Nicole and I thought it might be helpful to give a little background information on each of us so that some of what we write about makes more sense. Sometimes it is easier to understand why we think/act the way we do or why certain things are important, etc, if you know a bit of the background story, so we will go a little deeper than the basic introduction from a few days ago.
I will start with me. I was born in 1963. I was raised in Atlanta by my biological parents until their divorce when I was about 8 or 9. My dad remarried and then passed away from cancer when I was 12. My mom remarried when I was 15 and the family moved to New Jersey. My childhood was marked by repeated episodes of sexual abuse at the hands of three different men. I medicated my anger and shame with food as a young girl and my weight fluctuated from mildly overweight to morbidly obese. In high school, I added alcohol to the arsenal and I struggled with bouts of depression. My mother's marriage was volatile and uncomfortable and alcohol featured prominently in everything in their lives. I did not feel loved, accepted or valuable and I was very confused and conflicted about love, sexuality and family.
In high school, I spent a summer in Japan as an exchange student. This experience really changed my perspective on what it meant to be a citizen of the world. It also changed how I respond to people who look, think, behave, worship, eat, speak, dress, etc, differently than I do. It taught me to love and embrace diversity, to meet people as individuals, to judge them by their characters, to look for what we share in common and to respect their right to live as they choose. It taught me that, although I think America is a wonderful country, it is not the ONLY wonderful country in the world and that in some areas, we have a LOT to learn.
After high school, I spent two years at the University of Georgia. The biggest lessons I learned there didn't come from the books or the professors. I learned a lot about being Karen and I learned that Karen was a lesbian and that being a lesbian was OK. I learned that a good therapist is a VERY valuable thing and that not all therapists are good. I learned that I had a LOT still to learn.
Trying to grow up in the midst of sexual abuse, divorce, the death of a parent, alcohol abuse, relocation.....your development becomes kind of chaotic. Pieces get missed. You are forced to develop beyond your years while at the same time missing developmental milestones that got lost along the rocky road. To say that I struggled as a young adult is an understatement.
I went through several bad relationships and in a strange twist of fate and a stunning betrayal, I became pregnant at 23. My mother had divorced her abusive husband and moved to Florida with my oldest sister and her children, so I moved to Florida as well. I needed the support, and as screwed up as my family was, it was still my family. I wanted to be a good mother more desperately than I had ever wanted anything in my whole life. I wanted to raise a child who NEVER felt a moment's doubt about how loved and wonderful they were. I put all of my feelings about my own sexuality and my own past on hold and concentrated on loving my child. I learned to live without medicating myself with alcohol. I did not manage to do that with food.
I raised my son in an environment that says everyday that you are good and valuable and cherished. I learned a lot about healing myself as I raised him. Most importantly, as I watched that beautiful, innocent child grow, I learned that no child ever deserves to be exploited or abused and that the abuses that happened to me as I was growing up were not my fault. I protected him fiercely and loved him even more fiercely. I made a lot of mistakes. He loved me anyway. I did a LOT of things right and in doing them, I began to re-write the internal monologue that told me who I was.
I spent a good number of years in a church that told me gay people go to hell and insisted that God would make me straight if I only asked him sincerely enough. After nine years of the most earnest prayer possible I realized that while God had spoken to my heart about a lot of things, He had never taken issue with my sexual orientation. I chose to believe the God I had built a relationship with over my pastor and I left the church. Today, I am a Unitarian Universalist and I enjoy a deep faith and rich spiritual life.
Trying to grow up in the midst of sexual abuse, divorce, the death of a parent, alcohol abuse, relocation.....your development becomes kind of chaotic. Pieces get missed. You are forced to develop beyond your years while at the same time missing developmental milestones that got lost along the rocky road. To say that I struggled as a young adult is an understatement.
I went through several bad relationships and in a strange twist of fate and a stunning betrayal, I became pregnant at 23. My mother had divorced her abusive husband and moved to Florida with my oldest sister and her children, so I moved to Florida as well. I needed the support, and as screwed up as my family was, it was still my family. I wanted to be a good mother more desperately than I had ever wanted anything in my whole life. I wanted to raise a child who NEVER felt a moment's doubt about how loved and wonderful they were. I put all of my feelings about my own sexuality and my own past on hold and concentrated on loving my child. I learned to live without medicating myself with alcohol. I did not manage to do that with food.
I raised my son in an environment that says everyday that you are good and valuable and cherished. I learned a lot about healing myself as I raised him. Most importantly, as I watched that beautiful, innocent child grow, I learned that no child ever deserves to be exploited or abused and that the abuses that happened to me as I was growing up were not my fault. I protected him fiercely and loved him even more fiercely. I made a lot of mistakes. He loved me anyway. I did a LOT of things right and in doing them, I began to re-write the internal monologue that told me who I was.
I spent a good number of years in a church that told me gay people go to hell and insisted that God would make me straight if I only asked him sincerely enough. After nine years of the most earnest prayer possible I realized that while God had spoken to my heart about a lot of things, He had never taken issue with my sexual orientation. I chose to believe the God I had built a relationship with over my pastor and I left the church. Today, I am a Unitarian Universalist and I enjoy a deep faith and rich spiritual life.
