No gives back

This world is just bursting at the seams with horrific news. Black lives extinguished and threatened. COVID deaths. I would try to muster up the strength to continue this list but I just don't have it. My empty shell of a soul hurts too much.

This week lifestyle blogger Myka Stauffer's disgusting act came to surface. After financially profiting from adopting an autistic child from China she and her husband and their perfect blond, white family gave him up. I use the word "lifestyle blogger" as my body threatens to retch.

I know how difficult an autistic child who is prone to violence can be. I know how we struggle as a family with a teenager who has autism and bipolar. I get it. But as many times as I think that I can put him in residential or give up the fight, my heart knows I could never allow that. I scream and complain. There are times when I want to just go to sleep and never wake up. The stress, the exhaustion, the fear is all-consuming. But giving up on your child whether it is biological or adopted is not an option. She has the means to hire help to keep Huxley from hurting their other children. She has the means to get therapy. 

We are a middle-class family. We've paid tens of thousands of dollars on therapy, medication, and care. In the last seven years, we have two nights when our friend Jon has taken Andrew overnight to give us some respite. We know the struggle. We are the poster family for the struggle. 

I admit to sometimes feeling hatred toward my son. The things he says and does, the punches, the threats -- it hardens something in me. Deep down I love him more than anything and would never completely give up on him. There are times when I feel like surrendering but I know I could never do that. 

The Stauffers should be disgusted and ashamed. They went headfirst into adopting a child with special needs, profited from the adoption, and then decided it wasn't working. Life is hard. Life is a pile of steaming shit sometimes but if a mother or a father gives up on their child what does that child have left? The kindness of strangers. I hope Huxley benefits from the kindness of strangers.