فصل 16

CHAPTER 16

The Lie

I CAN’T TELL THE TRUTH

Do I have the courage to tell you this whole story?

That’s what I’m asking myself even as I type these words. For days now, in moments when my mind is spinning with all the questions and what-ifs, I’ve asked myself how I would explain all of this . . . How I could tell you this story.

Honestly? I don’t want to.

I want to keep it close to my heart, to hide it away in the hopes that it will hurt me less if it stays hidden. But then I understand that when things are hidden, we give power to the fear, the negativity, the lies. I don’t want to allow that to happen. I want so badly to be honest about our experience—mostly because I didn’t know this experience was even a possibility and because I wish I had truly understood.

Would it have changed our choices?

I’m not sure. But the hope that by being honest about what’s happened to our family we might empower or inform other prospective adoptive families is what has me writing these words down now. I hope I have the courage to include them in this book, because truthfully, after building a career based on total honesty . . . I hesitate telling you this now.

But here it is.

When I was pregnant with our son Ford, we decided that we wanted to adopt a little girl someday. As Christians we are called to care for the orphans, the widows, and the oppressed. These are not just a handful of words from the Bible; they are the tenets of my faith. And so we began to research our options and settled on international adoption. Our reasoning—the irony of which is not lost on me in hindsight—was that we were afraid of involvement from biological parents. We were so naïve about so many things back then, but our fear was that biological parents might come back into the picture and take the baby back. We reasoned that if we were an ocean apart, that scenario would be impossible. Eventually we narrowed our search down to Ethiopia.

I remember feeling so overwhelmed by the paperwork, the blood tests, the home visits. I had no idea we were at the very beginning of a journey that would last nearly half a decade. So without any real perspective, I planned and dreamed and waited for news from our agency that we were slowly inching our way up the list. We were in the Ethiopian program for two years.

Toward the end of the second year we received word that Ethiopia was “pausing” its adoption program, and our agency told us to consider moving to another country’s program. I felt frozen about what to do next. Moving to a new country meant starting all over again. New paperwork, new meetings, new waiting lists . . . I believed God had called us to Ethiopia, and I believed if we were faithful he would make a way. We decided to stay in the program. Every month we’d get an email from the agency.

Still no movement.

The government office that handles adoptions is still on hiatus.

No word.

Six months later they closed adoptions to the United States completely.

I felt stunned and unsure. If God had called us here, and if nothing came out of the work and pain and fear, what had been the point? All the dreams I’d had about going to Africa as a family to meet our daughter made me feel foolish in retrospect. For the first time I asked myself questions that would pop up again and again over the next several years Should we still try and adopt? Should we just feel content with the incredible blessing we have in our three sons? Should we give up?

I am not by nature someone who sits long with a problem. I am also not someone who gives up. I started to pray and research and scour the internet for what we should do next.

Maybe we were supposed to do domestic adoption . . . Maybe we’d gone through what we did because we were always meant to adopt our daughter from the States and she wasn’t even born yet. That answer felt right, so I researched some more.

The more I looked into what was available, the more I believed we should adopt from foster care. We felt called to Ethiopia because they have an unrelenting orphan crisis, and we thought we could help there in some small way. Foster care was the same for me. There were so many children in Los Angeles County who needed love and care; both were things we could offer in abundance. In LA, you have to commit to doing foster care before you can be entered into the adoption program. At first we were terrified of what this would mean for our family or how it would affect our boys. Then we decided that exposing the kids to this reality and showing them how we could tangibly show up for other families who need us was worth it.

We entered the system for foster-to-adopt.

What we didn’t know at the time was how difficult that journey was. We didn’t understand that we’d get foster placement with a medically frail baby and that the department would have no knowledge of her extreme medical need. We didn’t know that they would call us three days after she arrived and beg us to take her two-year-old sister—going from a family of five to a family of seven in a matter of days. We didn’t understand the delicate dance of managing a relationship with biological parents who were, in many ways, children themselves. I personally didn’t understand how traumatic it would be for me when the girls eventually transitioned out three months later.

I mourned the loss of the foster girls and tried to wrap my brain around what I now knew about this broken system. I thought we’d have months before we got a call for adoptive placement.

It came thirty-four days later.

I was sitting in my office at work when I received an email from our social worker. The subject line was Twins?

We never anticipated taking twins. We weren’t signed up for two babies at all, but apparently agreeing to take on the second girl in our foster care journey had made it possible for us to consider it.

