Welcome to Not Fit for the Feed. Confessions and conversations about parenting through the hard stuff. I'm Brittany Shootman. I'm not a therapist or an expert on parenting. I've just survived a lot of things I didn't see coming, and it often felt like I was going through it alone. But here's what I've learned. When we release our fears and our pain out into the sunshine, instead of keeping them locked away, they lose their power over us and we stop being alone in them. So pull up a chair and let's get started. Today's episode is about the night something in me broke. And my realization that in spite of it, I could keep going. I just couldn't take one more minute in my house with my four kids. I couldn't do it. I was completely underwater. It was ten o'clock at night and totally dark except for the street and front porch lights of the surrounding houses. And our house sat in the center of the cul-de-sac. It was Mediterranean style and perched at the top of the hill. It had beautiful dark wood double front doors that opened onto a porch with staircases and fancy balustrades to either side that reached down to the front sidewalk. When I had first seen it, it reminded me of the type of place where a princess might emerge. But on this night, a stressed-out 47-year-old mother of four stumbled down the stairs. I was so distraught and worn out that I literally made it to the middle of the cul-de-sac and just lay down on the street. I looked up at the night sky and just screamed while tears flowed down my cheeks. And I didn't care if anyone saw or heard me. Or maybe, I don't know, my subconscious did want someone, anyone to hear, so I could be rescued from my life. I'm sure that anyone who was looking at the facade of that life would have been surprised to hear this because it probably looked like I had a dream life. I was married to my soulmate. We lived in an affluent part of town. Our neighborhood was gated and beautifully manicured. We drove expensive cars and we lived in a 6,700 square foot home with a three-car garage and a pool. We had four kids, ranging in age from six to sixteen. The two older kids were our biological sons, and the two younger girls had been recently adopted from Ethiopia. People were impressed that we would take on the adoption of two older children, because the girls were nine and five when we adopted them. Our friends had been surprised that we would choose to re-up, as they called it, when our boys were 11 and 15. But we felt like it was the right decision, and so we pushed ahead with full steam. However, two weeks after bringing the girls home, it was obvious that we had underestimated how difficult this was going to be. The girls didn't speak English and had never been to school. They didn't understand time or the calendar. They didn't even know where to put toilet paper. They were adorable, but they had huge personalities. The older daughter, Remy, wanted to know everything and do everything and be a part of everything. She was obviously smart, but she was also pushy and loud, and she needed attention twenty four seven. It made some sense that she wanted and needed attention from a mom because for the last year or two of her biological mom's life, her mother had been dying. But it was more than that. She wanted attention from everyone around her. It felt like she needed to be at the center of everything all the time. If the room's attention drifted away from her for more than a few minutes, she found a way to pull it back. She either picked a fight with Sam, her younger son, or tried to get Will, our older son, to interact with her, or she began to talk about herself and what she considered to be her best attributes, to no one in particular. I already loved her fiercely, but she wore me out completely, sometimes to the same five minutes. The younger daughter, Tara, was much more reserved and quiet, but she could become angry and sullen in an instant. She wanted her way, and when she didn't get it, she threw tantrums that could last hours. I would have to sit on the floor holding her in my lap so she wouldn't lash out at the things around her. We had recently been driving to the doctor's office for an allergy checkup because her nose was constantly running. I had both girls in the car with me, and as we were exiting the highway, Tara said she wanted to get out of the car. I told her she couldn't get out of the car and that she needed to stay in her booster seat. I was talking to her and watching her in the rear view mirror, and she looked right at me and opened her car door. I almost had a heart attack. I know I screamed and tried to slow down the car and pulled to the side of the road as quickly as possible. Remy was yelling at Tara as well to close the door, and when I came to a stop, I tried to explain to her how dangerous it was for her to open the door while I was driving, but she had no context and too little language to really understand it. So I just got out of the car, walked to her side, and firmly shut the door. I was shaken, but we still had a doctor's appointment to make. Tara did just fine at the doctor, so afterward I decided to treat the girls by taking them