Rescuing Julia Twice Read online

  “Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt make it look easy,” writes Tina Traster in the opening pages of this intimate memoir. “They adopt kids from all corners of the world and the media broadcasts images of perfect Kodak moments. They’d have you believe that families bond and blend instantaneously. They don’t. Not always.”

  In moving and refreshingly candid prose, Rescuing Julia Twice tells Traster’s foreign-adoption story, from dealing with the bleak landscape and inscrutable adoption handlers in Siberia, to her feelings of inexperience and ambivalence at being a new mother in her early forties, to her growing realization over months then years that something was “not quite right” with her daughter, Julia, who remained cold and emotionally detached. Why wouldn’t she look her parents in the eye or accept their embraces? Why didn’t she cry when she got hurt? Why didn’t she make friends at school? Traster describes how uncertainty turned to despair as she blamed herself and her mothering skills for her daughter’s troublesome behavioral issues, until she came to understand that Julia suffered from reactive attachment disorder, a serious condition associated with infants and young children who have been neglected, abused, or orphaned in infancy.

  Hoping to help lift the veil of secrecy and shame that too often surrounds parents struggling with attachment issues, Traster describes how with work, commitment, and acceptance, she and her husband have been able to close the gulf between them and their daughter to form a loving bond, and concludes by providing practical advice, strategies, and resources for parents and caregivers.

  MORE PRAISE FOR RESCUING JULIA TWICE

  “Tina Traster deftly tells of the slow dawning that things aren’t quite right between her and her baby daughter. How Tina uncovers what had been concealed from her and turns around a devastating diagnosis is nothing short of stunning. This book will stay with you long after you close the cover.”

  —LORI HOLDEN, author of The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption

  “I am in awe of Tina and her husband, and the wonderful success they have had with Julia. If you are an adoptive parent, don’t miss this book.”

  —JANE BALLBACK, executive editor, Adoption Voices

  “Traster’s experiences and the way she writes about the realities of adoption are very helpful to everyone raising a child with RAD or thinking of adopting a child who may have RAD.”

  —IRENE CLEMENTS, president, National Foster Parent Association

  “Tina’s journey hit very close to home. I know it will offer understanding for those finding themselves on a similar path with adopted children they’re helping to heal and love.”

  —TIFFANY SUDELA-JUNKER, producer and director, My Name Is Faith

  “Having raised three kids with varying degrees of RAD, I know how much this book is needed!”

  —JULIE VALENTINE, editor, adopting.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Tina Traster

  All rights reserved

  Foreword © 2014 by Melissa Fay Greene

  All rights reserved

  Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN 978-1-61374-678-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Traster, Tina.

  Rescuing Julia twice : a mother’s tale of Russian adoption and overcoming reactive attachment disorder / Tina Traster ; foreword by Melissa Fay Greene.

  pages cm

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-1-61374-678-3 (cloth)

  1. Attachment disorder in children. 2. Adoptive parents—United States—Biography. 3. Intercountry adoption—Russia (Federation) 4. Intercountry adoption—United States. 5. Adopted children—Family relationships—United States. I. Title.

  RJ507.A77T73 2014

  618.92’85880092—dc23

  [B]

  2013039314

  Interior design: Sarah Olson

  http://juliaandme.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to Julia Sophie Tannenbaum, my daughter, my inspiration, my beacon. Our journey together has taught me to live life more patiently, to embrace challenges of the heart with fortitude, to welcome imperfect love with grace and acceptance.

  Contents

  Foreword by Melissa Fay Greene

  Prologue

  Part One:

  A DAUGHTER WAITING IN SIBERIA

  Part Two:

  SOMETIMES THESE KIDS ARE NOT ALRIGHT

  Part Three:

  MAKE LOVE HAPPEN

  EPILOGUE

  CONCLUSION:

  What Being Julia’s Mother Has Taught Me, and Other Advice for Raising a Child with Reactive Attachment Disorder

  Acknowledgments

  Resources

  Index

  Foreword

  Every dream of adoption—like every fantasy about parenthood—is really a dream of attachment. Whether or not a person ever uses the word attachment (the word was coined in the 1960s by the great twentieth-century British psychiatrist John Bowlby), a prospective mother or father surely envisions rocking a baby in a soft-lit nursery; running behind a tiny two-wheeler powered by a ferocious, chubby-legged piston; or slow-tossing a Wiffle ball toward a smudged little face all but hidden under a baseball cap. No one thinks attachment. It goes without saying that each imagined scene is knit together by empathy and love, eye contact and merriment, intimacy and laughter. You no more dream about attachment than you head to a clothing store with thoughts of well-made stitches and seams. And if all goes well with a baby—if he or she is born healthy and enjoys tender, attentive nurturing from the first moments of life—then the parents’ handmade scrapbooks and online photo albums will swell with happiness, showering the world with glimpses of first smiles, first steps, first birthday candles, and first days of school.