We weren’t told much about them. The girls were three days old, they’d been abandoned by their mother at the hospital . . . and we had thirty minutes to decide. We sat on the phone together and talked through it while freaking out. Newborn twins? Could we do it? Were we ready after so recently experiencing the loss in foster care? We prayed it over, and ultimately we called the social worker and said the biggest yes of our whole lives.

After waiting four years for an adoption call, we barely slept that night. We spent hours coming up with names. We were so excited we couldn’t eat the day we went to pick them up. At the hospital I thought I might be sick waiting for them to bring the babies into the room. And then there they were—so precious and tiny and beautiful I felt like the luckiest person in the whole world because they were ours. Certainly I knew that in foster-to-adopt there would be hurdles and roadblocks, but the story we were told about them led us to believe that reunification was a slim possibility. We took them home and didn’t sleep for days because, well, newborn twins. But we didn’t even care. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

Four days later, at ten o’clock at night, the police rang our doorbell.

What a harsh and shocking sound. I was so surprised when I heard the doorbell that night that I wondered if a package was being delivered—that’s how outside the realm of possibility this was for us. The doorbell rang in the middle of the night and my first thought was, Is that the almond butter I ordered?

I think that memory is the hardest for me; I mark it as the last moment I still held on to a naïveté about how things really functioned in the world we were now a part of.

It wasn’t FedEx.

It was two police officers, informing us that someone had made an anonymous call to the child abuse hotline about our family for our previous foster care placement.

I stood on my front porch wearing boxer shorts with little hearts on them. My mind was foggy from sleep deprivation, and I tried so hard to understand the words that were coming out of their mouths.

Over the next few days I would learn just how common this practice is in the foster care system. Because the child abuse hotline is anonymous, anyone can do it. Anyone can say whatever they want. They can do it for spite, to harm your family, to draw attention away from themselves, or a million other reasons I’d prefer not to think about anymore. I obsessed over them for days, and the obsessing did nothing. No matter what we said or did, we could not escape it. The result of a phone call like that is an intense investigation.

Now, let me pause here and say that an investigation is necessary. Of course it is. Child abuse is a horrendous, deplorable crime, and if the system doesn’t investigate it, how will they protect the children in foster care? I understand this on an intellectual level. On another level, I had to sit in my living room and listen to someone from the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) ask my sons questions about whether or not “Mommy and Daddy ever hit each other when they got really, really mad.” Or if someone ever “touched them underneath their underwear.”

I tried so hard to be strong for my boys in those moments. I tried to keep a smile on my face while holding an eight-day-old baby and telling them, “It’s okay, buddy, just answer them honestly.”

When the boys left the room, I sobbed quietly while signing documents that gave the DCFS office the right to pull the boys’ medical records, to review their school documents, and to ask them further questions.

The whole time the litany that kept playing on repeat in my mind was, I am the one who pushed us to do foster care. I exposed my family to this system. I worked so hard to make sure my children would never experience the trauma I’d experienced as a girl, yet I’d unwittingly called it down on our family.

I had no idea.

I was so extremely naïve about what could happen to us. I assumed that the worst thing we’d manage would be the trauma the children in foster care had been exposed to . . . It never occurred to me we’d be attacked simply by virtue of being involved in that world. And I knew—we knew—we were completely innocent of this suspicion, but ultimately our record will show “inconclusive.” Not “innocent,” because how can they clearly say we are innocent when they are working with accusations and the child in question is too young to speak? This isn’t a system where you are innocent until proven guilty. This is a system where you are guilty until deemed inconclusive.

During this time so many people on social media asked me why I was suddenly so skinny . . . They wanted to know which diet I was doing so they could try it too. It was because for weeks we had investigators from Child Protective Services sitting in our living room questioning our character, asking us if we’d ever gotten so upset we’d shaken a baby.

But are you sure, Mrs. Hollis? Maybe when you were really overwhelmed?

I barely ate. I couldn’t sleep without taking medication to help me.

All of this happened while we had newborn twins.

And then, in the midst of this nightmare of pain and confusion, we found out that the girls weren’t really available for adoption. Their biological father wanted them. Turns out, he’d always wanted them and we’d never been told. They were never actually up for adoption. They were definitively in foster care and had only needed placement until his court date. The justification for the omission of this information from the social worker when we found out was, “Well, they could be up for adoption at some point if he steps out of line.”

