Thank you for your generosity!

We’re grateful to those in the Mother Ranch community who donated in 2018 to my work with special needs families—particularly families who have children with Developmental Trauma Disorder also known as Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD.) Because of your generous donations we were able to provide nearly 100 low or no cost Gestalt coaching sessions to families who are financially tapped out due to this mental illness. We also held a RAD Mom Summer Camp Retreat in July for six moms—4 of which were able to attend because of the generosity of donors.

In 2019 we’d like to double those low or no cost coaching sessions for RAD families to 200 and hold 3 retreats for RAD moms. The retreats are 3 days long and held at the ranch. Included in each retreat: an ice breaking, giggling goat yoga class on the first day; a massage for each mom, daily group coaching with the horses facilitated by me; a group transformational breathwork session; all meals; and of course plenty of free time to enjoy each other, nap in the hammocks, or create some art in our big sunny art room. Lodging is camping onsite or nearby hotels. It’s a very special time for these moms, respite from a hard life with children who are emotionally and often physically abusive to their families.

If you are searching for a non-profit to donate to, look no further. Whether it’s for November 27th “Giving Tuesday” or an end of year donation, your tax deductible donation will be put to good use. Every dollar counts!

In 2017 we were  approved for fiscal sponsorship by Spirit Horse Alliance. They are considered an "umbrella non-profit" where people can donate to my work through them, they hold the non-profit status for me. They take 10% and everything else goes to helping RAD families.

Your donation will be to The White Horse Whispers, this is my original business name and the one still used for all of my work with RAD families.

Click here and donate to help more families in 2019!

Flashbacks and PTSD in RAD Moms

My son and I are fans of Dwayne Johnson although for distinctly different reasons ;-) We all went to see his newest movie called Skyscraper. All is well in my world, I'm happy, healthy, and I'm enjoying a movie in a cool theater on a hot summer day. Skyscraper is exactly what I expected from the trailer and I'm enjoying the fun. 

And then.

The movie was nearing the end. Dwayne Johnson, who plays a father named Will, and his daughter Georgia are caught at the very top of a burning skyscraper. He has pretty much moved mountains to get to his family who were caught in the inferno. He's managed to get his wife and son out of the building. But now, here he is, at the very tip top, fire surrounding them both. They're sitting on the floor, daughter between his knees and his arms wrapped around her. There is nowhere to go, end of the line. Holding her tight and kissing the top of her head, he says something along the lines of, "I'm sorry."

Cue unexpected PTSD flashback.

It's 2015. My daughter with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) has been home for 6 years. My son and I are shells of our former selves and Brad and I fight every day. Brad and I are soul mates. We rarely fight. The occasional argument or disagreement but we don't scream at each other. Ever. We've been together many life times and we've pretty much got it down to a science. Boy has that changed.

Our 8 year old son is extremely depressed and is being forced (unbeknownst to us) into a teeny-tiny life by our daughter. 

We live in a domestic violence household except it's our 10 year old daughter who is the abuser. 

No one believes me.

(You can scroll on down to see all kinds of posts about RAD but this sums it up fairly quickly.)

I've tried everything I can think of to help her and even learned new and unusual ways of living life with her--always trying to help her heal. Some things will work for a short time. Some things make her worse. Still I try.

I tell myself, "I will never give up."

And yet...

Here I am, sitting on top of a skyscraper, my son in my arms, no where to go and the world on fire around me. 

Always I am in protection mode but as much as I am always, always "on" and head on a swivel, it is never enough to protect my family 100%. The abuse that is heaped on myself and those I love just flattens me.

There is nowhere for my daughter to go that will help her and that we can afford.

Divorcing the love of my life and taking our son with me wouldn't fix it--Brad doesn't believe that our daughter is a danger. If we split he will believe her lies and not protect our son from her abuse when they are at his house.

Suicide? In the back of my mind, but in reality, nope. There is no way I will leave my son with no protection.

Nothing can be done and no one believes me. I am helpless and hopeless. 

And so, eyes wide and full of fear at the raging inferno that no one else will see, I sit with my son wrapped in my arms, kiss his head and whisper, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I snap back. I'm sitting in the movie theater in July 2018. We are all safe: my husband and I have come through and are stronger than ever, my son is thriving, I am thriving, and my daughter is doing well in her home. I'm ok. I breathe in a deep breath. Blink. Touch my arms to my son's on my right and Brad's on my left. Breathe. In and out. I am right here. Safe right now. I feel my feet on the recliner and wiggle them around. I feel my skin touching my loved ones. I feel my breath. The movie comes back into focus. I'm here, in this moment. That was two and a half years ago. 

