The First Wrinkle: The Effects of Childhood Trauma and an Honest Look Inside the Foster Care System

By Wendy L. Samford Ph.D.

Using brain research on the effects of childhood trauma, we know our brains cannot create lasting memories without attaching to old ones. In other words, “The First Wrinkle” in our memory is permanent. This book presents the authentic stories of four people who, in different states, experienced some form of childhood trauma. Alternating with the four memoir’s, are additional interviews showcasing those trying to better the system, including foster parents, first responders, and volunteers. The First Wrinkle is a tribute to the brave men and women who, from all over the country, have volunteered to share their stories. Read this book about needed change in our foster care system with your eyes wide open and without judgement. Find a way to be a part of the change in this hidden epidemic we call abuse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664194120

Wendy L. Samford Ph.D.

Wendy L. Samford, Ph.D., worked in the K-12 setting as an administrator for 13 years, higher education for 8 years and has been writing and contributing to books for 6 years. Her passion lies in working to support children of all ages, no matter where that direction may lead. She wrote, “The First Wrinkle” as a follow-up to “Bloom Where Planted” and hopes to continue to share honest stories of those who grew up in the foster care system in the United States. The message in her books, non-judgement of people as they journey through this life. Wendy is happily married and has four great kids and one awesome granddaughter. Contact the Author: Website: www.WSamford.com Email: [e-mail] Facebook: facebook.com/WendySamfordAuthor/ Instagram: The_First_Wrinkle

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by Wendy L. Samford, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Front Cover Design by Nick Dota

Rev. date: 12/08/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

830318

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Jenna

Chapter 2 Foster Parents

Chapter 3 Bree

Chapter 4 First Responders

Chapter 5 Catrina

Chapter 6 Volunteers

Chapter 7 Shaun

References

About the Author

This book is lovingly dedicated to:

God, for His direction

April, for her idea and her tenacity

My family: Scott, Addie, Joey, Savannah, Evan, Belliecia

for their unwavering support

All of the brave volunteers for contributing their stories

My Florida Writers Association Team:

Joel Boydston, John Chaplick, and Barbara Dandro

for their editing expertise

PREFACE

My life has been almost entirely dedicated to working with children or working with people who work with children. Six years ago, I was employed as an administrator in a school district with three years left on my contract. But as many know, when God calls, you answer. I knew that I was to write three books: one on over-testing in public schools in the United States,¹ one on school leaders who visualize schools differently,² and one on my daughter-in-law’s life in foster care. (Yes I know, I asked the same thing . . . foster care? I didn’t know anything about foster care.) So, as any irrational person would do, I quit my job as an administrator and went home to my basement in Ohio to write the first book.

After my second book, my family and I moved out of state and I fixated on getting back into my field. The prospect of finding a paying job consumed me. (Writers are notoriously paid poorly unless you make it big.) Unfortunately, I was plagued with the nagging knowledge that I knew I was directed to write a third book. For weeks, my conversation in my head, yes with myself, went something like this: I don’t know anything about writing a memoir. I don’t know anything about foster care. How could I start? How would I know what to say? Would my daughter-in-law even want to work with me? How long will it take? How will I make money while I am writing?

I fought the good fight for several long weeks, and eventually, I lost the battle. I cried. I mean one of those gut wrenching, break down, defeated cries. I had lost the battle with Him and I accepted my fate. Almost exactly one year later, Bloom Where Planted,³ about the life of my daughter-in-law being raised in foster care was published.

I took some time before I wrote this book. I volunteered at my church. I read many, many books on various topics: religion, brain research, trauma, abuse and neglect, general fiction, and my favorite—Stephen King! Maybe I was trying to heal from the year of writing Bloom. Maybe I was waiting for direction. Maybe both.

In October 2019, my daughter-in-law and I won two awards for Bloom Where Planted through the Florida Writers Association⁴ and had the opportunity to meet with an agent after the awards ceremony. When he asked us, What are the next books in the series? we had no answer. During our drive home, we talked at length about ideas for the next book. We thought maybe a book that had several stories of people who grew up in foster care would be a good follow up, with different perspectives from different people. My daughter-in-law called out to some friends she knew to see if they would be interested in sharing their stories. I contacted some people, and as time went on, volunteers found me. It wasn’t until sometime later that the idea to include those who work for, and contribute to, bettering the system, would be included in the book.