The reasoning was disgusting, frankly—but honestly, I can’t even blame her. I can’t fathom how many children’s files come across her desk in a given week. I can’t even imagine how many kids she’s desperately trying to find a bed for. So if she has newborn twins popping up in foster care and she can’t find a home for them (something we later found out had happened), well then, do you reach out to a good family who’s licensed to take two at once? Do you mention that they’re abandoned but leave out details about other biological family because the alternative is that they don’t have anywhere to go? Do you take advantage of a family who is strong and capable because you have three-day-old babies who are vulnerable?

Probably. And that’s exactly what happened to us.

I’m trying to think of how to explain the way this knowledge hit me, and I just don’t have the words.

We got a call for the twins after four years of waiting to adopt. That call felt like the answer to years of prayer. But soon we were living a nightmare.

When they left, I felt cheated. I felt tricked. I felt devastated to the marrow of my bones. But it feels important to tell you that it was ultimately our decision to let them go. Honesty was not always offered to us during this process, which is why it feels so important for me to speak it here We could have agreed to keep the twins. We could have signed on for nine months or twelve months or eighteen months of foster care with the court-ordered two-hour visits, three times each week with the biological father, in the hopes that maybe it would turn into adoption.

We couldn’t do it.

Or, I suppose that’s not right. We could have done it . . . but my heart was shredded and my faith in the system was gone.

I fought with myself. Every day for weeks I fought with myself and tried to think of solutions. Maybe if we . . . But what if they . . . Maybe the dad would . . .

I fought with God too.

Him most of all.

What was all this for? Why were we here? What did we do to deserve any of this? What about the girls? The ones I named and walked the room with for hours as they worked drugs from their system? What about Atticus, with her big, bright eyes? What about Elliott, who was smaller and needed extra cuddles? What will become of her, Lord?

I cried.

I cried so much my eyes were swollen all the time. I cried when I held the girls. I cried when I hesitated to hold the girls, when I warned myself not to keep attaching to someone I would not get to hold on to. I cried when I saw other new mamas on Instagram . . . A few weeks before I had thought we were all part of a tribe.

After all this happened, Dave and I felt so alone. Who could possibly understand what we’d gone through? Would people even believe us when we told them we were being accused of something so far beyond reality for our family we didn’t even know it existed? Would anyone understand what it feels like to know that some anonymous person was so vindictive they’d pull us into this horrific scenario just for spite? Will the people who read this story shake their heads and say, “Well, that’s what you get for going through foster care”?

It’s a mess. It’s all a big, hard mess—and it wasn’t even finished. Even after the twins left, we still had to endure the investigation—because it wasn’t just about judging us for children in the system; it was judging if we were suitable to care for all children, including our own. Since we’d opened our home, our medical paperwork, our school files, access to friends and colleagues who can vouch for us as parents—no evidence existed to validate the phony claim.

Nonetheless, it was terrifying. It was ugly and traumatic, as if we were being abused. We had been attacked, and for weeks and weeks we lived in a state of shock.

I’ve been afraid to write this story. I hesitate to tell you our particular reality because I still believe that the children in foster care deserve advocates. But I think if we had been better prepared for the realities—that abuse allegations are an extremely common occurrence; that you might get inaccurate or misleading information about the children; that regardless of your best intentions, your heart might be broken in ways you can’t fathom. I think if we had been informed, I wouldn’t feel so hurt now.

Maybe I could have better prepared myself. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Maybe is the word that plagued me all day long. In the midst of all of the pain and questioning and wondering, we had something big to decide Would we continue to try and adopt?

My gut instinct said absolutely not.

International adoption and foster-to-adopt weren’t areas we felt comfortable exploring anymore, which left us with independent adoption. Dave had preferred this option from the beginning, but I felt like there was a greater need in international or foster care. But now he was asking me to consider it again, and I needed to make a decision quickly.

One of the hardest parts about adoption is how long it takes. So even if I wasn’t sure about moving forward, I knew that in order to secure any chance for the future, we’d need to start a new path as soon as possible. Home visits, blood work, applications, hundreds of pages to fill out . . . It takes a while, and unfortunately, none of it is transferable, so we had to start from scratch. Also, we knew nothing about this world or how to even go about it. Did we go through a domestic agency? Should we get an attorney? It all felt so daunting, especially after what we’d just gone through.

I cannot tell you how incredible my husband was during this time period. If you ask most adoptive couples, they’ll tell you that the wife originally came up with the idea. Men statistically struggle with the concept of adoption at first. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but most of the time women are the ones who push for it. I was the one who pushed for international adoption, and later, I was the one who urged him to consider foster-to-adopt. Now I was wrung out and incapable of feeling hopeful, but Dave encouraged me to reconsider. I’ll remember that conversation for the rest of my life . . . I sobbed in the backyard where the kids couldn’t hear us, while he fought for our dream of having a daughter.

