Tracking Freedom

On August 3, 2024, my son was admitted to Stonewater Adolescent Recovery Center. His use of marijuana to deal with trauma was unsustainable. He did well at Stonewater, and I might add, they did well by him. It was recommended by all those who cared about his progress that he go into a therapeutic boarding school for an extended period. I chose In Balance Ranch Academy because it involved equine therapy and music and art.

Maslow’s needs show a hierarchy of what is fundamental for growth – at the bottom are food, water, breathing and homeostasis. I learned recently that within 72 hours of being in the wild, your body achieves homeostasis. For a person like my son, being in the wilderness might be the first time his body has felt that kind of quiet. This week, I removed Tin from the ranch and enrolled him in a wilderness program. The gold standard of wilderness programs I might add. Food. Water. Breathing. Homeostasis.

I was sitting in the Hall yesterday, chatting with friends who had come to Bay Saint Louis to attend the small festival the Mockingbird was hosting to raise money for the trans community, called All Are Welcome, a riff on a sign that Ann Madden created for our small coastal town. While catching up, my friend described a scene from his school years, where a teacher allowed another kid to punch him in the arm, and when the entire classroom erupted in laughter, he got up and threw a chair at the kid. And he got in trouble.

Another essential need for Maslow is shelter and clothing. So as we track this, remember it is possible to turn 16 years old and your body never having known homeostasis. Now you are trying to move up to the next level in development, which is financial security, health and wellness, and safety against accidents and injury. But how could you feel safe in the world, if you have never felt safe in your body? Then you are to move to love and belonging. And then to freedom. So tricky.

The starting point for an adopted child is trauma, separation, abandonment. I never thought I would write those words, but there they are. Early childhood trauma, not being fed, being yelled at, not feeling safe, for Tin, took his trauma to the breaking point. So it seemed that wilderness might help with a natural reset – a settling of his body so that his mind would not be poised to take flight, or fight – instead a sense of oneness might be accomplished long enough to separate what is real and what is trauma.

Last night, in a book I’m reading, the author wrote about her experience as a journalist in Tasmania:

The river rushed through true wilderness: old-growth rainforest thick with horizontal scrub, resistant to human penetration. It was a demanding trip for a city person who didn’t know from camping. … I slept in a tent sagging under torrential rain, … ached in muscles I hadn’t even known I had.

It was a life-altering journey. For the first time I experienced a place where nature is big and we are small. I understood that wilderness was what my human brain and body had been adapted to for millennia and that the only life I’d known, in a crowded city, was a profoundly unnatural habitat for my species.

Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks

Adam, my therapist, has nudged me in the direction of embracing my own authority. But the truth is that I don’t know what my son needs to thrive. I have been gathering up the experts and at times, they know, and at times, they do not know. And sometimes I know, and sometimes I do not know. But I do understand nature and its effect on my body. I grew up in a chaotic house and was sent to my grandmother’s farm in Franklinton, LA during the summers. My Maw Maw’s home was a loving home. No one yelled. There were farm animals – dogs, horses, cows, as well as other creatures that hang around the country. There was a garden. There were home cooked meals.

To be barefoot and free in the country was the greatest gift my mother could have given me. It made me who I am today. I hope the wilderness is a similar gift to my son. I’m stuck on this homeostasis that he has already (hopefully) achieved. When I was older, my stint in California for 16 years created a fondness for hiking. Despite wanting to return home to New Orleans (now Bay Saint Louis) to be around a community I feel more kinship with, I miss the largeness of the landscape out west, the weather that allowed for long hikes, and the access to and reverence for nature. Here in the flats, with a body of water that might kill you, it’s hard to find that immersion and natural reset.

There is a lot of hype in the troubled teen industry about abuse – and I’m sure there is abuse. There is a lot of hype in the adoption and foster care industry about abuse. I’m sure there is abuse. However, the places my son has been enrolled in are family-run, and I’ve met some of the most incredible people, who have helped my son tremendously. In an ideal world, his biological mother would have had the resources and support to raise her son herself. In an ideal world, we would live in a community that helped my son through his tricky development – a school capable of reaching him without using a punitive system, neighbors who are not reactive and racist, a therapist he could connect with in meaningful ways. I could be younger. But those things are not the environment, so he is in a wilderness program, the gold standard for wilderness, and more will be revealed.

[Thank you for reading my writing; I love hearing from you and
would love to gather your responses here, instead of on social media.]