I was born and raised in Vero Beach, Florida. I grew up with three older brothers and a fraternal twin sister. The best memories of my childhood are going to the beach, riding horses, and visiting with my grandparents.

Yet, apart from these good memories, memories of growing up with little emotional connection with two alcoholic parents and feelings of being “invisible” within a family system are even more prevalent. (And I share this with you because these difficult memories are an important part of who I am today and why I am so passionate about the work that I do). As a child, I found connection and validation through academics and graduated at the top of my class. Following high school, I attended the University of Florida and earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s in construction management.

After working for ten years in the field of architecture, I woke up one morning with this pulling desire to be a parent. Due to numerous health issues and operations in my past (all a result of growing up in a stressful environment), adoption became the way to motherhood. Following countless phone calls and long nights working on paperwork, four months later I found myself in Russia meeting my son, an adorable 2 ½ year old little boy.

This was a major turning point in my life. Motherhood became the most difficult task I had ever undertaken. I had accomplished any goal I set my mind to in the past. Focus, self-discipline, and pure determination had been my tools to success. Yet, in the first six months of motherhood, nothing I had used in the past was working. Nothing-nothing was working. In fact, it was only getting worse.

Out of pure insanity or complete denial, I was in Russia a year and a half later, adopting again! This time I was meeting my daughter, a beautiful 4-year-old little girl. She was completely different, yet in the back of my mind, I kept hearing, “She’s too good…there is something very wrong here.”

As you can imagine, I had created quite a situation within a very short amount of time. After late nights of research, consultations with “experts,” and at least 200 books on attachment and bonding, I was still at a complete loss of how to bring peace into our home.

Late nights of research turned into late nights of curling up on the bathroom floor, crying in a complete state of helplessness. Yes, I’ve been there on the floor with you, feeling terrified of the future and feeling as if life was no longer worth living!

I decided that since I was doing all this research, I should return to school and change my career path. Looking back, I was simply returning to the environment that I knew in my early years that had sustained me through stress–academia. I earned a master of social work and sought training in the area of attachment and bonding.

After working to first change myself and the interpretation of my children’s behaviors, I was then able to parent in a whole new way. It also required intensive healing of my past childhood experiences in order to be able to become emotionally available to my children’s pain and fear. I came to realize that if you want to change something in your life, there’s only one place to look: inside you. And when you look to make this change, it takes doing it with love.

It took learning to love myself. First, though, it required a true understanding of the essence of love. We cannot give something we don’t understand or something we have not yet received. Loving yourself is the key to being able to love others unconditionally, without requirements. This is especially essential to parenting a child with a trauma history who simply does not have the capacity to receive love or reciprocate love due to the intensity of his/her internal pain and fear.

When unconditional love is put into action, it truly is the “cure” to creating peace in the home. It simply takes learning how to put it into action. Traditional parenting techniques are fraught with fear, disguised as love. Shifting your perspective to allow the light of love to overcome the darkness of fear is the only way.

My children are teenagers now and I have a wonderful relationship with both of them (How many parents do you know with teenagers who actually enjoy their company?). My children are more emotionally intelligent than most adults and they understand the dynamics of human interactions beyond their years. Their early experiences of abandonment, abuse, and neglect have been integrated into who they are and they are better individuals today because of their pasts. That’s the power of love!

If you are struggling with the effects of trauma in your home, I want this level of healing for you. I am passionate about providing the resources and understanding you need to make your family work for you. It is hard work. It is a journey of commitment and tenacity. Yet, it is what life is about – loving relationships. You aren’t living unless you are emotionally attuned to both yourself and to those around you.

I am committed to helping families and changing the false traditional interpretation of how to love and discipline children. There is a way to pull out of the depth of pain that resides in so many families (and perhaps your family). I hope you’ll join me on this journey to bring love back into a world that is living in too much fear and pain. Love never fails!

As I continue to grow in my own process, learning and experiencing love to a greater level each day, I am including in this month’s eNewsletter my latest reflections. Sometimes we have to step back from the grind of it all and reposition ourselves from a broader perspective. Sometimes simple statements of the truth can have a greater impact than lengthy dissertations of examples. I shared these reflections with the ladies who attended my Mom’s Conference last weekend and received positive feedback. I hope you enjoy them as much as they did.

But if you were looking for a Q&A this month, you’re still in luck. My new book, “Dare to Love,” is filled with questions and answers. If you’re struggling to make Beyond Consequences work in your home, I know this book will be the key to peace and love in your home.