“Yes, it’s hard! But our dream didn’t go away because it got hard, Rachel. We’re going to have a daughter even if it takes longer . . . The time will pass anyway. We can’t give up!”

It was Dave who did the research on an adoption attorney. It was Dave who called friends and colleagues and doctors’ offices to get referrals on where we should go. It was Dave who sat on the floor while I typed the first draft of this chapter. He had paperwork spread out in every direction on the first day of his holiday break while he uploaded document after document to our new adoption agency.

The independent adoption process felt more daunting to me than anything we’d done before. In that process a birth mom chooses you to be the parents of her child—which means being in competition with thousands of couples all over the country. It also meant that whenever a mother came up who had criteria that matched with ours, I would get a call from our attorney, who then asked us to call a stranger and have the most surreal conversations. This happened three times in the first two months. I think the optimistic view should have been that we had three opportunities in such a short time, but the truth—because I’m trying to be totally honest with you—is that those experiences felt brutal. I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, but it was impossible not to get excited when I spoke to a birth mom. I’d hear about her due date and listen to her story and start to think, Oh my gosh, what if this is the one? What if we have a baby in April?

When we weren’t the family she chose, I’d feel foolish for being hopeful. I’d wonder if this was all a big waste of time or a painful experiment that led nowhere. Were we ever going to have a daughter? Should we still even want one? I’d wonder. And my sadness . . . was it disrespectful to be sad when I had three beautiful boys and other families didn’t have any? I would sit in our bathroom and cry while my mind spun with all of these questions. I never truly found answers.

What I did cling to was faith. Sometimes that faith was tenuous, as though I could barely hang on to it. But it was still there—that small voice that urged me to keep trying. Just one more step, God would whisper. “Tomorrow will be better,” Dave would tell me. Someday I’ll hold my daughter in my arms and I’ll understand why I waited for her, I reminded myself over and over again.

During those months that we waited, I walked in faith. My steps weren’t bold or filled with the bravado I’d had at the beginning of the journey nearly five years before. My faith walk became cautious and unsure. I blindly stumbled my way down a path I could not see. I chose to move forward because, while I knew I would find pain, I also knew I would draw strength. I could look at the six months prior or five years in total and choose to be angry. Or I could look at the whole long journey and recognize all that we’d been given.

We knew about the orphan crises, both domestic and international. We donated time and money and prayers and resources to helping with something that wasn’t even on our radar before. That is why I kept walking in faith.

We got to know and love four little girls, and even if we never see them again, our lives are better because we were connected for a time. That is why I kept walking in faith.

We built a stronger marriage. If you go through that much together, it will either make you stronger or break you apart. Dave and I sat in a foxhole of paperwork and interviews and blood tests and invasive questions. Later, we learned how to care for toddlers with severe trauma and newborn twins who screamed all night. We have laughed and cried and come out the other side braver, bolder, and more connected. That is why I kept walking in faith.

I can think of so many good things that came out of all that happened, which gives me the courage to take another step. It’s why I kept calling birth moms even if it meant being disappointed when it didn’t work out. It’s why I kept praying for our daughter, not knowing who she was or how long it would take us to meet her.

It’s why I’ll stay hopeful even when I’m feeling weary. It’s why I’ll keep telling our story even when it’s painful to talk about. Because at the end of all of this, I don’t want you to see someone who went through a long, intense process to adopt a little girl. I want you to see someone who kept showing up again and again, even when it was tearing her apart. I want you to see someone who kept walking in faith because she understood that God’s plan for her life was magnificent—even if it was never easy. And even if it wasn’t easy, she was bold and courageous and honest even when the truth was hard to share.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. Taking the plunge. Finding the courage to be honest about who you are or what you’re going through is like throwing yourself into the deep end of the pool and fighting to swim once you hit the cold water. It won’t necessarily be pleasant, but once you’re in, it’s done. The longer you live in a state of honesty, the easier it becomes to simply exist there all the time.

2. Seeking out other truth tellers. Surround yourself with people who’ve also gone through the hardship of being honest about their feelings. They can talk to you about how it felt and how they found the courage. They can also stand as an example of someone who admitted their hardship and lived to tell about it.

3. Researching stories similar to my own. If we had done more advance research into foster care in LA, what happened wouldn’t have been so shocking to us. Having walked through it now, and knowing more people who have too, makes us realize how common our experience was. During the process we felt so alone, and seeking out a community who understood our path would have helped so much.