Earlier in the week Joselin spent the night at our house. She was in a mission to see what everyone wanted. I think that she also wanted to talk to me about her new boyfriend. The old Joselin would not have talked to me about her boyfriends.
I was driving her home and she told me that it feels like a dream. I asked what was a dream and she said her life right now. She said that she didn't ever believe that she would be living the life she is living right now. She has a normal boyfriend relationship, a new apartment where she could have her dog and most importantly she feels like a part of the family.
All the kids are questioning each other about what they want for Christmas. Packages are piling up under the tree. All the normal activity of a big family....and she is a participant in it all. In the past she was on the sidelines. She was moping and just never happy. Now I can see the happiness. The willingness to talk about stuff and confide in me.
We haven't always had this trust. It has taken so long to get to this point. Our troubles with communication started in Guatemala when we went to pick her up. The problems weren't because of the language differences, they were because of trust issues. When she met with her mom she was given a cell phone number. We didn't know this. We also didn't know that she lost it. We found that out about 2 years later when she was mad and yelling at me for taking her moms phone number. Huh??? We did not take the phone number. I never saw it and have no idea what happened to it. She didn't believe me. She had spent so much time being mad about it that she couldn't change direction. It took her a few more years to believe that I really didn't take it.
Without trust, building a relationship is very hard. When your child is unable to talk to you about things because she doesn't trust you then it the typical opportunities to build that relationship do not exist. We had many one sided conversations. On a few occasions she did open up to me then she retreated back. It was so frustrating.
So, yes, it does feel like a dream. After so many years of trying to build that relationship it has finally happened. Trust has finally happened and we can build from there.
That's a tough way to start an adoption. I wonder if they mother really wanted an adoption plan or had no choice or even had ulterior motives.
ReplyDeleteFrom what Joselin says, her mother wanted Joselin to get an education and then go back to Guatemala to support her. She told Joselin to return when she was 16 years old. Of course, we didn't know about that until years later either. Her mother really made things very difficult for Joselin. Joselin has no interest in returning to Guatemala, she says it isn't a place for women or children.
ReplyDeleteI guess her mother was trying to do the best she could, she probably had a very limited understanding of what moving to another country would do to J's relationship with her birth culture. A pity she's not interested in visiting. Although she will never live there again, as an adult visitor she would see beyond her childhood world and probably discover many good things about Guatemala.
ReplyDeleteShe is contemplating going on the next mission trip to Guatemala. I do know that she experienced a lot of abuse in Guatemala so her memories are not too pleasant.
ReplyDeleteWe have no way to knowing what her mother was thinking. I don't know why she didn't send Joselin back to her grandmother or to her aunts who were in Guatemala City. Soemthing just really broke down for in regards to her family support and I imagine she did what she felt was the best she could do.