The First Wrinkle is a loving follow-up to Bloom Where Planted. In this book, I was very careful to intentionally include participants from many different states. The issues in our social service programs are found throughout the United States, not centralized in one particular area. Since starting this labor of love, I now know much more about abuse and its effects. I continue to grow and evolve with the help of many generous and patient mentors who have dedicated themselves to helping children, both young and old. And I read . . . a lot.

This book is written purposefully in a very specific pattern. The book includes multiple memoirs and opens with a chapter introducing you to the life of someone growing up in the system, followed by a chapter about the lives of people who have committed themselves to trying to better that system. The third chapter is another memoir about someone growing up in the system, followed by a chapter that includes people trying to better that system, and so on. The First Wrinkle toggles between stories of people who underwent traumatic experiences as children, and those who try to stop that abuse. My hope is to inspire people to see the problem of abuse in this country and find a way to bring it to a halt.

This book is a tribute to the brave people from all over our country who volunteered to tell their stories. It takes an unimaginable amount of time and effort to be interviewed. Follow up the initial time contribution with continual editing requests on my part, and you have a large commitment of time. Beyond that obligation, there is an often unbearable heaviness to remembering when horrendous life events are recalled. Recalling trauma often triggers trauma.

I have often wondered over the past year and a half why these people have agreed to share their stories. I can’t say for sure. Maybe to help other people so they won’t feel so alone in their abuse. Maybe so other kids will know they can survive, and even thrive, over time. Maybe so abusers, theirs and others, will know they did not win. The why for sharing their stories is for the teller to know.

All of the contributors to this book are valiant and I, for one, salute them. It has been my honor to work with them to finally share their experiences of toxic stress⁵ and how those childhood scars carry into adulthood. Survivors all, these people have my undying respect for their tenacity to keep on trying, always changing as they slowly, often painfully, evolve.

This book may be difficult to read in some parts. What do I say in response to those who have a hard time reading these stories? They are true! This is not a work of fiction. These are actual experiences of people who grew up in an abusive situation in all different places in the US. Child abuse and neglect is a big problem and, unfortunately, it is not going away.⁶

So I say to you before you read this book, do so with your eyes wide open. Be kind, be courageous, and most importantly, be an agent of change in this great country. Like the first responders, volunteers, and foster parents presented in this book, find a way to assist in the change of this quiet epidemic.

If you can, give of your time. If you don’t have time, donate your money. If you can’t do either, prayers are always welcomed and needed.

My purpose in writing this book is to encourage non-judgment of anyone as they walk through life. Even if some people have a lengthy journey left to travel, they just may have already groveled through a great deal of sludge to arrive on the shore where they are today. And maybe, just maybe, they are on a continual journey that will eventually lead them into the light of acceptance. Acceptance of themselves, as well as by others.

Do not judge according to appearance. (John 7:24)⁷

Good advice.

INTRODUCTION

When I wanted to add brain research to support my dissertation,⁸ I was immediately shot down because in 2013 the research was considered to be too new. So, when I began writing this book, I knew I wanted to use the research of neuroscience to support the people who volunteered to share their stories in this book.

Today, current knowledge in both neuro-science and genomics points toward the unmistakable conclusion that the experiences and relationships we have as children exert a lasting biological influence on our learning, behavior, and health across the life course.⁹ This quote from a study at Harvard University is worth some deep thinking. In essence, what the study is saying is that we never lose our old memories. Never.

Interestingly, our brains cannot create lasting memories without attaching to old memories.¹⁰ As a prior teacher, this is fascinating to me on so many levels. It means that neurons cannot be erased; they just stay in our old memories hanging around, waiting. True, they might get buried under years of new knowledge and, if they are mundane or rote memory, we may not even consciously know we are thinking about these old memories. But the point is, our prior knowledge has made an indelible mark on our brain. Whatever neuronal networks created from that experience are in our brain and cannot be removed. What does this mean for us?

It means that The First Wrinkle in our memory is permanent.

