Tom and I just got home from six hours at the psychiatric hospital.  Not with our son, Tim, who I often write about in this blog, but with our daughter.

We adopted two of our three children – Tim and our daughter ('The Girl', I call her on my blog, as she prefers I not use her real name).  Tim’s mental health issues were a surprise, as we brought him home from the hospital 10 hours after birth, and we weren’t savvy enough to include mental health family history in the questions we asked of his birth parents.  The Girl is another story.  She came to us at age four from foster care, after being born severely premature, drug addicted, and cycling through approximately nine foster homes before ours, with a diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). We knew there would be issues. She’s come a long way, thanks to therapy and a more stable environment, but the years that Tim was home and seriously unstable took their toll, and two years ago her therapist said she was showing signs of PTSD, as we all were. 

Fast forward to three months ago when she suddenly stopped eating.