Art by Kelvin McKennon

BY NICOLE GOODWIN

I learned early on that black women are supposed to be “strong” and endure pain in silence. The three years I spent in the military and the five-and-a-half months I spent stationed in Iraq taught me the same lessons: Be strong. Be silent.

A month after my daughter, Shylah, was born, I kissed her good-bye and flew off to Iraq. I knew we would never get back those early moments together.

In Iraq, I saw and experienced many things that made me feel even more alone. My most painful memories are of the children: the girls who had to live at military orphanages and the boys selling gasoline by the road just to make enough to eat. Now, at moments when the memories come back in full I think, “How could I have stood this?”

A Joyful Reunion

When I came home, I brought my memories with me in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I was riddled with anger, self-hatred and loneliness. I felt like I didn’t belong, even among my loved ones—the family and friends who remembered me like I used to be.

The one bright spot was my daughter. I was prepared for her not to know me, but it took her only three or four hours before she recognized my voice. That was one of the happiest moments in my life, seeing her eyes light up when it dawned on her that I was her mom. It gave me great hope that I could make things right with my daughter despite our time apart.

But over the years, my PTSD and depression grew worse. Eventually I had trouble getting up in the mornings. I had nightmares so bad that I would wet the bed. I started hoarding. My personal hygiene went to hell. I was attending school but I could barely concentrate. I couldn’t hold down a job or a personal relationship either.

Losing My Joy

Then one day, in January 2010, when I was having a particularly hard time coping, I slapped Shylah, who was 6 at the time. She told her therapist and the therapist called child protective services.

I sat on the floor that night as Child Protective Services workers walked my daughter out of our filthy apartment into the hallway, down the stairs and out the door. I called my then best friend and begged him and his family to look after Shylah so she wouldn’t be with strangers.

Shylah’s removal was a humiliation that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But I was determined to make things right, not just for myself, but for my daughter.  I started medication and continued my therapy twice a week; I went through all the degrading meetings, interviews and court dates. It was a very hard journey for me. But I had much to fight for.

‘Be a Good Girl’

My daughter was in care for six months. During most of that time, I was lucky to see her almost every day, for many hours. We went on outings, had dinner together, did homework.

At first, Shylah was on her best behavior, but as we got closer and closer to reunification, her temper tantrums grew.

I was too busy working on me and jumping through hoops to pay much attention to her feelings. I was also still angry that she had been taken away in the first place and that no one around me understood the torment of being labeled a bad parent. I was so consumed with my own feelings that I wasn’t even aware that Shylah had her own set of feelings about her removal. Instead, I would tell her, “Shylah, I need you to behave,” or “Shylah, I need you to be a good girl.”

Confronting My Demons

Right before Shylah was scheduled to come home I made the decision to go to an inpatient facility for six weeks. It was hard to postpone our reunification, but I knew I needed to deal with my inner demons.

I signed myself into a veterans’ hospital in a secluded part of New Jersey. I was surrounded by women who also suffered from depression, post-traumatic stress, and panic attacks. All of us had been in the military. All of us also experienced “issues” due to “Military Sexual Trauma”—that’s just a nice way of saying you were raped while serving your country.

For so long, dealing with myself was the last thing I wanted to do. But in the end I just got tired of running and being afraid. It felt really good to be able to talk without fear of being laughed at, pitied, or judged. It felt good to discuss the other problems in my life that I’d never dealt with, like being molested in childhood and the rift it put between my mother and me—and how those issues lead to my enlistment in the Army in the first place.  It just felt good to talk to people—for the first time in a long time. It felt good to talk.

When I left there, I thought I was ready for Shylah to come back to me.

An Angry Reunion

I had this fantasy that the joy that I’d experienced with Shylah during our first reunification—my return from Iraq—would come just as easily this time. The apartment was clean, so were her clothes, and most of all my mood was on the upswing. I thought all the improvements I had made were going to make her happy.

But Shylah showed me anything but happiness. Instead she would go from zero to sixty having complete meltdowns. When I told her she needed a time out, she would kick, punch and bang her head against anything, including walls and windows. Then there were the shouting matches. We would argue constantly about any and everything. At the end she would say the most hurtful things, like, “You don’t love me,” or “You never wanted me.”

At the time, I didn’t really know what Shylah was feeling. What I was feeling was a mixture of anger, fear and guilt. I felt angry that no one understood me, and my daughter didn’t understand me either. When Shylah was taken from me, I really realized for the first time that she was separate from me, and that I could hurt her. I was afraid that I would hurt her again, and that I might even lose her again. More than anything I felt guilty, because, when I came back from Iraq, I had promised myself that I would make everything right with my daughter. When I saw my daughter so angry, I felt like I had failed.

