A college friend of mine recently wrote about her daughter who usually leaves her peers in the dust academically and athletically. Here's what she said:
"(People) wonder where her strength, her resilience, and her tenacity come from.... they also come from (her) life experiences... Those experiences from her early, formative years are forever threaded into the fabric of her life. (She) was born a fighter. A survivor. She has faced things that most of her peers never have, or ever will. She had to learn how to roll with the punches, from a very early age. Though she has no recollection of her first two years of life, they most certainly helped shape her into who she is today. She is a pillar of strength. She is an overcomer. She is an inspiration."
Like our daughter, this child was adopted internationally, two years old at homecoming and born with a congenital anomaly. The girls are the same age now, growing up in the Midwest in upper middle class families. But if I had to edit my friend's words to describe my own daughter, they would read more like this:
"(People) wonder where her fragility, her fears, and her hesitation come from.... they also come from (her) life experiences... Those experiences from her early, formative years are forever threaded into the fabric of her life. (She) was born vulnerable. A barely survivor. She has faced things that most of her peers never have, or ever will. She never learned how to roll well with the hard punches life was dealing her from conception. Though she has few conscious recollections of the first three years of life, her body has undoubtedly kept the score, which has most certainly shaped her into who she is today. She's clawing against seemingly insurmountable obstacles that are largely incomprehensible to others. She has her sights set on overcoming. She is an inspiration."
Why is one child able to forcefully forge forward and succeed by the traditional definition while another is endlessly treading water against her past closing in? Perhaps it's (epi)genetics, perhaps it's prenatal care, perhaps disposition and temperament are at play. Maybe one child received comparatively better care at her respective orphanage or coped more healthily with the traumatic circumstances while the other dissociated. Maybe one of the girls was able to form safe attachments amid the hardship while the other did not.
There are some answers from science and social studies about why people respond to and recover from adversity and trauma differently. But these explanations do not make things easier for individuals who are severely affected, even debilitated, by the reverberations of their life experiences. They don't lighten the load for those who are plodding along a path of daily struggle with someone shouldering complex trauma. As a mother, all I can do is keep walking in love and acceptance with my daughter, no matter how different she is from her peers, even those whose lives' beginnings were very similar to hers.
