Too Much To Live For
Occasionally I have the privilege of working with some of my clients for several years. Currently there is a teenager who has been on my caseload for several years. When I first started seeing her in counseling, she had all ready experienced being removed from her biological mother due to her mother’s drug use and experienced three disrupted adoptive placements and several other disrupted placements. Since she has been on my caseload, she has experienced another disrupted adoption and an additional move or two. Admittedly, she has been challenging for her caregivers to deal with. She tends to be argumentative and can be rude and oppositional when she doesn’t get her way. During the last year, it seemed as if she was finally attaching to her house parents and finding a place to belong. Of course, almost as soon as she seemed happy and well adjusted, her house parents decided to move. When they moved, she was abandoned again and then moved to another cottage. Her new house parents got to experience most of the frustration she felt about being abandoned again.
During our counseling session this past week, we were talking about a peer who threatened to kill herself because she was mad. My client told me that she had threatened to kill herself before when she was mad, but that she would never kill herself because she had too much to live for.
Too much to live for. . . that made me stop and think.
Let’s see what she has in her life . . . no parents . . . no regular contact with siblings . . . no permanent adults in her life . . . no permanent home . . . no guarantees about where she will be living tomorrow . . . no guarantee about who will be living in her house tomorrow . . . really no guarantees that most kids take for granted.
But SHE has too much to live for.
When I asked what she had to live for, she began a long list that included going to college, becoming a veterinarian, being a wife, being a mother, etc.
In a few sentences, she proved one of the concepts that research has told us about resiliency in children and adolescents. When kids perceive they have a future to look forward to they make better choices about dangerous and high risk behaviors in their lives. Because my client believes she has a future that will be good, she is making great choices now.
She does have too much to live for!
