The House With Open Doors: Meet Erica

Originally introduced through a small group at church, Erica and I bonded over child care trauma stories, a caustic sense of humor and sarcasm, and on the way home from a retreat where we discovered our mutual understanding of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). It is now my pleasure and honor to call her one of my closest friends and also my roommate!

Erica is currently employed at a day-care but will be joining my team at Behaven in the next month as a Child Behavior Aide and also volunteers with the children's portion of 'Celebrate Recovery' through Lincoln Berean church. Erica enjoys long cuddles with large cats, excessive amounts of coffee and alone time, reading, sarcasm and contemplating the mysteries of life.

The following is the first segment of an interview I have conducted with Erica. I share it because I think it is immensely important for people to understand that being a Christian does not mean that one life looks like the next, nor should it. Erica does not fit the 'stereotypical Christian mold.' She has a story that will benefit many others in hearing. She loves Jesus, is genuine, is flawed, is beautiful. 

Would you consider your family functional or dysfunctional?

Definitely dysfunctional.

Would you mind explaining your rationale behind that response?

Of course! First of all, my dad is an emotionally and mentally abusive alcoholic, and my sister (who is adopted), has a whole host of intense mental disorders. Which in all honesty, is why I have to explain that she is adopted, because a) its the truth, and b) because I dont want people to assume that I share the same disorders. It's really shallow, and I am ashamed.

Would you tell us more about your sister? How old were you when she was adopted, how old was she? Were the issues you’ve mentioned evident prior to the adoption or were they unknown to your family?

I think we adopted her when I was three, and I think she was the same age (she is three months younger than I am). When we adopted her, we had no idea that she was going to have the issues that she ended up having. My parents were told that she could possibly develop a host of disorders that run in her biological family, but she was way too young for anyone to be certain.

When did the mental disorders start to become apparent?

I am not 100% sure, it was maybe around five or six years?

What did that look like?

My memory is a little fuzzy, because I was so young when it was happening, and I have a child's memory of it. But from what I remember and based off of what my mom has told me, the very first diagnoses came when she noticed that my sister was not meeting all of the developmental milestones that I was. I know each child will reach each milestone at different points in time, some sooner than others etc., but I think that my mom was concerned because she was so, so far behind. I remember one day that I was left with a sitter for what seemed like hours and hours, and in reality it was probably only like three hours max, but my parents had taken my sister to the hospital for some kind of mental health test. They came back home with her first diagnoses: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. After that I remember being very distraught because we had special "company" over it seemed like all the time. I would always be sent outside or to my room, while my sister got to play with all of these cool toys. I did not realize the the individuals coming over were therapists coming to work with my sister. I just knew that she was getting special attention from not only the therapists, but from my parents as well, and it felt like I was not important or valued as she was.

So the issues were all a result of FAS?

No. There were more, but they did not appear until I believe elementary school? Worsening in middle school.

What were those issuses? Did your parents have any idea what the root cause of them was?

The first to really cause a problem was Reactive Attachment Disorder. But my parents did not get a diagnoses until a couple years later, because RAD, at the time, was not well known. It still is not something that very many people know about, but more and more people are being made aware of it! Then after the RAD, and perhaps the worst diagnoses, was a severe form of Bipolar 1. Then at some point she was diagnosed with a mild form of autism.