Rescuing Julia Twice

“Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt make it look easy,” writes Tina Traster in the opening pages of this intimate memoir. “They adopt kids from all corners of the world and the media broadcasts images of perfect Kodak moments. They'd have you believe that families bond and blend instantaneously. They don't. Not always.”

I
n moving and refreshingly candid prose,
Rescuing Julia Twice
tells Traster's foreign-adoption story, from dealing with the bleak landscape and inscrutable adoption handlers in Siberia, to her feelings of inexperience and ambivalence at being a new mother in her early forties, to her growing realization over months then years that something was “not quite right” with her daughter, Julia, who remained cold and emotionally detached. Why wouldn't she look her parents in the eye or accept their embraces? Why didn't she cry when she got hurt? Why didn't she make friends at school? Traster describes how uncertainty turned to despair as she blamed herself and her mothering skills for her daughter's troublesome behavioral issues, until she came to understand that Julia suffered from reactive attachment disorder, a serious condition associated with infants and young children who have been neglected, abused, or orphaned in infancy.

Hoping to help lift the veil of secrecy and shame that too often surrounds parents struggling with attachment issues, Traster describes how with work, commitment, and acceptance, she and her husband have been able to close the gulf between them and their daughter to form a loving bond, and concludes by providing practical advice, strategies, and resources for parents and caregivers.

“Tina Traster deftly tells of the slow dawning that things aren't quite right between her and her baby daughter. How Tina uncovers what had been concealed from her and turns around a devastating diagnosis is nothing short of stunning. This book will stay with you long after you close the cover.”

—L
ORI
H
OLDEN,
author of
The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption

“I am in awe of Tina and her husband, and the wonderful success they have had with Julia. If you are an adoptive parent, don't miss this book.”

—J
ANE
B
ALLBACK,
executive editor,
Adoption Voices

“Traster's experiences and the way she writes about the realities of adoption are very helpful to everyone raising a child with RAD or thinking of adopting a child who may have RAD.”

—I
RENE
C
LEMENTS,
president, National Foster Parent Association

“Tina's journey hit very close to home. I know it will offer understanding for those finding themselves on a similar path with adopted children they're helping to heal and love.”

—T
IFFANY
S
UDELA-JUNKER,
producer and director,
My Name Is Faith

“Having raised three kids with varying degrees of RAD, I know how much this book is needed!”

—J
ULIE
V
ALENTINE,
editor,
adopting.com

 

 

 

Copyright © 2014 by Tina Traster

All rights reserved

Foreword © 2014 by Melissa Fay Greene

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-678-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Traster, Tina.

Rescuing Julia twice : a mother's tale of Russian adoption and overcoming reactive attachment disorder / Tina Traster ; foreword by Melissa Fay Greene.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-678-3 (cloth)

1. Attachment disorder in children. 2. Adoptive parents—United States—Biography. 3. Intercountry adoption—Russia (Federation) 4. Intercountry adoption—United States. 5. Adopted children—Family relationships—United States. I. Title.

RJ507.A77T73 2014

618.92'85880092—dc23

[B]

2013039314

Interior design: Sarah Olson

http://juliaandme.com

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

 

 

 

 

This book is dedicated to Julia Sophie Tannenbaum, my daughter, my inspiration, my beacon. Our journey together has taught me to live life more patiently, to embrace challenges of the heart with fortitude, to welcome imperfect love with grace and acceptance.

Every dream of adoption—like every fantasy about parenthood—is really a dream of attachment. Whether or not a person ever uses the word
attachment
(the word was coined in the 1960s by the great twentieth-century British psychiatrist John Bowlby), a prospective mother or father surely envisions rocking a baby in a soft-lit nursery; running behind a tiny two-wheeler powered by a ferocious, chubby-legged piston; or slow-tossing a Wiffle ball toward a smudged little face all but hidden under a baseball cap. No one thinks attachment. It goes without saying that each imagined scene is knit together by empathy and love, eye contact and merriment, intimacy and laughter. You no more dream about attachment than you head to a clothing store with thoughts of well-made stitches and seams. And if all goes well with a baby—if he or she is born healthy and enjoys tender, attentive nurturing from the first moments of life—then the parents' handmade scrapbooks and online photo albums will swell with happiness, showering the world with glimpses of first smiles, first steps, first birthday candles, and first days of school.

Human babies are pretty resilient. The vast majority are born well-equipped with all the darling qualities that draw parents close. The vast majority are wired to fall madly in love with their cooing, looming, giant parents. It's an obvious evolutionary mechanism. But what of babies who, through no fault of their own, through congenital issues,
illness, birth trauma, or socioeconomic forces that pry them from their biological parents' arms, are unable to attract permanent devoted care-givers and cannot seem to locate an adult to adore? A baby will try and try and try, but little by little—each infant is different—a touch of baby despair appears. True grief enters when a baby—say a baby abandoned to an overcrowded institution with an underpaid, rotating staff of caregivers—feels itself cast loose from humanity, sailing alone across a black Arctic sea on an ice floe beyond sight of shore.

What happens to such a baby if she is not rescued before the light in her eyes has gone out? When a baby or young child who has lost her optimism and love is finally dragged out of her bed and placed in the arms of an adoptive parent—can the sweet pas de deux begin? Not necessarily. When a baby or young child has learned that no one is coming; that no one thinks he or she is the cutest little baby on earth; that he or she must weather hunger, cold, and sickness in solitary, those are hard lessons to unlearn. It's nearly impossible to convince a child that he or she is no longer alone in the universe. When a child belatedly offered family life fiercely rejects the proposition that one or more loving adults has now arrived for good, the professionals begin to speak of attachment as in “attachment issues” or “attachment disorder.”

And a new parent's dream of singing lullabies to a drowsy child, of chasing after a tiny two-wheeler while screaming encouragement, of softly tossing a Wiffle ball light as air must be postponed in deference to simpler hopes: the dream that the child will look into her parent's eyes and smile; that the distressed child will seek out the new mother or father above all others; that the hungry child will accept food from the parent; that the enraged child will allow the mother or father to help her find peace.

This is the story of one girl among millions, in whose eyes the light of hope and love and happiness faded and then flickered out. It's the story of one mother and father among millions, for whom the girl was not a throwaway, not one in a million, but the most precious of all children. Finally it's the story of how those parents dedicated their lives to rekindling the light in their daughter's eyes and how all three have been
fantastically enlarged, rewarded, and enriched by the happy result.

Melissa Fay Greene
is the award-winning author of five books of non-fiction, including
There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Country's Children,
about the HIV/AIDS African orphan crisis, and
No Biking in the House Without a Helmet,
about raising her family. She and her husband are the parents of nine children—four by birth and five by adoption.