain. They sat waiting for the whole truth to be told.

Then I blinked again, and I flew to a foreign country and stepped into an orphanage. It was not cleaned up or sanitized. It was raw humanity and lowly pain. I tried to close my eyes, but it was too late. 

You cannot unsee children dying. You cannot erase the silence and the smells. No, all of this clings to you and becomes a part of you. And you need to share it because trauma needs to be pulled out of that raw space, examined, and acknowledged. Instead I am finding that people don’t really want to see this lowliness and hurt.

And then you sit at a conference that is for orphan care, and these are your people. These are the adoptive parents that are supposed to rally with you, and you want to share a tiny piece of what it really looks like. You had sifted and weighed what image would best portray this without being too brutal. 

You aren’t asking to unload it all. You are just asking them to take a moment and look. When they don’t want to look, you feel so alone. Because you have brought this raw hurt and this painful picture home, and he is cleaned up and acceptable now. But what he once lived is “too graphic,” and this consumes your day.

“And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.” D. Bonhoeffer

When Darren and I became foster and adoptive parents, no one ever told me it would be so lonely and painful.

I did not know I would lose family and friends.

I never realized that adopting one or two children is acceptable, but you announce adoption number three, four and five, and you’ve suddenly tipped into being a bit fanatical.

I didn’t realize that adoption doesn’t always end up happily ever after and that some children cannot heal within your home.

I didn’t know that sharing the truth of trauma and the photos of those left in the orphanages was “too graphic.”

I never knew that through foster care and adoption, I would come face to face with my own hypocrisy, privilege, and fears.

I never knew how ashamed I would feel when people told me how wonderful I was for “saving these kids,” when I truly understood that it was foster care and adoption that had saved me.

I never knew that God would use Israel to change the heart of a woman like me.

I didn’t know the rules.

Darren and I are stepping back into the trenches of foster care. It sounds pretty darn fanatical, but I no longer want to be a rule follower.

Explore Lost Sparrows, our charity, which offers training for adoptive parents and foster parents.

Our Center for Healing Childhood Trauma provides online video lessons about early childhood trauma and adversity. You can choose which topics you’d like to cover and which speakers you’d like to hear. We also offer a monthly support group for foster and adoptive parents and host an annual Lost Sparrows Trauma Conference, which educates attendees about development trauma and early childhood adversity.

Written by Stacey Gagnon (2018)