Forgiving Myself

For about four months, the battles between us continued. Then the social worker at Shylah’s school introduced me to the Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP), an advocacy organization for parents involved in the child welfare system. I was so tired and desperate that I thought, “Hell, I’ll try anything!”

There I joined a multi-family therapy group for families who were reunifying after foster care. In the group, we read stories by other parents who had reunified and then written about their experiences for a publication called Rise, which prints true stories by parents involved in the child welfare system. Not every story was exactly like mine, but reading those stories helped me feel like I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t a failure. It made me see that even in the best of families, people make mistakes, and that believing in your family’s recovery is the most important thing.

Believing in my family’s recovery gave me the confidence to make mistakes. I began to feel less stressed out about “the job” of being a good parent and I began to give myself more room to connect to Shylah, and even have fun with her.

The Mother I Wanted to Be

I also took a class called the Parenting Journey. In the class I learned that my childhood didn’t have to define what kind of parent I became. It did mean that I might have to go back and learn certain skills that I never learned as a child.

One of the most important things I did in that class was write a letter to my mother that let me express feelings I had never expressed—feelings of abandonment that were at the core of my sadness. I was able to confront those feelings and not feel guilty about them. I felt like I needed to do that for my survival.

Writing that letter helped me focus my energies on the mother I wanted to have and the mother I wanted to be, a mother that listens, is nurturing and forgiving, and a mother that takes responsibility.

Defensive and Angry

Lastly, I went to family therapy with Shylah.

The first time I tried family therapy didn’t really help. I was too angry and defensive and the therapist didn’t know how to deal with me. Instead she just focused on helping my daughter, but that didn’t help us improve our relationship.

But my preventive service agency they helped me find a new family therapist and she confronted me on my attitude.

She said, “It seems like you don’t want to be here.”

I said, “You’re right. I’m still angry that my daughter was removed, and I think you’re going to accuse me like they did.”

Learning to Listen

The therapist reassured me that her role was to help the whole family, and that included me. When I realized that she wasn’t looking at me as the perpetrator, but as a part of the family, I got on board.

Over time, she helped me be present and really listen to Shylah. It took about six months before Shylah began opening up and really telling me about her feelings.

I learned things that I never knew, like that Shylah cried for me every night, and that she felt angry because she thought everyone blamed her for what was happening to us. One of the hardest things for me to hear was that Shylah felt abandoned by me.

Shylah didn’t always speak so clearly about her feelings. I had to decipher and decode a lot. For instance, she used to go on and on about Michael Jackson, how she loved him, how she missed him a great deal. Michael died right around the time she was taken away, and it took me a while to understand that her love for Michael was a metaphor for how much she loved me, and that her missing him was actually her saying, “I miss you, Mom.” She used Michael’s death as a kind of shield to hide from her feelings and express them at the same time.

Affection Returns

Even though it was hard to hear some of the ways I had hurt my daughter, what I discovered was that the more she talked to me the more affectionate she was with me. I realized that all my hard work was paying off when she wanted to hold my hand again, or be held, or, here and there, gave me a kiss.

In the beginning of our reunification, I had thought that my daughter didn’t love me anymore, and my job was to make her love me again. What I came to understand was that my daughter always loved me. She was just too afraid and angry to show it. I kept reassuring her—and I still do to this day—that her feelings are safe with me.

OK Together, and Apart

Shylah has been home for two years. I can’t say that everything we went through is in the past. Shylah still tells me about memories that continue to bother her from back then, or feelings she is still struggling with. It isn’t so much the slap that haunts her. It’s more the thought of losing me.

I try to coach myself in patience—which isn’t my strong suit. I tell myself that our bond must be continuously built. I work on giving Shylah some independence, too. Last summer I sent Shylah to a Fresh Air Fund summer camp. She loved it and it was good for me to realize that we were strong enough to be apart, too.

It’s a long, arduous process to recover for PTSD and depression. For me it takes constant effort to do the little things that most people do effortlessly. But as I do the work, I also find that I enjoy my life more.

Rebuilding Ourselves

For a long time I lived with a lot of fear: fear of people finding out about my PTSD and depression and fear of losing my daughter. I thought my traumas made me strange and unlovable. At some points, I thought I didn’t deserve to have my daughter or be her mom.

My daughter hugs me now for no reason, and it feels glorious. Little by little we’re rebuilding ourselves.