My almost 30 year old daughter, Cristy, said it best, “There’s no shame in my story.” And she is so correct, what happened to her, happened to her, she was obviously not a willing participant in the circumstances that led her, and her siblings, into the foster care system, nor did she cause nor provoke the sexual abuse that occurred.

At age 12 when she joined our family, she was in terrible shape. Eventually diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, she put us through a decade of Hell. There’s no better word to describe what we went through, and I see other adoptive parents out there nodding their heads in recognition and agreement.

Cristy somehow even survived the loss of her three children, that she placed with me willingly. We’ve both been honest with the kids, now 6, 9 and 10; and they understand the circumstances. The best part has been Cristy’s continued participation in their lives, as she quickly learned to put their interests first, and I’m the first to applaud her and remark on how few clashes we’ve had in these past ten years.

She has spoken before parent groups at an adoption agency, she’s been published in an adoption magazine, detailing her struggles, and she did it for one reason. She wants other adoptive parents to understand how damaged the children are that are coming out of the system. She wants the new parents to comprehend that these negative actions that will then ensue, come solely from the child’s trauma and it isn’t about the new parent, it’s about the past. And Cristy greatly rewarded my commitment to her by coming out on the other side of all this, a strong, beautiful, intelligent and recovered woman. She's pictured above wearing red.

She acknowledged her past, has worked through it, read many, many books, even joined a psychology book club, we’ve talked about it between us for nearly 20 years now, when she finally understood it wasn’t her fault, she began to mature; but that did not occur until her early 20s.

Now she is majoring in psychology, realizing the profound depths of the trauma that has been dealt to my children, causing many to be troubled, some refusing to even believe they have a problem, and many more on the other side of the battle after accepting their losses, learning strong coping skills, and a new reality in which they are emotionally strong and not fixated on the past, or on a persecution, victim complex.

Even now Cristy’s using what she’s learning, taking one of my angry, aggressive, nine year old daughters under her wing and showing her a calmer way to express her feelings through art. Her own birth daughter, also 9, has lived with me since birth, and is fairly well-adjusted (considering she lives amongst everyone else’s issues), also artistic and her own art subsequently reflects beauty, nature and love.

At the school where she’s a full-time parapro, Cristy is mentoring several young Hispanic girls, pre-teens, who are troubled and involved with gang lifestyles. What better way for Cristy to give back, to use what she has discovered to help others?

She shares her positive, successful story every chance she gets, stressing that the bottom line is that all children need to grow up in loving, supporting families, and she encourages me often to keep on telling it like it is, to explain to adoptive parents ‘why’ the kids act out, and to keep trying to model a lifelong commitment to both the other families and to our own.

Until one recognizes a problem, it cannot be solved.