Nowadays, this doesn't happen very often and the length of time gets shorter as I learn to pull myself back into my body. I'm able to process what happened a little more each time, to put more words and feelings into the experience instead of sitting in stunned silence. Healing isn't a linear process but instead seems to jump around. I don't mind, I'm just glad there is movement! 

So, why do I tell you all this? Because RAD moms are often diagnosed with PTSD. Flashbacks can happen and it's okay to give yourself a break--whatever emotions you have about them are normal. AND also know, you aren't broken. You aren't damaged for life. You can heal. 

In the RAD Mom Summer Camp retreat in early July (a 3 day, all inclusive, healing retreat held at my ranch in Colorado, specifically for RAD moms) one of the shifts was from believing, "I will never get back to who I was before this trauma." to, "I am healing and becoming a new and better version of myself." 

Hi, I'm Julia and I'm a trauma-informed certified Equine Gestalt Coach, artist of 30 years, and Reiki Master. I combine my skills to create an individualized care plan for each client. As an adoptive mother of two (one with Reactive Attachment Disorder and one "glass child"), I am intimately familiar with the trials and tribulations RAD moms and their glass children face as they navigate the muddy waters of life with a mentally ill child. While I see many types of people in my practice, my heart and my specialty is the health and healing of RAD moms and their glass children. Learn more at The Mother Ranch.

If you have a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder in your home and are feeling scared and alone, please join the facebook group called The Underground World of RAD. I am the admin/moderator, there are a few questions to answer and then you'll be added, lifted up, supported, and believed. 

Co-active coaching and the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method

One of the interesting things about the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method (EGC or EGCM) is that the style of coaching is different than some. It's called "co-active" and what that means is that I believe every client already has all of his/her answers lying within but often out of conscious awareness. One of my jobs is to assist my clients in finding their own answers.

Advice is easy to come by don't you think? It comes from all corners and we often feel bombarded by what other people think we should do. But really, how often does, "I think you should_____." feel good and true in our own bodies? There is sometimes an internal, "nope" feeling when we are given advice--it just doesn't fit. 

Every so often we end up at a place in life that is scary and uncertain. We feel desperate for answers and turn to friends and family to help us find them. That's when the "shoulds" start flying. Maybe we're desperate enough to try anything and we pick up a few shoulds, dust them off and try them on for size, "I don't know what else to do, maybe this will work." Even when desperate it can be difficult for us to implement the advice and have it make a positive difference in our lives--because it's not coming from within. 

Making assumptions that our stories are the same and that my way will work for you is a recipe for disaster and disconnection. 

So, what does all this mean? It means that I don't "fix" my clients. Instead, the horses, client, and I work together and find ways to tap into their internal wisdom (we all have it!) which is where we find the way through any situation or trauma we've endured. Through greater awareness, self-compassion, and Gestalt methodology we are able to find healing.

What is Equine Gestalt Coaching?

What is trauma?

I most often talk about trauma in reference to children who suffer from Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and the families who raise them but I'm often asked, "Well, what exactly constitutes a trauma?"

Psychological trauma is an individual's experience of a one-time occurrence or ongoing condition where:
1. The individual cannot integrate their emotional experience (overwhelm) or
2. The individual experiences a threat to life, body, or sanity.1

Common examples:

• Experiencing war as a soldier or close to home
• Assault: physical or sexual 
• Domestic violence: experiencing directly or witnessing2
• Adult abusing child: physical, psychological, sexual
• Natural disasters 
• Terrorist attack

Less common examples:

• Witnessing3 death or injury
• Child on child abuse: physical, psychological, sexual
• Divorce
• Adoption, even as an infant. (Loss of bio family at best, or worse, the child is removed from the bio home because of abuse or neglect.)
• Neglect: emotional and physical
• Verbal abuse
• Psychological abuse
• Abandonment
• Incest 
• Nontraditional domestic violence (where a child harms the family): experiencing directly or witnessing2
• Medical interventions

You may be thinking, "Oh please, my parents divorced and I'm just fine." Your point is valid--for you. Here's the thing about trauma though: it's a subjective experience of an objective event. Not everyone responds to an event the same way. Two people can experience the exact same thing, one will walk away unscathed and the other will be traumatized.

The more powerless you feel in a frightening situation, the more traumatized you will be. 

Psychological effects are likely to be most severe if the trauma is:

1. Human caused 
2. Repeated 
3. Unpredictable 
4. Multifaceted 
5. Sadistic
6. Undergone in childhood 
7. And perpetrated by a caregiver3

And that is where many of the children with Reactive Attachment Disorder come from. When you read that list, it's not hard to understand why these children are the way they are.

