I remember this moment 15 years ago so clearly. I was in the dim office of a locally well-known Attachment Therapist named Faith. She was sitting stoically in her overstuffed blue chair, coaching me to hold tightly the little wriggling body of my then 3-year old adopted daughter, Annie. Annie was all bone, no meat, and full of piss and vinegar, as my mother used to say about me when I was a child. I found myself thinking my hands seemed like monster hands wrapped around her tiny arms, when suddenly without a wink of warning she spat hard into my face. The spitball startled me, then slowly slid down my cheek, eventually dropping onto her frilly pink dress. The blob smudged into the shape of a heart right where I desperately hoped a real heart lay in waiting. “This is going to be your life now,” Faith proclaimed like some kind of life sentence. Then driving her point home, she emphasized again, as though I had checked out the first time, “Your life is never going to be the same again.”

At the third holding session I asked Faith if she could help me figure out how to parent the crazy things that Annie was doing at home. In desperation I shouted, “Nothing works!” Faith said, “Oh no, I only do attachment therapy—not parenting.” What? You just sit there in the corner telling me to hold Annie tighter every session, while she screams she hates me, pees on my lap, and tries to bite me, then somehow at home miraculously Annie is going to stop breaking her toys into little bits, stop lying about stuff she isn’t even doing, and start letting me hug her? I don’t think so. I fired Faith that day, and began the journey of my lifetime—raising Annie, and her 2-year old attachment challenged brother, Devon.

This blog was dreamed up right then and there. I needed help and hope, and none of the professionals knew how to help me. Amazon.com wasn’t invented yet and even if it had been very little was written that I could digest and use in my every day life that would inspire me, lift me, help me stay sane while working every day to heal the broken hearts of my children who had very difficult beginnings—maltreatment, abuse, neglect and attachment trauma. This blog is for all the parents out there who are just like me—raising attachment challenged children and trying to staying sane one day at a time.

My Beautiful Children

Annie, Devon and Frank…Cats were around somewhere.

Ce has published a book of letters to parents of traumatized, attachment-challenged children.  You can find it at www.attachplace.com/drowning-hair-fire/