An Unlit Path
 

Author: Deborah Hannah

 
 

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Fostering Families Today
Richard Fischer
Columns: Must Reads
Jan/Feb 2007 Issue

Hannah writes in a friendly conversational style and cleverly unfolds the history behind the characters in a manner to pull the reader into the story. The reader finds the Hannah family is very much like many other families eager and willing to help children in need of a safe and loving home. Their combination of eagerness, naiviety and trust were to ultimately be their undoing in a series of events that would eventually tear their family apart...

"An Unlit Path" is an excellent teaching tool and of particular interest is the information found in the final chapter titled, "The Conclusion." Here Hannah recounts her family's fostering difficulties and identifies the warning signs and the necessary resources to help the reader avoid the same tragic pitfalls.

This book is recommended for all prospective foster and adoptive parents.
The Light of Truth *****
Reviewer: Jodee Kulp
Better Endings
(Minneapolis, MN)

It seems that by the time one is wise enough to know what must be done, one is almost too old to do it. I thank the Hannah family for sharing their story to enlighten others in their hard-earned wisdom. Out-of-home care for children of trauma is difficult even in the best case for the whole family - the new child, the parents and the other children living in the home. The Unlit Path lights areas that have remained recluse in this world of love and laughter, pain and suffering. Hannah does not sugar coat the realities - she shares her heart and soul and allows the reader to walk with her as she begins to restore her spirit for new adventures and growth. A recommended read for professionals and caregivers to build bridges of understanding so that 'more harm' is not done in the hope of providing 'best interest.'

Joanna Freitag
Adult Adoptee and Founder, Family Tree Finders
“Reuniting Loved Ones Lost to Adoption”
Apex, NC
May 5, 2007

Hannah delves deep into a subject that most can barely bring themselves to scratch the surface. The foster/adoption system in this nation is mediocre on its best day due to lack funding and employees that should not be allowed to care for goldfish, let alone human beings. The “system”, for most of the states in this great country, is based and founded on lies and secrecy so unfortunately, Hannah’s book is not as surprising to me as it might be to others.

While Hannah does not partake in the sugar-coating of the system, many directly involved (i.e. case and social workers) have and will continue to do so, putting a band-aid on the real issues and problems of some, not all, foster and adopted children. Issues that families, like the Hannah’s, have the right to be aware of and deal with upfront.

This is an important read for anyone involved in the system and definitely anyone embarking on the journey of raising foster and adopted children. Thank you for lighting the path, Ms. Hannah. In my line of work, I hear many of these same stories week after
week. I commend you for being brave enough to write about it; sometimes living it is quite enough. Your book will help others in so many ways whether through education or sheer comfort.
Stacie J. Byrd
Co-founder www.lifechoes.com
American Adoption
Congress SC Representative

I have never been a foster mother or a mother to an adopted child, though Deborah Hannah makes me feel the things that she feels and very easily swept me into her world. Discovering that love is not enough can bring us to our knees and make us question our very existence and the existence of God. The Hannah family's strength through their pain is to be applauded as fostering is about so much more than "just parenting". As I read "My memories once so real were now only witnesses to an illusion", I knew that I was hooked, as we have all probably had these thoughts but were unable to say them so eloquently.

As a graduate of Saint Louis University with a degree in child psychology, a graduate of the Center for Biblical Counseling, a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors and a Mother I feel that Deborah Hannah has the knowledge to empower and educate foster parents and Social Services in the needs of our children.

Hannah's strength to return to herself and her God is a testimony to her strength. As she said, "Be the Change you want to see in the world."

I would recommend this book to all parents thinking of fostering and all professionals involved with fostering and adoption.
Cindy Bodie
Adopt America Network
http://older-child.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/an-unlit-path
http://thebodiebunch.blogspot.com/2007/01/unlit-path.html.

Older Child Adoption Blog
Deborah L. Hannah, author of An Unlit Path, has written a searingly personal, and excruciatingly painful, account of her family’s journey into the foster/adoption world.

