The adjustments seemed to start revealing themselves right after Anita's 7th Birthday. We can't pin point the exact date or what "triggered" it but they just started to "appear" more frequently. As we tried to rack our brains on what was happening and why, we couldn't put our finger on it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary ... and then I guess it all can be so small, those triggers can be just so sneaky and small.Soon after Anita's birthday, her closest friend in her class moved to Arizona. Losing Darla was devastating to us and we had no idea the effect it would have on Anita. She played it off pretty well. Never seemed to mind too much but then again, haven't people and friends constantly come and gone in her life. Ugh! As the days passed, slowly a withdrawn, spacey, wondering deer in head lights little girl started appearing. She would literally check out and be in her very own world. She's happy in this state. She never seems upset but she's just not "with us" either. Her attention is not here and has been devoted to somewhere and something else. I'll joke with one of my closest girlfriends (practically a sister) and say "she goes to that world you like to go to!" My friend smiles and says "that world is WAY MORE FUN!" I just sigh and smirk. My heart doesn't want her to feel like she has to cope. Because this is what she is doing, coping. She's safe here! I want to shout it. She's safe ... "YOU are safe, how does Mommy show you are safe!?" She's safe with her Mommy and Daddy! We aren't going to leave her! We're not! But how does a surviving, smart, intelligent, little girl know she's safe and this family, she has grown to love, will not leave her? My heart breaks and in the same moment I'm angry b/c she wants to check out. I want her to talk to me and reveal what she's thinking and yet she searches for the perfect words she thinks I want to hear. "Oh my daughter, I want you to reveal you, not what they told you I wanted ... but you, the good, the angry, the sad, the happy ... the Anita who's hiding!"
As I recalled back at this "trigger" in our journey and while I frantically re-read my books on hand ... I was enlightened to read about memory triggers in our lives. These triggers can be subconscious and perhaps they cannot even be conveyed with words but they are triggers enough to cause us to "feel" different and be snapped back into ill feelings. And as I read this my eyes stopped and I read it again. We accepted Anita and Maxwell's referral in the spring of '09. Could her body be reacting subconsciously to the trauma she experienced when she was taken from her Grandma Victoria and placed in the Foster Home? Could this be her trigger? She has yet to speak about it. Won't say a bad thing about her transition. Yes, it was sad but she was fine. And at this, my heart breaks for my little girl who is so strong and trying so hard to show she's a survivor. She's coping and cannot even recognize its happening. In time my sweet girl, we'll help you in time. I can't imagine being 4 yrs old and simply taken from what I know and put in a foster home so unfamiliar, so unprotected, so chaotic, and so unloving. I'm sure I would check out and go to my happy world too...
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