Triggers

This is a hard one to wrap my head around because it can be so unexpected.  This whole adoption process can trigger hard feelings in Kid, Mike and me, and others around us.  The night terrors in all the kids of our co-students were all result of a trigger.  One was going to daycare for the first time, one was after a surgery, all were seemingly normal things to the parents but all triggered an unsafe feeling in the kids.  These possible triggers are carried forever too.  There was an adoptee who, in her late 20's, went back to visit her orphanage to find out about herself and was instantly brought back to it all by the smell of the orphanage.  Amazing.

For my own possible triggers I have to look into the future and see how Kid might possibly grow.  I have to realize that when Kid has a kid it might be even harder for me since I couldn't now.  There were stories of how the adoptive mum couldn't even listen to her kid talk about her growing pregnancy because of how it would trigger her own feelings of inadequacies.  Another thing I never thought of but I can see me having troubles with that as I hate 'failure' and no matter what not being able to get pregnant has me feeling like I've failed someone.  I feel better being forewarned about this possibility so I can hopefully not struggle so much when and if this situation occurs. 

The triggers in those around us was nothing Mike or I had considered and now we are quite worried.  We have someone close to us who was adopted and it never once crossed our minds that this process could trigger problems for her.  We were both shaking after watching the video about Jenny's struggle to deal with who she was before she was a Fero.  She had so much supressed anger since her adoptive parents didn't want to talk about her adoption or who could possibly be her biological parents.  She felt a constant need to succeed and please others because she didn't want to not fit in or be seen as a failure.  She clearly did a lot of things that she thought she should do but things that didn't make her happy.  Without the honesty between her and her parents, Jenny kept that anger repressed and acted out through substance abuse, promiscuity and spending lots of money on clothes.  Mike and I are both scared that as this person close to us watches Kid go through a similar situation it could either trigger more problems or make her want to stay at a distance.  If anything does happen we hope it's that this person will help our kid understand how to better handle not-knowing.  I hope we cause more good than harm with the whole adoption... it's just another part of the big picture which we did not consider and we don't want to hurt anyone.

On a more positive note, we have our last meeting for our home study this Thursday morning!  It's so exciting to think we are just that much closer to having our name in Russia!