  Human babies are pretty resilient. The vast majority are born well-equipped with all the darling qualities that draw parents close. The vast majority are wired to fall madly in love with their cooing, looming, giant parents. It’s an obvious evolutionary mechanism. But what of babies who, through no fault of their own, through congenital issues, illness, birth trauma, or socioeconomic forces that pry them from their biological parents’ arms, are unable to attract permanent devoted care-givers and cannot seem to locate an adult to adore? A baby will try and try and try, but little by little—each infant is different—a touch of baby despair appears. True grief enters when a baby—say a baby abandoned to an overcrowded institution with an underpaid, rotating staff of caregivers—feels itself cast loose from humanity, sailing alone across a black Arctic sea on an ice floe beyond sight of shore.

  What happens to such a baby if she is not rescued before the light in her eyes has gone out? When a baby or young child who has lost her optimism and love is finally dragged out of her bed and placed in the arms of an adoptive parent—can the sweet pas de deux begin? Not necessarily. When a baby or young child has learned that no one is coming; that no one thinks he or she is the cutest little baby on earth; that he or she must weather hunger, cold, and sickness in solitary, those are hard lessons to unlearn. It’s nearly impossible to convince a child that he or she is no longer alone in the universe. When a child belatedly offered family life fiercely rejects the proposition that one or more loving adults has now arrived for good, the professionals begin to speak of attachment as in “attachment issues” or “attachment disorder.”

  And a new parent’s dream of singing lullabies to a drowsy child, of chasing after a tiny two-wheeler while screaming encouragement, of softly tossing a Wiffle ball light as air must be postponed in deference to simpler hopes: the dream that the child will look into her parent’s eyes and
smile; that the distressed child will seek out the new mother or father above all others; that the hungry child will accept food from the parent; that the enraged child will allow the mother or father to help her find peace.

  This is the story of one girl among millions, in whose eyes the light of hope and love and happiness faded and then flickered out. It’s the story of one mother and father among millions, for whom the girl was not a throwaway, not one in a million, but the most precious of all children. Finally it’s the story of how those parents dedicated their lives to rekindling the light in their daughter’s eyes and how all three have been fantastically enlarged, rewarded, and enriched by the happy result.

  Melissa Fay Greene is the award-winning author of five books of non-fiction, including There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue Her Country’s Children, about the HIV/AIDS African orphan crisis, and No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, about raising her family. She and her husband are the parents of nine children—four by birth and five by adoption.

  Prologue

  Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt make it look easy. They adopt kids from all corners of the world, and the media broadcasts images of perfect Kodak moments. They’d have you believe that families bond and blend instantaneously.

  They don’t. Not always. Not in my experience or in the experience of many others. Sometimes the road to loving your adopted child is long and twisted and scary. You know something is wrong—but is it the child? Is it you? You drown in shame and confusion, hiding your feelings from the world. It can’t possibly be that you’ve gone to the other end of the world to get this baby and you’re not bonded after a month, six months, two years.

  I knew something wasn’t right early on. We adopted Julia from a Siberian orphanage in February 2003. She didn’t clutch to me nor gaze in my eyes. She never rested her head on my shoulder or relaxed into a warm embrace. She didn’t respond if I sang or read to her. It was like she was there but wasn’t.

  For a while, weeks, maybe months, I sank deeper and deeper into depression, thinking I’d made a terrible mistake. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a mother.

  Julia was a little more responsive with my husband but only somewhat. For the first ten months, I suffered guilt, shame, and sadness. After traveling ten thousand miles (twice) to bring home this child, I was unwilling to let anyone know how I really felt. Then the revelations began. I hired a daytime nanny in early 2004. Anna was twenty-one, experienced and energetic. She’d come with a glowing review from the mother of her last charges. When she mentioned Julia was having trouble warming up to her, a ding went off in my head. Why? Why isn’t Julia connecting to this lovely young lady who took her daily to the park, to play dates, to “mommy and me” classes? I had thought for sure that Anna might be able to give her what I couldn’t.

  A year later, I enrolled Julia in preschool and saw more of the same: a child who was not bonding with teachers or other children. She was as much an enigma to others as she was to us. Everyone agreed she was gregarious, vivacious, friendly, and outgoing. Yet at the same time, she was aloof, hard to figure out. When I picked her up at the end of the day, she was always by herself, sometimes sitting under a desk. Worried, I mentioned her odd behavior to her pediatrician. That was the first time I took notice of the phrase “Reactive Attachment Disorder” (RAD), even though I had heard it mentioned before. The doctor, who worked with foreign adoptees, explained RAD was common among institutionalized children. The early break from birth mothers causes trauma that makes it difficult for the child to trust or attach to another adult. This, he explained, is why Julia recoils when she is held. Why she doesn’t have a favorite teddy. Why she won’t make eye contact.

  I wasn’t ready to hear this. I told myself we just needed more time. I stored the doctor’s explanation in the back of my mind, but pieces of it drifted out when I watched Julia fight naps or wander away from me constantly. Finally, when she was four, I was ready to face her demons, our demons. It was during a nursery school recital that I broke down and sobbed because I realized how lonely, displaced, and isolated my daughter was. Julia was unable to sing along with the group. Her disruptive behavior forced a teacher to take her off the stage and leave the room. This may not sound like the most unusual event for a young child—but put in context, I understood right then and there that I needed to intervene.

