Self Harm

She calls from school at 10am.

‘Mum it’s happened again’

I can hear she is holding back tears.

‘I need to come home’.

‘OK’, I say. ‘We will come get you.’ 

She tells me it happened in the exam, she couldn’t help it. Her brain was whirring and she bit herself until she bleed. 

She sounded scared.

I spoke to the teacher and they agreed I could come and get her. I was worried they wouldn’t as this was the second time in less than a week. 

The first was last Tuesday. She cut herself with her finger nail and then found a sharp rock outside to make it deeper. That's quite a lot of intent. 

The school called me to explain what had happened. They had cleaned her up and she wanted to stay in school. She then told her favourite teacher at lunchtime that she had had thoughts about self harm and death for a long time. 

I spoke to the school again and explained that she had talked to me about these things too for a number of years and that it can feel very alarming but usually, after she has expressed this out loud, she is much happier and actually OK.

When she came home, we talked a little and she said it was like a voice telling her to do it and it was louder than the other voices saying don’t. She didn’t have ‘brain whirr’ when it happened, it was just a feeling that overcame her.

Wednesday was school sports day so she finished early and came home with me and hubby and slept for neary three hours in the afternoon.

Thursday she called from school at 11am, almost crying again. ‘ Mum I need to come home or I’m going to do it again.’ Hubby went to get her and when she got home she fell into me as I reached for her. We stayed like that for some time. Both our eyes wet.

She got into PJ’s and we all had food together and you could tell she was so happy to be at home, with us. That we listened and came and here we were, us three, safe. HOME. 

She quietly played with her horse farm and then said she wanted to go to the actual stables (she is a working pupil so works every Wednesday and Saturday in return for free lessons). They are always pleased for extra help. I dropped her and she came back happy. She’s always happy after being with the horses. It’s her therapy. 

Yesteday we talked some more in the car on the way to the stables 

‘Do you really want to die when you cut yourself?’

‘I don’t think so, I just feel sad that I didn't get to say goodbye to Matilda, Jane and Caspar and perhaps if I could go there, I could get to do that. But I would want to come back. But I’m scared that if I do go there, I won’t be able to get back.’ 

………………………………………

We are in her room. We talk about her managing this week at school with the exams. I say carefully, 

I think maybe you are sad because there were a lot of goodbyes that you can’t remember now, before you had words and even though you can’t remember them, that sense of loss will still live inside you. I started to list her early life story again. 

‘So you were in the hospital with your mum and dad, then you went to a foster carer and saw you mum and dad for visits. That's why you have pictures of you with them as a tiny baby. Then you went to live with them in a special place where they monitor the parents to see if they are able to properly take care of their babies. Your mum stayed a month and then left after an argument with your dad. Then after three months, even though they decided your dad was able to put your needs first, it was decided that you should be adopted. This was because it wasnt safe for you to stay with your dad if he was still seeing your mum.’ 

I start crying and say, ‘Sorry, it makes me sad that you had so many moves.’ 

She hands me a tissue. ‘Do you mind me being such a crier? I think sometimes I cry your tears.’ 

‘I think you cried my tears when we met my birth mum’, she says. 

‘Probably’, I laugh through blowing my nose. ‘Are you sure you want to hear all this again?’ I ask 

‘Yes.’ 

I continue,

‘So then you went to another foster carer but a year later they went away for a month so you had to go back to the first foster carer and then when they came home, you went back to them again and then you moved to live with us when you were 22 months old’.

She nods affirmatively. That is enough.

Later I think maybe she’s ready for the later in life letter, maybe we should do a timeline piece or art, that lays it all out, like her family tree did. How trauma creates fragmentation and she needs to put the pieces back together. Then I think maybe I shouldn't have gone over it all again…..now. Maybe it’s too much for 14, when she is already self harming. 

Maybe it all needs to go back in the box? 

But it's out of the box already. 

It's written in the multitude of scars across her arms. 

She doesn't want them hidden. She doesn't want healing cream. She wants me to see them. To see what she isn’t able to say.

It would be easy to pin it all on meeting her birth mum, but I don’t think that’s true. Fourteen is complicated enough without adding exams, APD and early trauma. The reunion didn't create those things but it will have added.

I vacilate between, she’s OK, this is 14, when big, ‘change like the wind’, feelings happen to feeling heartbroken that my beautiful girl is self harming. It feels like an assault on my nervous system, like this time I could be out of my depth. 

I email the adoption support team fabout funding for therapy. I am waiting. 

Today, when I pick her up, I say, 

‘I think we need to get you some more help’. 

‘Yes’, she says, ‘I am scared I will cut too deep and hurt myself and not come back. I dont want that but I can’t stop myself when I hear the voice’. 

What else is the voice telling you? 

Is it saying you are bad or wrong? 

Where in your body does it come from?

What do you feel when you hear it?

Can you make friends with the voice? 

She doesn’t know, so I let the questions lie. Sometimes it’s just about asking the question, the answers can come later, I hope……

………………………………

The contact adoption social worker calls me. Birth mum is having second thoughts about meeting in the summer. She says what if she meets and then doesn’t know when she will see us again. What should she tell her girls? She doesn’t feel she has had enough support, maybe she shouldnt have met, she should have protected her own feelings.

