jade

I feel like this has been the year Adara learned to be jaded - to not trust. The year doctors went from mildly annoying people with fun toys to nasty people who cut you open, break your bones and stick hunks of metal in you. Imprison you in fiberglass and subject you to months of x-rays and probings. And your parents sanction all of it.

Is it a developmental coincidence that this is the summer she learned to fear? Grasped the concept "If you don't do x, you won't get to do y?" Learned to future-trip, and regret the past?

I feel sometimes like in my effort to heal her hip I have subjected her to the ultimate violation, right down to her very bones and her innermost psyche. I should be excited for the developmental leaps, that she can process so much information so much more maturely, that she is getting the tools to navigate the world, but at what price?

And how do we rebuild the trust? Is this just growing up? I have always enjoyed what I have come to call the slow dance of Adara's development. Being privy to the effort in the first steps, the first words, the first grasping of concepts. But to draw out this one just seems so unfair. It is excruciating to watch her grasp the fear without the ability to see through to the other side of the terror. To mourn and grieve without the ability to contextualize, or to really verbalize. Is this just what kids do? Am I just a little slow on the uptake? Time to find a good family therapist for all of us?