After I reconciled myself with God concerning my sexual orientation, I spent a number of years feeling that perhaps I was bisexual. Looking back, I think it was my attempt at trying to have a life that I could live openly in society, because while I had come to a comfortable place spiritually regarding being gay, socially it was a whole different thing. I live in a very conservative state. There are no protections in my area for LGBT people regarding discrimination in housing, employment, etc. It is very difficult to talk "around" your personal life. People want to know and if you are vague or cagey with them, they can be really crappy to you. SO, while I was still living in that space in my head, I met and married a man. Oddly enough, I told him the day I met him that I was lesbian. The marriage had many more problems than me trying to force my lesbian square peg self into the round hole of a heterosexual marriage, and the combined issues led us to divorce (amicably) four years later. Again, I learned a LOT about myself from that experience and I also gained a lovely daughter, Tara. There has been a tremendous investment in parenting her that has benefited us both in more ways than I can count. She was a teenager when we met and through her I learned how to respect the person she already was while still nurturing and teaching her the things she needed to learn. It was good for both of us. Still is!
I have been a nurse for 22 years. For the last 11 years I have worked as a private duty pediatric nurse. I work with kids who have complex medical needs and who require a nurse at night, so I am one of those graveyard shift nurses. The schedule plays hell with my personal life, but for now it solves more problems than it creates.
I re-use, re-purpose and recycle. I try to conserve resources. I take issue with how we treat meat animals in this country, but I am not vegetarian. I choose to buy meat from sources that practice humane and responsible animal husbandry. I think how we treat the planet and ALL of its inhabitants speaks to who we are as people. I root for the underdog. I shop mom and pop businesses and spend extra to buy things made from recycled materials or by local sources, etc. I am a liberal and a pacifist. I talk too much and am sometimes a bit of a know it all. I hate this about myself. I also struggle with control issues. I am uncomfortable when I don't know what to expect. Sometimes I am bossy. I have a lousy edit feature and struggle with what information to leave in and what to leave out, even in simple instructions.
We were told when we went to meet Lisa that she would most likely not make eye contact with us. We were warned that it would take an extended amount of time to gain her trust and for her to speak to us without being prompted and even longer to get anything more than "yes, no, fine or I don't know" out of her. Happily, this was not the case. She felt the same feelings of "this is my family" about us that we felt about her. That is not to say that the moment we met she told us all about her life and her feelings and there has not been great difficulty, but the sense between all of us that we were meant to be together has certainly been a HUGE factor in helping Lisa to make strides towards over coming the effects of her childhood trauma.
I re-use, re-purpose and recycle. I try to conserve resources. I take issue with how we treat meat animals in this country, but I am not vegetarian. I choose to buy meat from sources that practice humane and responsible animal husbandry. I think how we treat the planet and ALL of its inhabitants speaks to who we are as people. I root for the underdog. I shop mom and pop businesses and spend extra to buy things made from recycled materials or by local sources, etc. I am a liberal and a pacifist. I talk too much and am sometimes a bit of a know it all. I hate this about myself. I also struggle with control issues. I am uncomfortable when I don't know what to expect. Sometimes I am bossy. I have a lousy edit feature and struggle with what information to leave in and what to leave out, even in simple instructions.
Around the house, I love to cook. Nicole and I are cupcake and cake bakers/decorators and sometimes a LOT of our schedule happens around creating cakes/cupcakes for someone's event. When I have time, I create beautiful stone bead and precious metal jewelry.
So, that's me. Now on to Nicole. She had a much more stable life than I did, so her story is, accordingly, much shorter. (It's ok, you can say Thank GOD out loud. It wouldn't hurt my feelings even if I could hear you.)
Nicole was born in 1981 (the year I graduated high school, which has become the punch line to a lot of jokes in our lives.) She was raised here in north Florida by her biological parents, who are loving, nurturing and stable people. She was always taught, by both word and deed, that she was valuable and wonderful and loved. Her parents were childhood sweethearts who have remained completely in love with each other throughout their marriage and it was in this environment that Nicole learned about loving a partner and parenting children.
Nicole's mom has the most amazing ability to make someone feel welcome and wanted. She listens to and observes EVERYTHING without you even noticing it and then she delights in surprising people she loves with something that is just the right thing for them. Nicole's dad is quiet. He does not speak often...never engages in idle chit chat. But he is a generous natured and hard working man and if he ever suspects that you need help with something, he is right there to do whatever he can to help and he almost makes you feel like you are doing him a favor for letting him help you. They are wonderful people and they raised a wonderful daughter.
Nicole married her first serious boyfriend a couple of years after she graduated high school. She went straight from her parents' home to their shared home. Her husband was eight years her senior, but completely unable to care for himself. He struggled to remain steadily employed. The marriage was difficult and ended after eight years. During the time they were married, Nicole not only worked full time to support them, but also put herself through college and got a bachelor's degree.
Nicole is a talented artist, although she will deny that any time I mention it. She has a keen eye for design and rearranges the furniture with an almost maddening frequency. The only thing more maddening than the frequency of her redecorating is the fact that it always looks so nice that I can't complain about it!