Extremely well-written, it had me from the introduction; I was transfixed, fascinated, interested, and horrified. Having myself also parented traumatized children for decades I could almost see what was coming, yet I too was blindsided by the twists and turns their very troubled children provoked.

I read the book in one day, all the more remarkable as it was a Saturday with 25 kids in the house with me. I stood at the stove, cooking and reading, and I stayed up late until I’d finished it, underlining many of her thoughts to write about, and ponder, later.

I was nearly afraid to get to the end, afraid she’d pour out her rage at what happened to her family, but her message encouraged even a tough, old bird like me, “Many of the things that happened to us could have been avoided, and even though we suffered a terrible loss, if we could go back in time, we would still have taken these children into our home.”

That’s what I needed to hear, a validation of what she, and many others of us, who’ve dared to take on this often insurmountable challenge.

The system failed her, social services let her down and persecuted her, the police were of little help, and even her church hurt her family. Filled with despair that she’d not made a difference in her children’s lives, I saw it differently, from a perspective of having done this for a very long time.

She kept her children safe through their childhood, she instilled values, and she demonstrated a strong family life to them that may not bear fruit for a very long time, but I feel certain that eventually it will do so.

I’ve lived with raging runaways, destructive, nearly murderous children, kids who’ve been arrested, investigations by social services due to lying allegations, pregnant teens, and children in psychiatric facilities. But after these same children storm through their twenties, partying and living wildly without the restrictions imposed by a parent, I’ve seen phenomenal emotional growth and maturity that I expect Mrs. Hannah will someday also encounter. I would love to read a follow up of this years from now.

This foster/adoption world is a wild ride, a heart breaking, gut-wrenching ordeal at times when we will question even our own sanity and original motivations. We’ll lose friends, support, spouses sometimes, family members will desert us, others will betray us, the unfathomable will occur, and we will stumble through to the other side with our head in our hands, trying to ensure that our appendages are still attached, so devastating this journey can be.

Deborah Hannah may have had a more extreme ride than many, but her inner strength was amazingly encouraging. She is not, for a minute, attempting to discourage others from adopting from the foster care system, but her very realistic, often bleak snapshot of it, is something everyone should be prepared for and, more importantly, trained to undergo.

I highly recommend all foster and adoptive parents read this book immediately.

Many of us, nowadays immersed in this adoption/foster care world, grew up reading Cheaper By the Dozen or Helen Doss’s The Family That No One Wanted, and we simply desired to parent large, happy families. But today’s children in foster care, damaged in utero by crack cocaine and meth, RAD and often without a conscience, are a different, and shockingly dangerous story now, as newer adoption books relate. I think it is very important that parents entering into this world do so with their eyes wide open.

Deborah Hannah kept this jaded, yet still optimistic parent, eagerly turning the pages, immersed in their world, and learning with every step taken with this strong, and inspiring, Colorado family.
BellaOnline The Voice of Women

Attachment Parenting Site
Julie Renee Callaway
BellaOnline's Attachment Parenting Editor

Reactive Attachment Disorder in Adoption

I recently read the book, An Unlit Path by Deborah L. Hannah. I believe that her message needs to be shared...

I hesitate to even write this article because I believe strongly in adoption. I don't want to scare away desperately needed potential adoptive parents. I also have the scars of living the first 15 years of my life with foster and adopted siblings who made life impossible. I need to share what I know so families know the risks inherent in adopting hurt children. I believe that Hannah's book can be a help to families in similar situations.

Hannah is also a Christian and her faith that love could conquer all is so familiar. Everything in me says that love should be able to heal all wounds - but the reality I have lived is simply that some kids don't get fixed. When these broken hearts knit together again it somehow happens all wrong. Instead of learning to enjoy being loved they fight it and will even go to extreme lengths to avoid caring about others or letting others love them. Attachment parenting along with knowledgeable therapy can help to make a huge difference for the kids who can be helped. Some kids just won't let anyone reach them.

Deborah Hannah and her family adopted 5 children and fostered 9 more. Her family went through very similar expereinces to those of my family and other families I know attachment disordered children. Families of RAD children and teens will recognize life with hideous false accusations, abuse of other family members, physical threats, lying social workers, an underfunded system that has no resources to help familes with RAD kids, and the aching desire to just know how to help this child you love and fear.

