"Pee" ... and little pockets of hope

I receive a lot of emails from moms.

This morning I opened my inbox, and called my husband over. I pointed to the top one and said, "This is how I start my mornings." We both had a big laugh. The top subject line just read "pee."

I knew what would be in that message. It was another mom who felt as though she was drowning in the angry urination and stealth peeing so many of us experience when parenting traumatized children. I try to get back to every one who writes me. I try hard because I had so many ladies who carried me through those earliest days. I know how vital it can be to just hear from someone who says, "I get it," or "You are not alone," or "I have also had fantasies of laying down a new floor made of Huggies."

Those aren't the only things I receive, however. Every once in awhile I get a message that brings me to tears. This past week, one of those showed up from my online friend, Deb, and she has given me permission to share it with you. Because we can't stop having hope.

Deb's daughter will pull out some of her locs, and it has been an ongoing battle. She was able to start locs again, and keep her hair longer, if (this time around) she would no longer pull them out. I have been there. The amount of time and energy it takes to put in braids or locs is extensive. It is a battle that has so many facets as to the "why's" and the "what do I do now's".

"Today, I was tightening her locs and there are several places where there are NO LOCS!! Now, it wasn't like that last month...so this is new. She had every excuse in the book..."I didn't pull them out...I just tried to fix them." And on and on it went. I stopped tightening the locs and asked her to tell me what our deal was. She repeated it, through tears. Then, the strangest thing happened....I heard your "voice" and you said "It isn't about the hair".

So I waited a bit and called her into my room and I said "This is not about your hair, is it?" The look I got was priceless!! I said "you are pulling your locs out because you believe you are ugly, don't you?" She started to cry....I guessed again and said "You think that you are bad and that is why your mother gave you up and put you in that orphanage, don't you?" And she started to sob. I was on a roll here, so I said "I bet it was so scary in that orphanage without your Mom and then she came back....with your whole family and you thought you were going home with her, didn't you?" Now, she is really crying and snot is flying....then I said "M .... you did NOT do anything wrong, there is nothing wrong with you. You are beautiful! Your mother did not give you up because you were bad or ugly, but because she loved you and wanted you to have a chance at a good life. We tried to help her keep you, but they told us that because you had one arm, you would be treated poorly and your best chance at life would be here." We got out her photo album that I made for her with pictures of her brown mom and grandma and her first couple of years here. I pointed out how beautiful she is and how happy she looks in the pictures when she is 3, 4, and 5 years old. I told her that we loved her and she did not need to pull her hair out.

Then, later on in the day, I asked her if she still wanted the locs and she said she did...so I worked on tightening them and she went to bed happy. Oh, and she asked to keep her photo album in her room now."

Deb totally looked past the behavior and seized the moment. She realized that even though the behavior does directly affect her and is aimed at her, it really isn't ABOUT her. She helped her daughter cross a mountain that day ... one of many she will have.


(photo by winterdove, used with permission)