She has her mother's talent for listening and observing and then surprising you with just the right thing at just the right moment. She has very strong ethics about how you do and do not treat people and she will not abide rudeness. She has a wicked sense of humor and is quick to find the humor in things and has a talent for making people laugh. She is not above doing something silly to make people laugh, because she knows who she is. She is tender hearted beyond words.
So, that's me. Now on to Nicole. She had a much more stable life than I did, so her story is, accordingly, much shorter. (It's ok, you can say Thank GOD out loud. It wouldn't hurt my feelings even if I could hear you.)
Nicole was born in 1981 (the year I graduated high school, which has become the punch line to a lot of jokes in our lives.) She was raised here in north Florida by her biological parents, who are loving, nurturing and stable people. She was always taught, by both word and deed, that she was valuable and wonderful and loved. Her parents were childhood sweethearts who have remained completely in love with each other throughout their marriage and it was in this environment that Nicole learned about loving a partner and parenting children.
Nicole's mom has the most amazing ability to make someone feel welcome and wanted. She listens to and observes EVERYTHING without you even noticing it and then she delights in surprising people she loves with something that is just the right thing for them. Nicole's dad is quiet. He does not speak often...never engages in idle chit chat. But he is a generous natured and hard working man and if he ever suspects that you need help with something, he is right there to do whatever he can to help and he almost makes you feel like you are doing him a favor for letting him help you. They are wonderful people and they raised a wonderful daughter.
Nicole married her first serious boyfriend a couple of years after she graduated high school. She went straight from her parents' home to their shared home. Her husband was eight years her senior, but completely unable to care for himself. He struggled to remain steadily employed. The marriage was difficult and ended after eight years. During the time they were married, Nicole not only worked full time to support them, but also put herself through college and got a bachelor's degree.
Nicole is a talented artist, although she will deny that any time I mention it. She has a keen eye for design and rearranges the furniture with an almost maddening frequency. The only thing more maddening than the frequency of her redecorating is the fact that it always looks so nice that I can't complain about it!
She has her mother's talent for listening and observing and then surprising you with just the right thing at just the right moment. She has very strong ethics about how you do and do not treat people and she will not abide rudeness. She has a wicked sense of humor and is quick to find the humor in things and has a talent for making people laugh. She is not above doing something silly to make people laugh, because she knows who she is. She is tender hearted beyond words.
Then there is our Lisa. Lisa is brave, funny, complicated, sweet and MOODY! The first six years of Lisa's life were spent bouncing from birth mom to aunt to grandmother and back again. Her birth mother was unstable and frequently left her unattended, even as a VERY young child and Lisa was exposed to drug use and sexual activity. Lisa is the youngest of five children. Of the other four, three had been removed and were adopted as a group prior to Lisa's birth. The other child was back and forth between foster homes and extended family members' homes. The two of them never lived together and saw each only rarely.
At six, Lisa was removed by the state and went to live with extended family. Two years later, she was taken into foster care. It is unclear how many foster homes Lisa lived in prior to her first adoption. At the age of 8, Lisa was adopted by a single mother who was a member of a very stringent religion. Lisa was sent to bible study and church where she was taught that physical violence was wrong only to come home and be beaten. Lisa endured a very difficult 15 months before the adoption was terminated and she was again taken into foster care. There was another series of foster homes, one after the other, until Lisa was finally placed in a group home to try to gain some stability. The group home was stable, but it was a religiously based organization. Given her prior experiences of being forced to attend church and her confusion about God and religion, it was not a good match for Lisa. She felt unwanted and that feeling was reinforced by a cool and distant house mother. LIsa's grades plummeted and she became severely depressed. She refused to talk about her past and was emotionally completely shut down.
At six, Lisa was removed by the state and went to live with extended family. Two years later, she was taken into foster care. It is unclear how many foster homes Lisa lived in prior to her first adoption. At the age of 8, Lisa was adopted by a single mother who was a member of a very stringent religion. Lisa was sent to bible study and church where she was taught that physical violence was wrong only to come home and be beaten. Lisa endured a very difficult 15 months before the adoption was terminated and she was again taken into foster care. There was another series of foster homes, one after the other, until Lisa was finally placed in a group home to try to gain some stability. The group home was stable, but it was a religiously based organization. Given her prior experiences of being forced to attend church and her confusion about God and religion, it was not a good match for Lisa. She felt unwanted and that feeling was reinforced by a cool and distant house mother. LIsa's grades plummeted and she became severely depressed. She refused to talk about her past and was emotionally completely shut down.
We were told when we went to meet Lisa that she would most likely not make eye contact with us. We were warned that it would take an extended amount of time to gain her trust and for her to speak to us without being prompted and even longer to get anything more than "yes, no, fine or I don't know" out of her. Happily, this was not the case. She felt the same feelings of "this is my family" about us that we felt about her. That is not to say that the moment we met she told us all about her life and her feelings and there has not been great difficulty, but the sense between all of us that we were meant to be together has certainly been a HUGE factor in helping Lisa to make strides towards over coming the effects of her childhood trauma.
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