to look at the koi pond on the grounds of the medical offices. They'd never seen anything like it, and they really enjoyed walking around the pond and watching the fish swim, but eventually it was time to go. Tara, however, didn't want to leave, and so she refused to follow Remy and I to the car. I ended up having to chase her around the koi pond, and when I finally grabbed her, she kicked so much that one of her flip-flops flew off. They were purple and sparkly, and she loved them so she was so angry that she didn't have both shoes, and she just kept fighting me to put her down. But I knew that putting her down would just start the whole koi pond chase over again, so I carried her to the car while she screamed and cried and kicked. I made sure to put the child locks on before we set out for home. And honestly, I didn't feel badly about leaving the purple flip-flop behind. Maybe it would serve as a lesson for her to not fight me. So, in general, life with the girls at this time was chaotic because they never stopped moving, were constantly trying to push every button, turn every knob, and open every door, and they pawed at the boys trying to get their attention. Sadly, on most accounts, these were unwelcome advances, especially by our oldest son Will, who was not in favor of the adoption. He had played along with the idea for about 18 months and then started to really dig his heels in. He just couldn't understand how we could love two little girls we didn't really know. He was willing to concede that the idea of adoption was a good one and said, I know that two-thirds of the world's homes could probably fit in our kitchen. So I know that adoption is a good thing, but why did we have to be the ones to do it? Alex and I tried to explain again and again, and then finally we just said, look, it's a done deal. This isn't like buying something from Walmart that you can later return when you decide it isn't working for you. And we also said, you know, it's absolutely okay to have the feelings you're having, but the girls are now a part of the family. They are staying. At first, Alex and I were hurt by Will's attitude and behaviors, and then if I'm being honest, it just made me angry. Our younger son Sam had been supportive of the adoption from the first mention of the idea. He really wanted the opportunity to be a big brother. He felt alone in the family a lot because of how his older brother treated him. Will just had no time for Sam, and it treated him like he was stupid and immature. The boys were four years apart in age, but five years in school. So there was very little overlap in regard to school, sports, and friends, where they might connect even superficially. And even though I tried to help the boys come together in even small ways, Will's behavior had been going on for years. But a couple of months into the adoption, even Sam began to retreat into his bedroom to escape the chaos of the house. In particular, he struggled with our older daughter's personality. She was super competitive with him. If he had something, she wanted it, whether that was an object or privilege, and she had no concept of the fact that they were three years apart, mostly because they were roughly the same size. One night when Alex was out of town, I fixed dinner for myself and the kids. I was exhausted from managing everyone's emotions, and so I served the kids and then said I needed a few minutes to myself. I walked back to my bedroom for about 15 minutes, and my hope was that the kids would interact together at the dinner table. But when I returned to the room, the girls were at the table by themselves, and I asked where the boys were, and Remy just pointed to the patio. The boys were eating at the table outside, acting as if it was no big deal. I walked out and asked Will what they were doing, and he said they decided they didn't want to eat with the girls because their table manners were disgusting, and so they had come outside. I was so angry I could have spit. And I sort of lost it for a moment. I started yelling at him that the girls were still learning, that they couldn't help that forks and knives were still new to them. And it was incredibly rude of him and Sam to just get up from the table and leave them there alone. Was it too much to expect that after I had served them all together, that they could sit together and eat as a family? He was 16 years old for God's sake. I needed him to act like it. I told him that I needed his help, that I just needed a few minutes to myself and had expected that I could count on him, and what I'd gotten instead was like a slap in the face. I told him he had to try harder. I think we'll in that moment saw how stressed out I was at everything that had been happening, and not just this one thing, and he backed down and apologized. He said he would work on being better around the girls, and then he walked inside with his plate. When I turned to look at Sam, he burst into tears. He said, Mom, you're always taking care of the girls. What about me? I feel like I can't even ask you for a hug. You know, my anger dissipated in an instant. And I put my arms around sweet Sam. I told him