CHAPTER 1

The Great Gift Exchange

As she held the sleeping child in her arms, she was at once overwhelmedby feelings of deep love and by a fear that spoke in a loud voice, "Lovewill never be enough to fix all that's gone wrong here." Even after threeand a half months of devoted care, her grandchild's night-terrors werenot subsiding. Angelina was exhausted and filled with the knowingsense that it was going to take more to raise Samantha than she hadever imagined.

She had been disappointed when her middle daughter married Steven.Something about him just didn't seem right. From three states awayshe had known there were problems, but she had no inkling how badthose problems were until the morning three and a half months agowhen she got the call.

"Hello, is this Angelina Rivera?" a strong male voice questioned.

"Yes, speaking."

"This is Dan Redding, with the Sherriff's Department in Tampa, Florida.There was a criminal incident last night involving your daughter, Carolineand her husband. We have them in custody and we are looking forfamily who can take their daughter. Caroline asked us to call you." Hisvoice trailed off as Angelina's world crashed around her.

Everything that had happened since then was too complicated andheartbreaking to think about and there was nothing she could doabout it anyway. Her heart ached for her daughter, but with her armswrapped around three-year-old Samantha she knew in her heart thatshe had to do something for her. The child continued to whimper abit as slumber settled in, and Angelina committed herself to findinganswers for all the problems she was dealing with now. Samantha'snight-terrors were just part of it.

Samantha screamed when she left her at daycare and that tore atAngelina's heart every day. She had taken two weeks off when she firstgot her but could not quit her job. She needed the money now morethan ever. She was tempted to take second shifts to cover the extraexpenses, but turned them down because she knew she had to be withSamantha as much as possible. The child clung to her and followedher all over the house. She wouldn't stay in her bed at night and wokeup with night-terrors regularly. She was pulling chunks of hair out ofher head, and already had a large bald spot around the crown on theback of her head. She sucked her thumb and reverted back to wettingher pants. When disciplined she would refuse to comply and othertimes she would sob without any apparent reason.

Angelina was exhausted, but her love for this lost little child got her upevery morning to start the next day with just as much energy as shehad the day before. She had to save her granddaughter, if it was thelast thing she did. Samantha might just be all that was left of Caroline,who was going to be tried as an accomplice to a murder, apparentlydrug related. It seems that Steven was a meth dealer and Carolinehad taken up with him and all the chaos and destruction that lifestylebrought. Poor little Samantha had been subjected to a life not at allsuited to growing up and developing properly.

Raising her own three kids had been instinctual, nothing morethan the regular challenges of weaning, potty training, making surehomework was done, and curfew kept. Getting them all off to collegehad brought both a sense of accomplishment and a serious case ofthe empty nest syndrome. But Angelina had focused on her work andrecovered sufficiently from an unexpected divorce to enjoy life again.Sitting in the same old rocker she used when her kids were little, shecouldn't help looking back over the years for a bit. What went wrong?Everything seemed good enough. Why would Caroline, having comefrom a good family, get involved in such a lifestyle? How could sheneglect and abuse her own child? Now Angelina began to doubt herown parenting skills. If she couldn't raise Caroline right, even in goodcircumstances, how in the world was she going to raise Samantha whohad been through so much. Would she be able to make a differenceor was it already too late?

Many grandparents who are raising their grandchildren begin to havedoubts as they experience difficulties with their grandchildren thatthey never encountered when they raised their own children. Howwill this all turn out? Will I cut my own life short from the stress of itfor nothing? Is there any hope for my troubled grandchild? These aregood questions and thanks to scientists, researchers and other peoplewho devote themselves to finding real solutions for what ails the humancondition, we now have answers to many questions, questions peopledid not even know to ask fifty years ago. And we have the reassuringtruth that although it "takes a village," if a child has even one personin their life who truly loves them, it can make all the difference in theworld. They just need that one ray of hope and the picture imprintedin their minds of what being loved feels like.

POWERFUL MEMORIES

"Now that I know about the trauma of being separatedfrom my birth mother at 43 days old, the fights betweenmy parents, abuse and abandonment from my dad,I realize that I would have had to be an incrediblydistraught baby in the middle of a storm. I have alwaysthought of my grandma as an angel that saved me fromall that trauma and strengthened me, gave me resiliencyto get through it all. I think that to a certain extent I wasalso what allowed her to finally be a mother—fully amother, not just a mother that was DOING EVERYTHING,(widow with 9 children) but now being able to be themother that was just nurturing for the first time—justbeing a mom. In some way I think it was healing to bothof us." ~ A grandchild

Erik Erikson was the first child psychoanalyst in the city of Boston,where he fled from Germany during the Holocaust years. He taught formany years at the Harvard Medical School and for the Institute of ChildWelfare at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked with andstudied children and youth in many cultures and areas of the UnitedStates, and...