The thing is, my child is hurt. He is adopted, therefore he was abused, and the abuse was all those big words – significant. There was a child protection medical, and report after report was written, so many people’s voices, views, opinions, words written about my child’s birth family, the history of the family. Findings were made but not arrests, more words noted, more assessments done.
Life story work, ‘family contact’, permanence reports, court hearings, and beyond.
But the hurt is rarely mentioned, unless noted for threshold. There was no talk of healing, or impact his development, or beyond. No consideration of what the injuries left behind.
I tried to get people to see, to see he needed those injuries healing. I got dismissed because of his beautiful eyes, soft face, and cheeky demeanour.
My son hurts. People are starting to notice, 10 years after I had. 6 years after I had asked for support in crisis. 13 years since I fell in love.
The thing is, I was one person stood on an island, shouting to the stars, the clouds, for help, and nobody heard me. They saw parenting deficits, where there was exasperation, exhaustion, trauma and my own hurt.
He moved out. It was unsafe, nobody was listening and nobody was keeping us safe.
Now they are starting to see, and his hurt is more evident. The thing is, that hurt has always been there. He was hurt young, and that makes it worse. He cannot understand the incident, or recall the time, or consider the words to how his body feels and acts differently, because he hasn’t known anything different. But his reactions, his core processing, his communication show it all. His face is darker now, eyes not so bright. His unhealthy coping strategies that holds his hurt are leaving lasting shadows.
Is it too late? I don’t know. But being in love and not being able to take away your son’s hurt is a feeling that cannot be written in words, or summarised with emotions. It hurts too much, to know I saw what nobody else did, but that nobody else saw him.
Children don’t recover from their hurt, whether we ignore its existence or not.
This is heartbreak that never stops, as the footprints in the sand that he is making are going in the wrong direction.