My heart sinks. I was worried this would happen. I knew when she asked the social worker if it was ok to text me, and I had said I would text her if I felt I needed to, that she wanted a bigger relationship than I was able to offer. The feeling that we had been like parents to her, that my letters had made her a better mum, whilst lovely was also a warning that she may hope for a lot from me. 

In my heart I would love to gather her and her daughters up too, but as the social worker said, this actually wouldn’t be right for Angel, as well as being too much for me.

What worries me most is not once, in amongst it all, did she say, what is right for Angel? 

With a sigh I say, I’ll write to her. See if I can make things right. 

………………………………………

I hear that you are feeling uneasy about meeting up over the summer. We’ve always done so well with our letters, I thought it might be helpful to write again to fill you in a little on what has been going on for us since we met and what my hopes are, going forward.

 

As I said in our texts, meeting up brought up a lot of sadness for me about Angel not being my birth child. It’s very hard to process because obviously she is who she is because she grew in your belly and I love you for that and am incredibly grateful, but it’s also painful she didn’t grow in mine and had to experience the trauma of five moves before she landed with us, which has left lasting scars.

 

It’s strange how different things can be true at the same time. I needed time and space to process this for myself, and I think that was important.

 

Alongside this, having initially seemed entirely unphased, Angel self-harmed four weeks after we met. In terms of self-harm, it was very mild. She is using her fingernails or a sharp stone on her forearms, and she is open about what she is doing but says that a voice comes into her head that she is unable to control.

 

It has happened two more times subsequently and I have had to pick her up from her school twice, when she has called almost in tears, saying she thinks she will do it again unless she comes home. It only ever happens in school.

 

We have talked about the big feelings she is processing around meeting you and her early life story and I think when she gets what she calls a ‘brain whirr’ in school (due to her APD), it probably triggers similar feelings to the overwhelm she must have felt as a baby with so many changes. She is literally, actualising her wounds, because she can’t find another way to express them.  

 

She says she wants to be able to say goodbye to all the people we have lost – her foster carer, my sister-in-law and a very good family friend - but in fact I think it’s the loss of all the early goodbyes she never got to say because she didn’t have the words then, that is weighing on her.

 

We have talked about all this and are feeling our way forward. The school have been amazing, and I have been busy trying to sort out therapy for her via the adoption support fund, which is nearly in place to start in September.

 

This has all been time consuming and emotionally draining.

 

I didn’t feel this was something to share with you immediately and imagined you would also be dealing with your own multitude of conflicting emotions.

 

This is big and complicated for all of us, but I don’t, for a minute, regret meeting.

 

If anything, it forced me to look at and process some stuff that I hadn’t and I think for Angel, in the long term she will gain so much from processing this stuff now and go on to lead a very happy life. However, I am also mindful that she is only 14 and it’s important to go slow and give her the space to process, so she doesn’t go in to overwhelm.

 

One of my best friends also has stage four terminal cancer and I have been supporting her best I can, as well as working. Life is ‘a lifing’ as they say and I know you know all about this.

 

Maybe it would have been helpful for you if I had indicated how I saw things moving forward but it’s very hard to know until you meet and then I have been dealing with first mine and then Angel’s fallout.

 

In my head, I imagine us settling into meeting up 2-4 times a year and perhaps having a what’s app group to share any significant moments for the girls – winning competitions, exam results etc. I think we would need to be mindful about sharing too much, as this could make Angel feel sad too - that she didn’t get to have you as a mum, while your girls did. Like I said to her, just because she landed with the best parents ever (lol), doesn’t make it any less sad that she didn’t get to have you as her mum, for you both and even for us, as we just want what is best for her! Like I said, COMPLICATED LOL!

 

In my heart I could imagine so much more, but know the reality is it’s hard for us to find the time to see my family, hubby’s family, the twins, the foster family (who Angel would still like to see), her friends, our friends etc and that is what is probably doable.

 

And of course, when she’s older, Angel can also have her own independent relationship with you.

 

I imagine you must be going through a lot and am acutely aware that there is little to no therapeutic support for birth parents, which feels grossly unfair. Having therapy really helped me move through my own feelings quickly, which allowed me to then be there for Angel, and I think it must be really hard to do that without support.

 

I am happy to be led by you in terms of when you are ready to meet again with the girls but know that Angel is very keen to meet them and see you again.

 

I don’t think it will be as complicated for them to meet Angel as it was for you, especially as Angel is so brilliant with younger kids and additional needs but maybe it’s about managing their expectations about what the relationship means and maybe that’s’ what you need to process too?

 

Feel free to write and let me know your thoughts.

 

Sending love as always. No one said it was going to be easy but I’m sure we will navigate our way through, holding what’s best for Angel in our hearts, because that’s what parents do (-:

 

Lots of love

 

xxx

 

PS. The picture frame was such a lovely gift and Angel has it, pride of place, next to her bed with a picture of you both from the day xx

PPS. Just to add that Kayla has self-harmed once before when she moved to her current school (big moves are big triggers) and I wanted you to know that I don’t feel Kayla self-harmed just because of our meeting. I think the meeting stirred up a lot that she didn’t know how to process alongside all the usual growing pains of 14 and, for the later times, feeling exam pressure too. It’s a potent mix but we are confident we can get her to the other side of it xxx

 

…………………………………..

I hope it is enough.

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