When Mama Can't Kiss it Better, A journey of love, loss and acceptance , livre ebook

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125 pages

English

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WHEN MAMA CAN'T KISS IT BETTER is the raw account of a true story that shocked the nation in 2010. Gertz was America's most hated mother when news of a decision to place her adopted child in another family broke in the media. Called out by many as an unfit mother and an evil woman who threw away her child, she was catapulted into the national and international media. Her daughter, Emily suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, bipolar disorder, and other disorders. She had never bonded with Lori, her father or her siblings and had begun a spiral of self-destruction that often involved running into traffic and other dangerous behaviors. While Gertz recalls feeling isolated, accounts like hers are not rare. Stories like When Mama Can't Kiss it Better are not told terribly often because of the stigma and finger pointing. She writes, "The mother is always blamed first when a child suffers from extreme behavioral disabilities." There are millions of parents who are struggling to raise children with behavioral disabilities, who feel misunderstood, unheard, and judged, and who want to be reassured that there are others like them. With one in four Americans struggling with mental illness (NIMH) every year everyone in this country either lives with mental illness or knows someone who does. The greatest tragedy is that 60% of the adults and 50% of the children suffering from mental disorders will receive absolutely NO services or support for their mental illness. WHEN MAMA CAN'T KISS IT BETTER covers: * The adoption of their daughter Emily, early signs of trouble, their birthmother's suicide, the truth about her pregnancy and warnings about how to avoid what happened to the author and her family* Raw and honest details about her daughter's rages, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations * The turmoil that living with mental illness causes for everyone in the home and how it affects siblings and marriages* The difficulty in receiving support from physicians, educators, & clinicians* The author's increasing desperation to find answers and help as rages and impulsivity became safety issues * Being judged by doctors, schools, and outsiders as "the problem" while her daughter collected diagnosis after diagnosis* The painful decision to place her daughter in another family and how she came to accept that she had to do the unthinkable* Parents worldwide waging verbal attacks on her since if the fault belonged to Gertz alone, it couldn't happen to anyone else

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	30 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622877171
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0540€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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When Mama Can’t Kiss It Better
Lori Gertz

First Edition Design Publishing
When Mama Can’t Kiss It Better
A journey of unconditional love, loss and acceptance

First Edition Design Publishing
When Mama Can’t Kiss It Better
Copyright ©2014 Lori Gertz

ISBN 978-1622-877-36-2 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-877-17-1 EBOOK

LCCN 2014953852

November 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
"And then it rained buckets and buckets until there were no more buckets. And our dreams floated away in a swift river of hope. Well placed post-it notes of "I'll miss you" decorated our home where once the sounds of screaming wafted and now, the echo of raindrops as they hit the roof and slid down, down, down my cheeks. "

~ Lori Gertz’s blog, An Unfinished Parent, June 8, 2010 ~
To respect the privacy of the individuals involved in this story, all of the names have been changed in this book except for Lori and Craig Gertz.
For my family, friends, spiritual teachers and guides who have supported me through this epic journey. I am filled with gratitude for your unconditional love and kindness.
When Mama Can’t Kiss It Better
A journey of unconditional love, loss and acceptance

By
Lori Gertz
Table of Contents

Prologue: Behind The White Picket Fence
Chapter 1: The Making Of A Mother
Chapter 2: Blind Faith
Chapter 3: Meeting Babymama
Chapter 4: The Good Mother
Chapter 5: Blowing Cotton Balls With Straws
Chapter 6: How A Heart Breaks
Chapter 7: We Are Those Parents
Chapter 8: The Rescue House
Chapter 9: Shrinky-Dinks
Chapter 10: Like Ridin’ A Bike
Chapter 11: Falling Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole
Chapter 12: Heavily Meditated
Chapter 13: School Daze
Chapter 14: Ripping The Band-Aid Off
Epilogue
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Prologue:
Behind the White Picket Fence