Hi, I'm Julia and I'm a trauma-informed certified Equine Gestalt Coach, Reiki Master, and artist. I combine my skills to create an individualized care plan for each client. As an adoptive mother of two (one healthy and one with RAD), I am intimately familiar with the trials and tribulations RAD moms and their glass children face as they navigate the muddy waters of life with a mentally ill child. While I see many types of people in my practice, my heart and my specialty is the health and healing of RAD moms and their glass children. 
Learn more at The Mother Ranch.



 --
1Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995, pg 60

2 Witnessing trauma: The more attached you are to the victim, the greater the distress. It is particularly horrifying for a child to witness violence in any form toward their mother/primary caregiver both in and of itself and for fear of losing their main source of security.

3Sidran.org

Florida School Shooting and the Underground World of RAD

There is an underground world of RAD moms and they are more frightened than ever this week. The Reactive Attachment Disorder facebook groups are lit up with information and worry about the Florida shooter. It's coming up because the shooter was adopted, the police were at his home multiple times as he grew up, and then to top off his trauma, his adoptive parents died. These RAD moms are saying: "This will be my kid someday."  and "This is why my child with RAD needs to be somewhere safe."

We don't yet know what Nikolas Cruz's early years were like, and may never know as his adoptive parents are deceased but there are a lot of similarities to the life we know.

New York Times: 
In the hours after the shooting, people who knew Mr. Cruz described him as a "troubled kid" who enjoyed showing off his firearms, bragging about killing animals and whose mother would resort to calling the police to have them come to their home to try to talk some sense into him.

CNN:
Broward County Mayor Beam Furr said during an interview with CNN that the shooter was getting treatment at a mental health clinic for a while, but that he hadn't been back to the clinic for more than a year.  "It wasn't like there wasn't concern for him," Furr said. "We try to keep our eyes out on those kids who aren't connected ... Most teachers try to steer them toward some kind of connections. ... In this case, we didn't find a way to connect with this kid," Furr said. 

Gordon Weeks, another attorney representing Cruz, added, “When your brain is not fully developed, you don’t know how to deal with these things. That’s the child I’m sitting across from. The child is deeply troubled and he has endured significant trauma that stems from the loss of his mother.” 

As RAD moms, we wonder, "Does Nikolas Cruz have RAD?"

What is Reactive Attachment Disorder or RAD?

A quick and easy description is given by the Institute of Attachment and Child Development: A disorder in which children’s brains and development get disrupted by trauma they endured before the age of 3. They’re unable to trust others and attach in relationships.

Unfortunately, it's so much more than that quick and easy description.

RAD is often thought of as only a mental illness that adopted children suffer from but this is not true. I know children with RAD who are step kids, bio kids, foster kids, and adopted kids. This isn't an adoption issue, this is a trauma issue. As children from severe trauma often end up in the system and are adopted, RAD is most often found in the adoption world. However, not all adopted children have RAD.

RAD symptoms:

• cannot give or receive affection
• no empathy
• extreme manipulation
• long arguments over ridiculous things
• hypervigilance  
• often engaging and charming, but only superficially
• nonsense questions and unrelenting chatter
• “mad peeing” (peeing all over the house when angry, years after potty training and up into teen years—this can happen with feces as well)
• crazy lying and stealing
• little eye contact
• no cause and effect thinking
• poor hygiene
• triangulation
• parents (particularly the mother) seem hostile and/or confused


Severe RAD symptoms are the above and also:

• threatening behavior, particularly toward the mother and siblings
• hurting or killing pets
• abusing mother and/or siblings--physical, emotional, verbal, psychological, sexual
• false allegations
• threatening harm to self or others
• gaslighting 

Again, these behaviors all stem from early childhood abuse and/or neglect. Children with RAD are angry and they have every right to be.

If Nikolas had early childhood trauma, from losing his birth mother and/or abuse or neglect, then he could have undiagnosed RAD. As we all scroll through facebook and watch the news we are faced with judgements aimed at the adoptive parents of Nikolas: 
"He needed more discipline."
"A good spanking would have fixed him."
"Where were his parents?"
"Maybe this wouldn't have happened if the parents would have spent more time with him."
"Why wasn't he in therapy?"

The mere thought of this riles RAD moms. We work hard to get help for our children with RAD, we learn therapeutic parenting skills, we beg for help but are more often than not met with misunderstanding and simple parenting strategies. "Try a sticker chart!" we are told. "Hug them more, spend more time with them. They just need more love!" We are not believed when we tell the truth, "My child is trying to harm her brother." We are surrounded by ignorant (not stupid, but ignorant) "professionals" who have very little, if any, trauma training. 

We need and want help but there are so few resources out there and the good ones are often private only. No insurance will cover them. If RAD parents are able to get their child in, these resources can work on the children with less severe RAD. 