I remember when my mom was in the hospital having back surgery and, needless to say, she was on some heavy pain killers. One night during her recovery, she was petrified of a monster behind the mirror that was in front of her hospital bed. She kept screaming for me to help her, Get the monster! Stop him. Don’t you see him? I ran to help and try to stop her from being so afraid. I walked over to the mirror and opened it up showing her the empty cabinet behind it. Through a great deal of trying to convince her and after a long night, she eventually calmed down, but she remained unconvinced. A few days later, as she was wheeled out of her hospital room, she made me stop in front of that cabinet so she could look inside. I will never forget when she said, I know it doesn’t make sense, but I swear there was a monster behind it.

The amygdala is a little gland found in the base of our brain responsible for handling the fight, flight, or freeze response associated with fear. So if you are on a camping trip and a bear starts sniffing around your camp, or your toddler goes running toward the street after a ball, you want your amygdala to kick in and protect you and/or your loved ones. That being said, if the amygdala has taken over, it literally hijacks your body, it wants to make every decision based on simply surviving.¹¹ This is a necessary defense mechanism when there is a disaster, but if your emotions think you are in trouble because of a past trauma, you are in survival mode even though there is no imminent danger. Your brain is trying to survive a past trauma even when it is not true at the present time.

I recently watched a documentary entitled Paper Tigers.¹² The story shares how Lincoln Alternative High School in Walla Walla, WA, and the surrounding community responded to toxic stress¹³ by using a trauma sensitive approach to education. The movie speaks to the lack of distinguishing real and masked danger in the brain of a person who had experienced trauma. Put beautifully, the movie supports the notion that children who have lived through abusive situations don’t know the difference between a real tiger and a paper tiger.

When we are talking about traumatic experiences, there are actually two memories that form on the hard drive of our brain: a semantic memory as well as an emotional memory. Neuroscientists have shown that you can never erase the events and the facts from a trauma, but instead, you can rewrite an emotional memory that is even stronger.¹⁴ The memory of specifics and events can never be changed, the emotional association with the event can be altered at any time during our life.¹⁵

The good news is our brains continually add new experiences to our old ones and we have the ability to construct our understanding using part of what we already know and part of what is new.¹⁶ That means we don’t dump the old memories, but we are able to make new pathways that can explain the experience. Memories don’t go away, but we can soften the blow! What makes the change hard is that our brains are influenced by our emotions which affect our reasoning and our memory.

Unfortunately, as a general rule, people do not necessarily want to change. Why? Maybe because changing in a sustained manner often involves killing off of the old self.¹⁷ It involves leaving your old way of living behind and becoming vulnerable to a new way of thinking, living, being. That doesn’t sound like fun, does it?

I have spent a lifetime (well, a lifetime so far) learning about human change. What I can share with you about sustained change is that people will not seek change before discovering that there is, in fact, a problem. As human beings, we like to stay in what is referred to as a non-reflective state.¹⁸ In other words, people do not like to break out of their everyday habits because safe, even mundane, activities are preferable to chaos or fear of the unknown. This is human nature. The truth is most of us like consistency. We all know people who play it safe all the time in order to avoid the fear of the unknown.

The bottom line is that in order for sustained change to occur, we must recognize that there is a problem and go through the necessary stages of change. That is detecting a problem, creating a hypothesis to confront the problem, gathering tools and data to support the hypothesis, experimenting or taking action to test the hypothesis, reaching a place where new knowledge is applied to our problem, and having that place as our new normal. This cycle¹⁹ is difficult to complete and takes time and support.²⁰

Change is not easy and those who have experienced traumatic events as children have a difficult time pinpointing the exact problem in order to begin the change process. This can be difficult for a number of reasons. Maybe there is more than one problem, maybe the problem is buried so deep that it requires extended therapy to dig out, or any number of other reasons. The bottom line is this. It is very difficult to change when you don’t really know the problem.

Recently, I heard a speaker discuss the effects of trauma on the brain.²¹ She shared an experience that a fellow trauma therapist had shared to illustrate the difficulty of discovering a problem in the mind of someone who had experienced sexual abuse. Her therapist friend was called in to court to testify on behalf of an 18-month-old child who had been sexually assaulted when she was six months old. The child had undergone surgery as a result of this abuse.

Fourteen years later, the same therapist was called to provide therapy to a young girl. As soon as she saw the teen, the therapist remembered her. After seeing the therapist, the girl instantly ran down the hall and locked herself in a bathroom. Frightened,