Hannah does an excellent job of pulling you into her world. If you are considering adoption of an older child you will want to read this book to prepare yourself for possible problems. If you have a RAD child on your hands, this book will make you feel much less alone. Explaining life with a RAD to someone with normal kids feels much like explaining war to someone with no combat experience. You just don't know what it is like to cross a mine field until you have done it. Watching a few war movies does not prepare you for the sound of exploding bombs falling around you.

Hannah is careful to point out that she believes in adoption as long as everyone is well informed and families get the support and informtion they need. A painful but important read for anyone dealing with RAD.
Sarah Welsh
Independent Social Worker and manager of http://www.indibooks.co.uk
Social Work Books Online, a resource for students, social workers, foster carers and adopters.
May, 2007

I read Deborah Hannah's 'The Unlit Path' from the perspective of an Independent Social Worker carrying out foster carer assessments in the United Kingdom and a former social worker supporting and supervising foster carers in their fostering task, during which time, I was on 24 hour call to them. I found the book easy to read due to Hannah's subjective and narrative style and apreciated her honesty and I guess,the cathartic nature of the book. As a non Christian, I wondered how people of other and no religious faith would find the book, which refers to tenets of Hannah's faith at the beginning and sometimes during each chapter. Personally, I gained an insight into how a person's faith informs their life and decision-making and because it is a subjective and personal story, I did not find that it detracted from the story and its messages, which is essentially about Hannah and her family's journey through fostering and adoption. There are central themes within the book which are relevant to fostering internationally and to carers of any religious, or no, faith.

I had a great deal of empathy with Deborah, Joe and their children when faced with the common challenges in caring for children with significant emotional and mental health difficulties and their consequent behaviours, without the apparent preparation and support they needed. This is now compulsory in the UK (although the quality and intensity varies enormously.) They are remarkable people to come through their experience with a positive outlook and greater insight,which is so evident in the final chapter. I am not aware of the procedures and governing laws for fostering and adoption in the US, but I would hope they have changed dramatically since the Hannah's first started fostering and adopted.

Deborah Hannah's story highlights the fact that it is in everyone's interest for there to be transparency about the needs and behaviour of looked after children, not least for the children, who may have already experienced multiptle placements and breakdowns, and who also require the appropriate care to meet those needs. The welfare of the Foster Carer's own children should also be paramount and any potential risk to them should be discussed before a placement takes place, or continues. As in the Hannah family's experience, I find that lying and deceit is still one of the most contentious and emotive issues between carers and looked after children, in spite of preparation and training in this area. It is the presenting behaviour which carers have the greatest difficulty in seeing beyond (this does not mean accepting) and understanding. It is also one that children, whose very psychological and/or physical survival may have relied upon their ability to lie and manipulate, find very difficult to come to terms with and face themselves. Deborah and Joe have allowed us to see how this affected their family in a dramatic way and how eventually, Deborah came to see this behaviour for what it was. There is a move, in the UK to try to convert long-term foster care placements into Residency Orders, whereby social workers and other support staff would no longer be involved and fostering allowances would no longer apply (and therefore, the care could be provided much cheaper). The Hannahs' story shows how important ongoing supervision and support for carers, caring for such damaged children, is. Support is the predominant thing that carers value in the UK , and I suspect in the US. As other reviewers of this book have stated, social care staff experience difficulties and frustrations in being able to carry out their role, due to understaffing and other restrictions, but we should never forget that it is the carers who are living with and caring for these children on a daily basis. They are the ones who will both make and experience, the most significant impact. As Deborah and her family come to realise, and show us through their experience, love does not cure everything, sometimes children and young people cannot invest in a family or change to become more socially acceptable and aware. The best anyone can do in these circumstances is acknowledge this and have the courage to just 'hold' them in the hope that at some point in the future, their love and care will have a positive impact upon their lives.

A valuable read for potential and experienced carers and anyone involved in fostering and adoption services.