One word kept coming up for me this week - to the point that I probably shouldn’t ignore it. It is blasting through in my adoption parenting readings, it is top of discussion as we’ve been checking in a little more closely with Jackson and it has stood out to me in several social media posts that continue to nag at me like a child calling your name over and over and over again until you respond.

Yes, I hear you! What do you want from me?!

Trauma.

A little word with a lasting impact that can seem far easier to repress than face. As I prepare to help parent a young child through the trauma of leaving their birth family and whatever occurred in their life to result in their adoption I am becoming abundantly aware that my emotional housekeeping skills could use a refresh. 

Seriously, do not open that closet… or look under the rug. 

This isn’t to say that I haven’t faced and addressed much of my life’s trauma - I have and usually have done so quite publicly through this blog. But there are a few memories I continue to avoid, the last month of Adelaide’s life being at the top of that list. There will be a day when I can talk about it and release it from its dark corner of my emotional closet, but not yet. 

While I can and have discussed the trauma experienced of seeing Adelaide seize over and over again, or holding her as she screamed at length with no hope of consolation, or the hospitalizations or the numerous resuscitations, I’m not sure I’ll ever fully grasp the effect of the compounded trauma as a whole. The hit after hit that forced a prolonged fight or flight response. What does being in survival mode for years actually do to a person? 

When I was living it I would downplay it,

“oh, today was pretty good - we made it home from therapies before Adelaide’s seizure and Jackson’s team won their baseball game!”

I mean, it was our normal, right? I knew it was a bizarre normal, but it was our normal and I didn’t have time to stop and recognize how totally screwed up it was - not that I could do anything about it anyway. So, downplaying it felt right, until I was speaking to someone who was unaware of our effed up normal and was reminded by their slack-jawed and bug-eyed response to our average day. But again, survival mode: there is no time or energy to address that kind of trauma while you’re in the thick of it. 

Which brings me back to present day, where we are entering year three of this global pandemic - yet, for the first time there may actually be some sort of end in sight. Yesterday I heard a reputable scientist report that once the Omicron variant has made its way through a region it is reasonable for local governments to begin loosening mandates. You might think this news would come as a relief, but instead I could feel my heartbeat in my ears along with my bed covers calling to me, “we’re here, Kelly, we’re soft and warm and we can protect you!”

Should this be true, should there not be another highly contagious and dangerous variant waiting to take up Delta and Omicron’s mantle, then it does seem like a new post-pandemic normal could await us. But what does that even look like? 

I see you trying to peel back that rug, I warned you not to do that…

Nearest to the light are my rational fears, but it doesn’t take long for the fears to devolve into total irrationality.

…Not for nothing, it’s not like the virus is gone or less deadly, it’s just less prevalent. Where does that leave our compromised friends and family? The world moves on but leaves them behind? Also, I like my cocoon, it’s safe and warm. I also like my mask that has kept me from getting sick with other nasty bacteria and viruses for the last two years. Turns out not getting sick with nasty colds is actually pretty awesome. Cocktail parties are overrated anyway, who doesn't want to do another puzzle, am I right? Sweatpants for everyone!

Hello, trauma! There you are, slithering out from under that rug. I don’t care who you are, there is no way that the last two years have not had a lasting emotional effect. From life and death fear, to the loss of our loved ones, to isolation - not to mention the experience of our medical professionals and frontline workers. We have all experienced lasting compounded trauma - sure we’ve downplayed it with jokes, and memes and Tik Toks, but it’s real. 

Picture this, it’s 2019 and you’re sitting across from someone who is telling you about how in the future there would be a terrible pandemic that would kill more than 5.6 million people worldwide, everyone would wear masks, many people wouldn’t leave their homes for weeks on end. Many children would do school from home and everyone who could work from home would. Oh yeah, and these conditions would last for YEARS. Pretty sure you would have been slack-jawed and bug-eyed - I know I would have been.

These have not been normal times, we know this of course, but they became our normal - a fight or flight, survival mode kind-of-normal. Aside from wearing a mask, getting vaccinated and washing our hands, there hasn’t been much else we could do to stop it - in so many ways it was out of our control. But now, a new, hopefully less stressful normal awaits. My request is to remember to be kind to yourself. There is no way to know how you will respond to facing your compounded trauma as the world eases back into some bizarre blend of pre-covid/post-covid times. 

Just as I won’t ever be able to see a child have an odd eye twitch and not wonder if it was a seizure, it’s going to be a long time before we hear someone cough and not wonder if the world is going to shut down all over again. We’ll get through it though, because we have to, just don’t expect to see me going maskless in public anytime soon.