I didn’t want to call the police. I just wanted to go sledding.
Desperate to get away from the madness that felt like it was penetrating my skin, I grabbed the pile of gloves, hats, and sweaters I had rummaged through before the episode began. Then I watched myself, just an observer of my body, as my hand reached to turn the knob on the door to my escape.
I needed a shower. I had been shouted at , spat upon, and bitten . I felt filthy and hopeless , useless and angry , and desperately sad, but I had to perk myself up so I would appear excited and cheerful when the other children saw me.
I gently slid my way across the slippery sidewalk to the car. Craig’s footprints of his struggle with Emily were but a faint abstract on the canvas of snow and concrete.
The kids were delighted to see me , but disappointed that Emily and Daddy would not be joining us. I took a deep breath, cleaned my hands with antibacterial gel I keep in the side pocket of my door, and put the car in reverse.
Not a minute later, I looked in my rearview mirror to see Craig, halfway down our snow-covered street, running after Emily. She tore down the street as he raced after her, neither of them in coats, no socks or shoes on her feet. Frosty smoke blew from her mouth as she screamed. I slowed down, and she ran past us toward the thoroughfare in search of harm. Self-harm. She was intent on finding a truck with the engraving to her headstone on it. She wanted to die. Craig chased after her. Please, dear God, my family needs you. Please see us in your crystal ball or however you keep track of all of us, and help my little girl.
Discreetly, I took a deep breath and tried to keep the pieces of my heart glued together.
“Mommy, there’s Emily,” Olivia squealed as I kept driving.
“Mommy, Daddy is chasing after her. She’s in her bare feet, Mommy!”
“Mom, what if Dad doesn’t catch her? She’s trying to run into traffic again,” Gabriel anxiously posed from the backseat.
“Guys, Daddy has Emily covered.” I tried to assure them as much as I tried to assure myself. Daddy has Emily covered.
The adrenaline was rushing through my veins, but I was intent not to let it overwhelm me. I inhaled deeply and held it for a few seconds to find my grounding. I’m here, I’m safe, and everything is okay now.
“When I was a kid, we had a huge hill in our backyard,” I chimed, perhaps a little too loudly and a little too purposely.
Amazed at how easily I could redirect their attention, I kept storytelling.
“The moment the snow would start, I’d be out there sledding. Of course, at the bottom of the hill there was a barn.”
I could see them looking at one another.
“I’d slam right into the side of the barn, pull myself together and yank the sled to the top and do it over and over and over again.”
“Ahhh,” Gabriel, wise beyond his years said, “that explains so much!”
He laughed. Olivia laughed. I laughed.
I was talking and the words were coming out, and they were listening and laughing, but it was as if I were having an out-of-body experience. I was still being assaulted on the floor between the kitchen and the pantry, just outside the laundry room, and my dream for one of my children was dying in my rearview mirror.

****
“You’reamonsterfuck!”
In what world do these words not even register on a mommy meter? Mine. A week prior, I was wrenching my hands and tight-lipped as I nodded to directions I was being given in my seven-year-old’s hospital discharge meeting.
“Emily’s self-abuse is a pattern. She is unable to modulate herself. Your call to action is to use restraint until you can no longer handle it. Try to move her to a safe space, and call the police,” instructed her psychiatrist, one of four in the meeting after her most recent psych ward stay. The professionals rarely left room for me to love her with all the instructions she now came with.
My mind wandered to happy times. Happy Feet times. The scent of an old room still reminds me of the ancient auditorium where my beautiful little princess, dressed as a penguin, performed the exact dance she had been painfully practicing for a year. Ten months of that year were a blur of deterioration during which she would melt onto the dance floor crying that she couldn’t keep up with or remember the dance. The final two months turned around by a short-lived success from an unusual alternative therapy. I jumped from my seat and thwacked my hands together so hard and so many times I should have been flying. There she stood on that stage, surrounded by ten other little girls in penguin outfits. Orange and black. She was glowing. The lyrics from “Hit Me Up” filled the room as I watched her move to a perfectly choreographed dance performance. Sweet tears streamed down my cheeks like a chocolate fountain as my pride raised me to a state of true joy. I couldn’t feel the floor under my feet. Baby! Baby! Just a little bit. Baby! Baby! Just a little more.
“Shap-pow?” she had asked as I worked diligently to affix the small orange headpiece to her tiny head, bobby pins hanging out from my lips, making me look like some crazy walrus.
“Chapeaux,” I repeated still pinching my lips to hold the remaining pins. “It’s French for ‘hat.’ I didn’t know that penguins wore them,” I said smiling as I tipped hers to one side and stepped back to get a whole eyeful of my adorable penguin. She was deliriously excited. I worried it would overwhelm her once on stage, but she was the star of the show, and it filled my bucket up with love and pride and hope. I turned to Craig, who was also on his feet, fingers in his mouth whistling like a teapot. Say hey, Come hit me up. Come hit me up. Baby! Baby! Just a little bit. Baby! Baby! Just a little more…Walk to me, talk to me, handle me right…
Like an invisible force, the words “I HATE YOU!” pushed me back into my skin. The memory of my happy princess-penguin faded as I found myself watching the nightmare ensuing on the kitchen floor as though it were happening to someone else.
“You’reamonsterfuck!” The force of the words hit so hard this time that spit flew out of her mouth onto my cheek.
I glanced over my shoulder. Craig looked dejected. He had gone almost completely gray in the last year, and he looked tired and angry even when he rolled over after a decent night’s sleep. This wasn’t the man I married 12 years prior, any more than I was the woman he chose to be his wife.
I crouched over her, trying with all my might to restrain her thrashing arms and legs. Her eyes were daggers shooting up at me. Seething with rage, she kept screaming nonsensical obscenities and threats in my face. Her pink hooded snow jacket twisted upward as she wriggled, and I could see her tiny belly button and soft, childlike skin. She was small but shockingly powerful. A size 5T dress with a Grand Canyon-size anger.
I kept trying to rationalize and reason with her.
“Emily, calm down,” I begged. Jesus! I thought. We just wanted to do something as a family, but before I realized it, I was pouring my heart out to a furious beast that had no way of taking in what I was saying.
“Please, Emily.” Where are you? Where is my little girl? I miss my family. I miss being able to go anywhere and do anything with all of us. I miss my husband, my best friend. I miss you, baby girl . “Please. Calm down. Please.” My “reveal” now out there for all to see, she just kept raging. The words— fuck, monster, liar, hate you all —washed over me like water dripping down the outside of a glass window during a heavy rainstorm.
As I watc