MrsArmor

Our healing process was long and hard but with great results. I can honestly say there is great hope for my step kids now. And we survived the worst of it. :o)  The following was written before we had completed our healing process and is our story:

During the 18 months of court battles in Los Angeles California I noticed that things were not "normal" with these girls. One dd opened up quickly and since I protected her from her sister and allowed her to become her own person with her own thoughts and voice she attached to me very fast. The other dd, on the other hand, would do so many things that had me questioning how normal" this child was. The lying, stealing, torturing of her little sister and animals, the gorging of food, the lack of conscience and the inability to learn cause and effect thinking, I could go on, but of all the RAD symptoms, the only one she did not have was the obsession with fire, but the blood, guts and gore replaced that one. It was difficult because dh could not see anything wrong with his "little girl" and as things escalated in her actions, it was directed at me and hidden from Daddy. It was the perfect triangulation with her Daddy as her puppet and me as the target.

All the symptoms escalated to an extreme after the courts finally gave us full permanent custody. The problem was that I was the only one who could see it all and being the honest person I am I would say it like it is. In time dh just thought I was totally insane. I was accused of things that were not true and I was always the one believed to be the one lying about all the things that this child would do. dh always said she didnt know any better because she was just a little girl. I knew different, but had no one who would believe me. This sent me into a serious spiral of depression and Spiritual oppression. I still kept trying to hold on hoping that dh or someone would see what I see and believe me when I said what was going on. That did not happen until it hit rock bottom.

I was so angry and hurting so bad and I had grown to hate this child I tried to love and wanted to love me back. I hit the bottom around in May of 1996. I was on antidepressants that did not work at all, no matter what medications they tried on me, nothing worked. I had been hospitalized in November of 1995 for severe depression, but when I was in the hospital I was fine. The psychiatrist just said that the problem is in the home, not inside me. I could not get help from any clinics that the welfare medical would cover since I was not suicidal at that time. I was in so much pain and I saw no way out. This child was destroying my home, my reputation and who I was, yet I still wanted to find a way to help her. Until I had nothing left to help her with, so I took the whole bottle of antidepressants to get the only way out I could see at the time that May.

After a three day coma and a long hospital stay I left my husband and went to my family in CA to stay with them. My son went and stayed with my brother. My husband and I were going to divorce and he was left to be single father to his two girls. This is when he began to see some of the things that I had seen all along. RAD figured she mastered getting rid of step mom and step brother, then the next one to get rid of was her little sister. dh's eyes were being opened finally. We also really did miss each other during this separation. After three months we had been talking and dh was willing to open up his eyes and make the changes needed in our home, so we reconciled in August 1996.

In October 1996, RAD was working very hard to continue with the destruction and triangulation, but one thing was different, Daddy was not allowing her to use him as her puppet anymore. So she increased the things that she did to get control of everyone once again as she had in the past. She had the school staff totally manipulated and that month the school counselor had RAD taken to CPS via police for neglect and threat of abuse, which was a fabrication of a situation at home at the time. When we went to CPS and talked with them, they heard the situation and they said there is no reason that they can legally keep her. The counselor did not use the proper route and report to CPS and let them do their job and investigate. They wanted to give RAD back to us and then just do an in home investigation. dh said no, he signed her over to them to keep.

RAD spent six weeks in a wonderful wise foster home who saw right through her and was not manipulated. We were given a great therapist who also saw right through her and helped us deal with her. This was the beginning of the healing for RAD and our family. When RAD came home she started to make major changes. The foster mom informed me about RAD and the therapist also diagnosed her with it. I got so much information that I, dh and even RAD read about RAD. We all were beginning to understand what the problem really was. With that understanding it was easier to deal with it, not easy, just easier.

Dh also has reunited with me on a front and we work together again. I now take RAD to the Attachment Center Northwest and she is making tremendous progress in healing. I too am much stronger now. My strength to continue to love and help RAD is all from God. My son has resentments towards RAD and dh, since she is his daughter, but he has not made any major wrong choices in his life because of it. dd is totally attached to me and is just like a normal child. She learned to defend herself against her bigger sister. Our family is healing and there is hope now almost as strong as the feeling of defeat in the years past. I thank God, for He has made good things happen from what was bad. We have all become different people within ourselves.

I have PTSD that I myself am working on healing from. There are still issues that rise and cause problems, but I've seen that with each uproar of problems, results in another step of healing for RAD. She and I are bonding as mother and daughter. The bio mother is still in their lives, but RAD has just gone through the learning of different dimensions of love and the separation of love and loyalty. She has made the choice to be my daughter and she is beginning to mirror me in many ways. I know we have still many hills to climb, but after the hell our family has gone through in the past, there is no turning back now. My philosophy is to heal the past, live the present and hope for the future.

RAD's past consists of being raised those first years by a mother who was found to have personality disorder/ mild sociopath. (found by the court psychologist during the abuse case) Being sent away for almost two months to "visit" all the relatives, one after the other, at 2 years old when her baby sister came home from the hospital. They lived in TX and she was sent to CA. Mother and father separated when she was almost 4 and within a couple months, during a visit, Dad took RAD to the hospital because she was sick so much and the mother was too busy with her life to take RAD to the doctor. It was found that RAD's heart was defective and was only working about 10%. She had open heart surgery at 4 years old. She had a stroke during surgery and then a minor seizure disorder for a few years afterwards. She was beaten by her stepfather. The mother and stepfather would tie her to the bed because she would sneak up at night and steal food. This was how they choose to deal with her actions. Which increased the RAD issues.

dd had a Nana who she spent most of her time with, since they lived back in CA after she was born. She had someone to bond to and had a different life than RAD did. She also has a totally different core personality than RAD does. She was not attached to her bio mother, but she did gain a full trust in me and she is a totally attached normal child now.