“It was not my fault”

Our doctor told me to encourage Yen to tap lightly beneath her eyes and above her cheeks.

This time of year mixed with her birthday… well, birthday’s can be stressful…even happy ones.

So I tell her to tap the accupressure point and to recite she is loved.

I explain that sometimes our hearts feel so much and they don’t communicate with our brains…and the confusion can cause us to be fragile.

She knows what I mean… she tells me , “sometimes that happens to me”

Twenty minutes later she meets me at the counter, while I make dinner.

“Momma….that really works!”

I had all but forgotten… but she had gone off and tapped under her eyes and with a newfound clarity came to share the good news.

she starts slow…she has only had this language for two of the three years … so frustrating for her nine year old self who wants to be able to explain her confusion…

“I never knew why she would give me away…

why would she give away the babies from her belly”

and my eyes well up…Yen has never used words like this.

Expressed these feelings.

These are the moments adoptive parents are waiting for… the moments when you hold your arms out, stopping space and time , to climb into your child’s world.

“I did that tapping stuff … and now I know…it wasn’t my fault, Momma….

It was her choice…. It wasn’t my choice.

I didn’t do anything.

It was her choice…she chose this for her life.

We were just babies.

It was her choice”

My eyes all liquid… “Yes honey… it was never your fault…she was a grown up…she made a grown up choice… you both  were just little girls…you did everything right.”

She nods and fiddles with a garlic clove….aware of how deep I am looking into her, I realize it too and inspect the dials on my camera.

she begins again,

“I think I could help other people with hurts on their hearts…I could tell them to tap and to pray, and I could tell them what I found out..

That it was her choice.  She choose to go somewhere us….we didn’t choose it.

Because there was a circle and we were in it together and she walked out of the circle…

we were here….

and she walked away…

It was her choice –

not my fault.”

We sat together in her world for almost an hour while she retold me the same things over and over.

She used different analogies as she pushed against the constraints of her small vocabulary.

Her little hands coming together and then one hand extending far from the center….over and over and over again.

Her eyes still holding the light and her face  still calm.

I stayed with her there as long as she would let me.

She knows her limits…and after awhile she climbed down from the counter and went into the living room… she curled up in front of the warm fire as her noisy family bustled about their evening routine.

~*~

More on Adoption and Our Story:

Honey Do Create

What the Shells are Saying

I know Pilgrims…or How Adoption May~Flower

To the Woman Who carried Babies with Me

Dealing with Abandonement