Lux et umbra vicissum…

I was getting ready to write a rant about an email a friend received, but I realized as I was thinking it through that a good portion of my rant would address PAD, or Post Adoption Depression, so I decided I should make a separate post on that first.

Being part of the adoption community (and specifically the Christian adoption community), we’ve heard all kinds of stories about how people have felt they’ve been attacked spiritually when they went through their adoptions. I’ll address some of the issues that have come up in my other post, but one major one that keeps coming up is PAD. Unfortunately, it isn’t a widely known or understood condition, so many adoptive parents don’t even realize it can happen. Even among those who do, many don’t think it will happen to them.

I, on the other hand, knew that I was prone to this sort of thing. It’s my weak link, if you will. So I read up on it as much as I could leading up to our first adoption, and when it did hit, I was as prepared as a person can be for that sort of thing… which, granted, isn’t much.

Post Adoption Depression is a documented issue, much like Post-partum Depression (PPD), only it’s not as well understood. It’s pretty clear with PPD that hormones play a large part in the things people experience. Well, adoption shouldn’t create those same hormones, you would think, and yet people who experience PAD report many of the same symptoms as people experiencing PPD. (Hormones are funny things, anyway. I know women who started lactating after adopting a baby.) Stress certainly plays a part in bringing it on, but even people who don’t normally have negative reactions to stress have had trouble with PAD.

For many women, the negative thoughts and feelings they have are actually directed against their newly adopted child. Mothers have reported feeling everything from apathy to hatred for their new son or daughter. They often wonder why they brought this extra person in to ruin their family. These moms usually say they need regular times away from the child, even if it’s just locking themselves in a bathroom for a bit, because they’re afraid they may lash out at the kids if they don’t. Sound awful? It is. And the moms usually feel terribly guilty about all of the thoughts and feelings they’re having, which makes everything worse. Put on top of that that many of these mothers report that the children are actually great… fairly well-behaved, happy little individuals. (Adopted children with issues is another topic in and of itself.) Just be careful not to judge these mothers. These women are fighting a terrible beast. Pray for them.

My PAD took another common form: lack of energy and feelings of complete failure. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed in the mornings. I couldn’t handle everyday issues. A child simply asking me for a drink could send me into a panic attack. It was like stress overload, and all I wanted to do was hide in a hole somewhere. I knew I wasn’t being a good wife and mother, and the guilt of that was overwhelming. I felt like I was failing in all of the areas that really mattered.

One thing that really helped me was an article that I read before the adoption by Melissa Faye Greene. She’s one of those women who comes across as having things pretty much together and all-around being a wonderful person with a real heart for orphans, and yet she wrote a very telling account of her own battle with PAD. It helped me to know that other women were fighting these battles, and that others were coming out victorious on the other side. Part of it is time, part of it may be counseling, and part of it may be medication, but what matters is that it does get better.

I keep thinking that I want to write to the Washington Post Magazine editor to suggest doing an article on PAD. There’s a large number of adoptive families in the Washington DC metro area, and it’s amazing how many of them have never even heard of it. And article wouldn’t prevent it from happening, but it’s amazing how much difference it can make to know you’re not alone.