There was a time last year when I didn’t know if we could survive the impact that grief, loss, and trauma were   having on our family.  After 22 months of tumult, with the situation worsening, we finally sought professional help.  We were 20 months later than we should have been.  I learned some important lessons in our quest, one of which is that good help is hard to find.  We had some false starts along the way, but after six months we found ourselves sitting with our daughter in a therapist’s office.  Our despair was great, we were exhausted, but the therapist shared her confidence and strength with us. Hope began to flow through our veins.

We have the great opportunity to work with one of the top adoption therapists in the country, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am.  Deborah Gray is a gift to the adoption community.  Although she can personally work with only a small number of families, her teaching reaches far and wide through her two books, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents, and Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience After Neglect and Trauma, as well as her programs for training other therapists.

I was recently asked what a therapy session “looks like”, and while I can’t answer for any other therapist, or for any other family, I can tell you what a typical appointment is like for us.

We live 300 miles from Deborah’s office in the Seattle area, so our appointments begin with a road trip.  We pack on Saturday night and generally leave Sunday morning.  We have missed a lot of church since beginning therapy last June, but we often listen to a sermon downloaded to my iPod while we drive, which sustains us.

Upon arriving in Seattle, we generally eat dinner and visit our oldest daughter who is in medical school at the University of Washington.  Then we head to our friends’ house where we will stay the night.  They have three young children, including one daughter adopted from Ethiopia, so the kids are always excited to see each other and try to sneak in a little playtime before bed.

We have learned that Dimples needs an early bedtime the night before therapy.  Once we made the mistake of keeping her up too late on a Sunday night and she fell asleep while waiting for her appointment.  Let’s just say it wasn’t our most productive therapy time.

On Monday morning our appointment begins when Deborah greets us in the waiting room, most often with small cans of apple juice for each of us.  She wants Dimples to feel physically good, with balanced blood sugar, before beginning her work.  Russ and I head back to Deborah’s office with her, leaving Dimples in the waiting room with the activities we brought along just for this time.  We have a tote bag with paper, markers, and rubber stamps that we often bring; Dimples also usually keeps my iPod for company.

Together the three of us review the past two weeks – what we have tried, what has worked and what hasn’t, other things going on in Dimples’ life, challenges, etc.  Deborah often gives us specific tools to use in the upcoming weeks and I take notes in the hope that I won’t forget a word she says.  Many times this turns into therapy for us as we process our own feelings about how grief, trauma, and attachment issues are affecting our family.

Then Deborah goes to the waiting room and brings Dimples back to join us; Deborah always greets her very warmly and Dimples adores her.  From that moment, it is clear that Deborah is in charge.  She expects respectful behavior and if that is lacking, she immediately addresses it.  She often picks up on small behaviors we find irritating but have not yet begun to tackle; once we see her deal with it, we can follow her example.

Dimples sits in the middle of the sofa between Deborah and one of us, while the other parent sits in a nearby chair.  Deborah often sets her child-size table in front of the sofa with a drawing tablet and set of special gel-pens on it.  After a few pleasantries are exchanged with Dimples (accompanied with loads of affirmation and genuine caring), Deborah picks up the drawing tablet and tells Dimples what we are going to work on.  The issue is often related to her earlier discussion with me and Russ, but it may also be a more long-term therapeutic task such as mapping Dimples’ life story.

The real work is just starting.

~Lisa

Watch tomorrow for Part 2 of What Does Therapy Look Like?

Lisa writes about attachment and trauma, sensory issues, and life as the mother of eleven children at A Bushel and A Peck. Please join the conversation.