that I always had time for a hug. But the fact that he'd been feeling like that, like that I hadn't paid enough attention to him or wasn't paying enough attention to him, cut me to the bone. I had been so occupied with every detail of trying to assimilate the girls into our family and our culture that I'd completely missed that I wasn't being there for my other kids, especially Sam. Maybe all of this wouldn't have felt so overwhelming if I'd had a partner on a daily basis to discuss the trials with and to be there in the evening to help manage the emotions and behaviors of these four kids, but I didn't. My husband, Alex, had started traveling to work two weeks after the girls arrived. He was president of a company that was based in Virginia and he'd been commuting for a couple of years. He spent most weeks in Virginia or visiting clients around the U.S. or traveling to Armenia where they'd open a new office. And this was normal for our family. But as luck would have it, our adoption of the girls coincided with taking his company public. Alex's responsibilities included traveling to meet with investors and the company's bored, and it was all consuming. I remember saying to him, uh, you know, you don't have to go. And he responded that he knew what I was saying, but that it was an impossible situation. His job required this level of involvement, especially while trying to take the company public. I understood his situation, but honestly, I was more than a bit afraid of being left to parrot all four of our kids on my own. It seemed like the fabric that was holding the family together was beginning to rip, and I gotta be honest, I'm no seamstress. All of this was running through my head as I lay sobbing in the middle of the street. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to hold it all together? I didn't want to unload all of this on my friends. That seemed like it would come across as complaining. And besides, wasn't I the one that had called fire in on my own hole? My sister kept telling me that I needed to remember what the airline attendant said. Put your own mask on first. She encouraged me to hire some help, but putting myself first was not something I knew how to do. And besides, being a mom was my J-O-B. I didn't want to hire a nanny to do my job. I don't know how long I lay in the street. Long enough for me to fantasize about what it would be like if I just walked away. I could walk to the end of the street and turn the corner and then just keep going and not look back. I know this was my fight or flight response because I felt like I was in real danger. The danger of losing my mind. My natural stress response has always been to freeze, and that night lying in the street, it kind of turned out to be a godsend. Once the tears stopped and my breathing came back to normal, it caused me to think through what was actually happening and what I was feeling. And what I realized in that moment was there was no way I could leave. My mom had left when I was six years old. Same age as little Tara. I knew in detail about the particular damage that a mother who leaves does to the people she leaves behind. I had spent my whole life compensating for that, and when I became a mom, I spent all my time trying not to be her. I wasn't about to start now. Yes, my life was complicated and chaotic at the moment because the adoption was the kind that changed our family that had reorganized everything. What I was experiencing was literally the hardest thing I'd ever gone through. But there was no way in hell I was going to quit on the kids, so I got up off the pavement and wiped my face, and I went back inside to face the music. To have a better understanding of how I came to be lying in that street in the first place, I really have to take you back to the house I grew up in. Back to the night my mom left. Dear listener, if you are lying in your own version of the cul-de-sac right now, literally or figuratively, this podcast is for you. I'm not telling this story because I've figured it all out. I'm telling it because I spent too long thinking I was the only one experiencing this kind of thing. I rarely asked for help and that was a mistake. It created way more stress and anxiety than was necessary, so don't be like me. If today's episode stirred something up for you, don't just let those feelings sit inside you. Talk to a friend, a family member, or a therapist. Write it in your journal. Or you can even share your experience with me. Because that's exactly the kind of story this podcast was made for. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at NotFitFortheed. Thank you for spending this time with me. If today's episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you're finding value in these conversations, it would mean the world to me if you take a moment to follow or subscribe wherever you listen and leave a review. It helps other parents who need this find their way here. You can find resources related to today's episode in the show notes. I'm Britney Shootman, and this is not fit for the feed, where we say the hard things out loud so they lose their power over us. See you next time.