I feel as if I’ve been dragged behind a speeding jet readying itself for takeoff…only to be dropped from the sky and hit by an 18 wheeler. Standing back up, an eagle must have swooped down and swiped my head, but hey I’m still standing.

In our month long ordeal, an emotional drought if you will, as others pointed fingers at my entire family while an amazing amount of friends, counselors and therapists rallied, we finally realized August was over and we’d made it.

Stronger than ever, totally banged up and disillusioned, yet more emotionally attached to each other, my children and I are facing a strenuous soccer season where we’ll now go through the next two months with 13 kids playing on four different teams with two practices each until the game schedule comes out.

That’s what I’m talking about.

I signed up to be Big Mama, to deal with our schedules, enormous grocery adventures, laundry marathons and school challenges yet I’ve also been dragged into a morass of exploding issues in traumatized kids while professionals slowly realize there aren’t many services out there to help.

Would I do this again, knowing what all I would encounter? Yes, I would, but I’m glad I didn’t know it was coming.

More than half of my children are now grown up and on their own, coming back to help or to support me, concrete examples that I must have done something right. Yet I feel as if the glory belongs to the kids who chose to make good decisions, who eventually learned to trust me and to make me proud. That’s all I ever wanted from them.

Raising traumatized children must be tougher than being a Marine. It is relentlessly exhausting, often thankless and even scary. My largest skirmish at the moment involves securing non-existent mental services for a very large, severely emotionally disturbed child. I’ve been here before with another child before so many budget cuts though.

My main purpose in blogging is to illustrate that this can be done, us adoptive parents can survive this treacherous journey. Let me slip down South and remind us all, “It ain’t easy,” but it is possible.