Half And Half

I realized this past weekend that Hanna has spent half of her life in chaos and half of it in stability. What does that mean for her?

You would think that the stable life she has here would balance out with the chaos and there would be a level of acceptable emotional and social behavior. We have not come anywhere close to such a balance.

She still trusts no one ever. She thinks that she has to be tough and take care of herself. In order to survive in her world one lies, cheats, steals, manipulates, and does whatever else it takes to get what one wants. She looks out for herself without giving a rip about how her actions and behaviors affect others. She does not accept affection from us. We can not even get her to look at us when we are talking to her. The clothes, toys, and others things we have given her she destroys. When we take her anywhere just to have fun she sabotages the outing.

She hurts herself because, well I am not sure why, but I suspect that is it because she thinks we will get rid of her or send her back to her other family, because she keeps telling us to do that. Neither one is going to happen and she has been repeatedly told that, but it comes back to trusting us enough to believe what we are telling her.

She does not consider her adopted family to be hers. If we all just fell of the face of the earth she would shrug and move on. She feels that no matter what happened in the past she belongs with her bio family. Yes, they are her family, and always will be, however she does not understand that when people are physically hurting one another that is not acceptable. She has no concept of her vulnerability.

I hope that some day the love, structure, routine, stability, concern, and acceptance we give her will allow her to want to be apart of the family because everyone needs one.