But what about the children with severe RAD? 

These are the kids who have killed their pets and the parents are not believed. 

These are the children whose parents have had to defend themselves against physical attacks, have been listening to their child with RAD tell them she wants to kill them and then they find the knives she's been hiding in her bedroom and the parents are not believed. 

These are the kids who have tried to maim and/or kill their siblings (please read about glass children!) and the parents are not believed. 

These are children who rape their younger siblings and the parents are not believed. 

These are the kids that no one knows how to help. Yet. Some of them can live in super structured group homes where people care for them but do not love them. As surprising as that seems, the "care not love" can help. Love is much too frightening for children with RAD. Love triggers them and creates the violent behaviors. This is hard to believe. It took me years to realize the truth. To get an inkling of how this works, read the bottom paragraph of this post. Others end up in prison for the things they do. Still others continue to be in their adoptive homes and the entire household lives under video cameras and terror.


What You Can Do


As a nation, we know we need better mental health services but what can you do, right now, today?

Be kind. Suspend disbelief. Reserve judgement. Listen. Find out more. Be supportive. 

The next time you hear about a troubled child, don't immediately jump to the conclusion that the parents are at fault. When you hear about a mom who has found a group home, an RTC (Residential Treatment Center), a boarding school, or a wilderness camp for their child with RAD and you think, "How could she?? I could never!" please remember she isn't talking about children like yours. She's talking about a kid who could easily be the next mass shooter. She's not being a drama queen, she's lived through things you might be thankful you don't know about. Her search for a safe place for her child with RAD, is to keep her family safe, her loved ones and friends safe, her community safe, and her mentally ill child as safe as possible. We don't want our child with RAD to have the opportunity to hurt others. We don't want to be the parents of the next mass shooter. If you know someone who is making a decision to place a child she loves outside of the home, support her. Then, hold your healthy children close and be thankful for what you don't know.

Join The Underground World of RAD facebook group.

Hi, I'm Julia and I'm a trauma-informed certified Equine Gestalt Coach, Reiki Master, and artist. I combine my skills to create an individualized care plan for each client. As an adoptive mother of two (one healthy and one with RAD), I am intimately familiar with the trials and tribulations RAD moms and their glass children face as they navigate the muddy waters of life with a mentally ill child. While I see many types of people in my practice, my heart and my specialty is the health and healing of RAD moms and their glass children. 
Learn more at The Mother Ranch.




 

RAD Moms, Glass Children and COPING SKILLS

Children are well known for their impressive coping skills.

Said no one ever. 

Glass children even less so. When parents are overwhelmed with the care of a special needs, mentally ill RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) child, their glass children end up with gaps in their emotional growth. One of those gaps is coping skills. 

Moms themselves are barely holding on by their fingernails and are just doing their very best to keep everyone safe day by day. Their coping skills are pushed to the edge, how are they supposed to teach appropriate coping skills to their glass children?

They don’t. 

No. They can’t. 

So, glass children learn coping skills from:
•watching their stressed out mothers and fathers
•watching their mentally ill sibling/s with RAD
•watching other siblings
•watching friends, if they still have any (RAD families are often isolated due to the nature of the mental illness)

This is why one of my jobs is to teach self-awareness and self-regulation, aka coping skills. Horses are amazing at this work. They won’t connect when kids are dysregulated but when a simple, “step one” coping skill like breathing is implemented, the horse tunes back in with the child—proving to them that it works and rewarding them for trying. As the simple skills are mastered, we move on to more difficult emotional work, like speaking feelings out loud and asking for what they want or need. Big work for kids who have always been known as “the good ones, the quiet ones, the ones who never need anything.” 

If you have a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder and a healthy child who needs extra support, please contact me at julia@themotherranch.com or 720-635-7015. Watch your "easy kids" for signs of depression, withdrawal from the family, immersing themselves in obsessive behaviors that keep them checked out from reality, and bursts of rage. Set up a free tour of the Mother Ranch and visit the facility, the horses, mini donkeys, goats, sheep, chickens, and dogs. Sessions here gives your child a chance to get away from the life of a glass child, learn self-awareness and regulation (coping skills) and how to create safe and connected relationships. 

Hi, I'm Julia and I'm a trauma-informed certified Equine Gestalt Coach, Reiki Master, and artist. I combine my skills to create an individualized care plan for each client. As an adoptive mother of two (one healthy and one with RAD), I am intimately familiar with the trials and tribulations RAD moms and their glass children face as they navigate the muddy waters of life with a mentally ill child. While I see many types of people in my practice, my heart and my specialty is the health and healing of RAD moms and their glass children. 
Learn more at The Mother Ranch.