Press on,

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW
Parent and Co-author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control

P.S. Check out this month’s Ask the Expert interview with C.C. Nuckols. Just click on the link to start listening. http://www.beyondconsequences.com/asktheexpert/ccnuckols/

Bridging the Gap Between Neuroscience and Parenting

At the beginning of this month, I attended a conference in Las Vegas where Dr. Allan Shore was the keynote speaker. His information was amazing! “Thick,” but amazing. By thick I mean it was in-depth, profound, intellectually stimulating, and heavily documented by scientific research.

The premise of his talk was that the repair of the self, or healing,
from early childhood experiences happens in the right hemisphere. The
right hemisphere is our unconscious processor and our emotional self.

He discussed how a child’s brain needs meaningful human interaction to drive the brain’s development and maturity. When these experiences are missed between the child and his caretaker, the neurological pathways are misaligned.

The great news is that repair and realignment of these neurological pathways is possible due to the plasticity of the brain. However, this repair does not come through intellectual or cognitive processing. The primary component of healing is the emotional bond. It has to happen through emotional communication and emotional connection. It is the right-brain-to-right-brain emotional communication that heals. The relationship is the key. In essence, and these are my words, it has to come through love.

Then at the end of this month, I attended the ATTACh conference in Charlotte, NC. I presented to a room of almost 100 parents. The energy in the room was so different from the conference in Las Vegas. At the ATTACh conference, the room was filled with parents struggling everyday just to get the basics of life accomplished, each desiring more information to be able to go back home and move out of a place of survival into a place of living. Yet, in Las Vegas, the atmosphere was more relaxed. The day was about informational learning and listening to the latest in scientific research. It was a day off work to earn continuing education credits then a night out in Vegas catching a show and having a nice dinner.

As I type this blog, I realize that we need to focus on bridging the gap between the intellectual and scientific understanding of trauma and the “real-life” parenting of trauma. The two need to come together in a more coherent way in order to put neurological science into action. Showing slides and talking about current neuroscience literature doesn’t necessarily mean that the quality of life in families is being improved.

As I look back and realize the incredible contrast between these two trainings, I realize more than ever my mission in life. This is the essence of my work at the Beyond Consequences Institute — to bridge the gap between neuroscience and parenting. Wow! This gets me fired up and rejuvenated to create more resources and ways to support you and other families.

If you have any ideas of how to I can help you or other families bridge this gap, post a note here. What more is needed to learn how to create these “right-brain-to-right-brain” interactions in your home? I welcome your feedback!

This is a tragic story of a single adoptive mother who reached a point of complete overwhelm and hopelessness—way past her window of stress tolerance. If you are not familiar with the news report, here are two links for more information:

http://kstp.com/article/stories/s551355.shtml?cat=1http://ssieferman.homestead.com/index.html

http://wcco.com/crime/stabbing.roseville.daughter.2.801183.html

This tragic event was blamed on the stress of finances and the economy. While this is truly a factor, it is no coincidence that this horrendous situation happened with an adoptive mother. Here is a mother who over six years ago was happy when her daughters came home but something went wrong.

Many of you reading this blog know exactly what happened. Many of you are saying to yourself, “Yeah, I understand how she got to this point.” And the hair stands up on the back of your neck because it is unnerving as a human being to realize that you actually comprehend and understand what it means to get to such a point.

Raising children with traumatic histories coupled with a parent’s own “unfinished business” is what creates this intense dynamic. All too often, adoptive parents go from a place of utter joy, travel half way around the globe, spend thousands of dollars, endure an invasive adoption process, only to find themselves six years later in a place of utter hopelessness, misery, and despair.

Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way anymore! There is hope. There is a way to make all of this different. I know there is both from personal and professional experience! It takes a new understanding of our children, insight into our own reactions, and support around us to make our way back to love. Putting love into action, free of fear, is the answer. Love never fails!

To me, what is more tragic is the media’s lack of response to do a follow-up story to help prevent history from repeating itself. I made numerous calls this past week to the media explaining that this is my area of expertise and offered to speak with them or even travel for an interview in order to create more understanding behind this news story. As many of you know, there is an entire chapter in my book that is devoted to explaining why parents get so hostile and angry. I also have a research study, published in the Journal of Social Work,explaining the stressors adoptive mothers face when raising children with special needs (You can read this at:http://www.beyondconsequences.com/issues.pdf).

I even called a publicity agency with whom I have been in contact but the reply was that they were too busy with other clients. I was willing to pay someone to help me connect with the media, but to no avail!

My efforts have fallen onto deaf ears, so I am asking you to help me. Would you do that for me? Would you write a letter to the editor of one of the major newspapers in Minneapolis, asking them to consider reporting on more than just the gruesome details of this mother and her children? Could you make some phone calls to news stations? Call Oprah for me. Call Jerry Springer if that is what it takes! Somehow, we have to find a way to break through to the public in order to prevent one more family from falling this far into fear.

Thank you for considering this call to action.