How do you grieve so you can buckle down and be your kids' parent?

Anger is just the fear trying to find it's way out. PRocess what makes you afraid and turns to anger and you'll process it all. However, I think grieving can be fairly fast, and then cycle back around later. There really is no right way to grieve. Just talking about your fears with someone, and saying it all out loud can help you organize your thoughts.There are no guarantees. Letting go of expectations is paramount. Assess your kids now and reset the expectations. There's no reason you can't be the mom too. A parent is a parent. Each parent does the job that needs to be done. And slowly you drift into roles you each are best suited for, but that isn't a static placement. It's ebb and flow, constantly evolving. Sometimes you take the lead, sometimes your partner does. When she can't handle it anymore, you step in and vice versa.Besides, not every traumatized child is forever broken. Kids can heal, and learn to cope with triggers.PS...KUDOS for adopting toddlers! I cannot even imagine adopting at that age. My dd was 3.5 and that was hard enough. The transition was simply too much for her to process so young.

Before we adopted, I knew I needed to grieve the fact the my body was failing us, that I could not get pregnant (my perception). For me, it was really as simple as putting words to it like you did in your op. In doing that I realized that I didn't need to be pregnant but I really wanted to be a mom. I also was able to forgive myself for what I felt were failures (ie, not getting pregnant) and heal some other creatures lurking in the darkness of my brain, they are still there but no longer powerful. The roles my husband and I play are fluid. Some days I am the warm lap, cozy and soft and other days he is that. We share every bit of parenting: every bit! The story of our journey to parenthood is almost unbelievable when we say it out loud. So how we parent, the roles we share and how we define them work for us, work for our kids and I believe those that share our life are better from it...because they are defined by a journey that is all our own! Claim your role as mom, define it with each action, gesture and breath you breath! Write down your "stuff", read it out loud even if it is to yourself...claim how you feel, don't patronize it, minimize it or deny it! I find that once I claim it with words, it has so much less power over me! You post hit home with me in so many ways today, so I have run on and on....and could go on even longer ! I hope this ramble helps....simply from my heart and from where I have been!

EMDR therapy has worked so well on my daughter's trauma, I would guess it would work for grief too. But if you don't want to spend the money, there are also techniques like EFT tapping that are helpful for emotions we get a bit stuck in. The site tapping.com has some free videos that describe tapping. I used tapping on my daughter for her fears at bedtime when she was little. It worked really well (like we would tap a few series and then she would be relaxed and ready to sleep even though she started out very tense and scared). I saw that it worked, but she would always say it didn't do any good, but then she told me a few years later that she sometimes does it herself and it works a little bit. I found the tapping even helped with migraines, because I used to get very stressed when I felt like a migraine was maybe starting and my stressing about it would push me over the edge so that I really did get the migraine, but after I started tapping when I felt like a headache was starting, it got rid of the stress and lots of times I avoided the headache.

I think that you have every right to grieve and I even read an article today written by a psychologist stating that it is perfectly normal to go through an "adoption depression" and opposed to post-partum depression, due to exactly the fears that you have explained. Parenting doesn't happen over night. Especially with a child or children who have had a rough start and are just getting used to their new placement. I have actually been researching exactly this because I have a possible match and a full disclosure on Thursday, and I am suddenly terrified. I don't think that you should feel bad at all, but if the feelings don't resolve you should definitely talk to someone. Also, you have to remember that your expectations for these children will never match up to the fantasy biological children you had in mind. DIRECT WORDS from my SW, I'm not just making that up. The sooner you are able to free yourself of your worries and guilt, the sooner you will be able to parent these children in your own way, which I'm sure is absolutely perfect, despite your fears. I hope you are feeling better since making this post!

In some ways your post reminded me of "just being a parent." I have 3 bio kids and 1 foster/adopt. One of my bio kids is on the Autism spectrum and I regularly go through what you're speaking about. I mourn the family that I had envisioned. Home life is stressful, scheduled, full of fighting and aggression, not at all what I wanted when I had children (although i did expect some levels of sibling rivalry - nothing could've prepared me for what we've been through). I feel the same way about our foster/adopt son. It was not what I expected, anticipated or even wanted, but for some reason it felt "right" and I knew that was what we were supposed to do even if I hadn't planned it that way. So I suspect that over the next XX years I will go through exactly the same feelings that I go through about our bio kids. I think the hardest thing about it is that it's not viewed as "normal" by most people, so then we have the added guilt of mourning as well as the morning itself. If we can learn to recognize the normalcy of these feelings and accept them as they come then we can spend all that extra energy focusing on being the parents our kids need. (now, if I can only take and use my very insightful advice, I'd be in good shape) :)