What I don’t know about adoption could cover several continents. I think the longer I’m in the adoption world, the less that I truly know. I am not any kind of expert or guru simply by the fact that I have so many children.

Before I had so many, when I was debating about writing a thesis for my PhD or simply jumping off the academic safe place into the abyss of older child adoption, I thought I was fairly knowledgeable. Yet the higher I climbed in the university world, the more I realized how little I truly knew.

It’s a big world out there; chock full of information, facts and theories that one never has enough time to learn properly no matter how much one hungers to do so.

So the more I live with my children, the less I feel that I truly know. One thing is certain, I have 39 very unique children, extremely unique with layers of thoughts, needs, issues and challenges that I try and address constantly, not treating one like the other but narrowing in on everyone’s specific minutiae.

I can step back at times and comprehend what’s really going on despite protestations to the contrary. Pushing me away physically while yearning emotionally for a close relationship, yet not daring to ask or respond, not exposing their vulnerability or their lack of trust in adults.

My 17 year old left home in anger recently, staying with friends not very far away, still attending school but she'd quit her job. We’d just before that had a talk and laid out her plans to graduate on time, I was helping her purchase a car, and trying to teach her budgeting and other needed skills.

Being that close to a successful outcome then drove her to sabotage it. Chaos and confusion are more emotionally comforting to her; it was all she knew before her adoption at age 10, this feeling of success is unsettling, dredging up her inner feelings of unworthiness that I’d been fiercely combating via therapy and constant reassurances on my part.

But it appears it was all for naught. I wasted my time and energy as it so seems she’ll revert back to her former existence.

One thing I do know, one thing I feel confident about though is by looking at my older children who showed me over and over how they’ve ventured into early adulthood in rather destructive ways, but they’ve all eventually returned to a close relationship with the one mama who never quit.

So what little I do know is based on decades of learning from my children. Experienced based, walk-through-fire and figure it all out, flying by the seat of my pants and other clichés are the only way I can describe it all.

My 17 year old just asked to come by on Thanksgiving knowing I’d say yes. This is her first step in acknowledging her continued place in our family.

Too restless to continue on in school I never did write my thesis. Instead I chose that time in 1986 to contact an adoption agency and dive in to a very unknown world.

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