  My husband, Ricky, and I banded together to read everything we could on the syndrome. We made a dogged effort and a conscious commitment to help our daughter and make ourselves into a family. It was our daily work. We learned that raising a child who has trouble bonding requires counterintuitive parenting techniques—some that disturbed and surprised family and friends. People could not understand when we’d respond to Julia’s fussing with a passive poker face rather than indulge her. We’d laugh during her tantrums until she abandoned them and moved on as though they’d never happened. They didn’t understand that Julia wasn’t willing to give hugs, and we didn’t ask her to do so. With the help of research and case studies, we had a toolbox. Some advice was invaluable; some failed. Some techniques worked for a while. We were living inside a laboratory. I knew how lucky I was to have a partner like Ricky, because so many marriages and homes are ravaged by the challenge of adopting difficult children.

  Over time, there was more engagement with Julia. It wasn’t necessarily loving and warm at first, but it moved in the right direction. We were drawing her out. She became more capable of showing anger rather than indifference. As her verbal skills developed, we had the advantage of being able to explain to her that we loved her and would never leave her. That we understood how scary it was for her to be loved by an adult and that she was safe.

  Progress took time, and the work of staying bonded with a wounded child is a lifetime endeavor. That’s okay though, because Julia has stepped out of the danger zone. She’s taken off her helmet and armor. She has let me become her mother. And I honor that trust by remembering, each and every day, how she struggles with subconscious demons and how mighty her battle is and will always be.

  Author’s note: Out of respect for their privacy, I have changed the names of some of the people who appear in these pages.

  PART ONE

  A Daughter Waiting in Siberia

  One

  Olga is waiting for us as we leave the baggage carousel. She is a pretty thing, with a round doll’s face and Delft-blue eyes. She holds a sign with our surname, Tannenbaum. After greeting us with a firm handshake, she takes us to an airport travel agent and helps my husband and me buy tickets to Novosibirsk, Siberia’s capital. We pass tired-looking soldiers in ill-fitting uniforms. Without pronouns she explains what will happen to us over the next twelve hours. But before anything happens, we go to the Novotel in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for four hours of sleep and a meal.

  Olga says, “Arrive 10:00 PM. Take to Domodedovo Airport.”

  Olga’s step-by-step instructions are a comfort; I already feel as if I have been carved out of my body. I am floating above myself, watching. Could be Sudafed’s mind-altering effects; more likely it is the enormity of our journey ahead. How does one prepare to meet her daughter for the first time? At a Siberian orphanage?

  I don’t know what time it is. It’s dark. Ricky and I are lying in the warm and comfortable hotel bed, giddy and disoriented. The alarm startles us. We shower, dress, and go to the hotel lobby atrium to eat, the first decent food we’ve had since we left New York. Ten sharp, Olga and the driver, her husband, pull up in front of the hotel. Olga asks us about our nap and dinner in clipped English while her stoic husband grabs our suitcase. We slide into a stale, smoky van with drawn-curtain windows and begin what seems like a covert operation. We are like refugees being smuggled across an illegal border, though we haven’t left Moscow yet.

  Domodedovo Airport, Moscow’s airport for domestic travel, is a shock—a place suspended in the mid-twentieth century with exposed steel girders and acrid smoke hanging in the air. Olga helps u
s check in. Everyone’s eyes follow us. Even with my fur coat and my husband’s Russian-style sheepskin hat, we are obvious outsiders. Men with deep fissures in their faces wear hats piled like birds’ nests and carry worn briefcases. Olga tells us they’re traders from the East. Some are accompanied by tall, elegant women who look like pigment-less stars from old Hollywood.

  Olga leaves us, our last link to anything accessible. My stomach somersaults.

  We amble into the waiting lounge, aided by our phonetic glossary of the Russian alphabet. A man is peering inside a briefcase propped on his thighs, cackling like a lunatic. With 9/11 still fresh in memory, he frightens me. No one here speaks English. I nudge my husband. “That guy doesn’t seem right. We should tell someone.”

  Ricky glances over at him, then at the briefcase. “He’s looking at an accounting ledger,” he says, stroking my shoulder. “Probably laughing because he’s made a lot of rubles.”

  Ricky and I have been together for only two years, but he knows how to diffuse my bomb. We had been childhood and college friends and reunited in romance in late 2000, when we were both thirty-eight. We married six months later and agreed we wanted a child. The fertility mill was a disaster—a large gamble with low odds—so we moved on to adoption. We chose a foreign adoption because we heard it was an easy though expensive transaction. No advertising in the Penny Saver papers. No birth mothers to deal with. No uncertain outcomes. Russia appealed to us because our grandparents hailed from Eastern Europe; we felt as though we were paying homage to our history by adopting from Russia.