Damn, bonny. I'm sorry you grew up in such a shitstorm.

Bless you, but I'm totally okay. The thing that really got me about this whole deal is that I was upset about this news story with absolutely no conscious awareness of its connection to my experience.

I wondered why my response to it was so strong, but it took speaking it out loud and getting push-back here that I really dug up the truth about what I was feeling.

My clients get that 'what's underneath this' question all the time but, today, it got turned within.

Interesting.

So, while I was casting around looking for an answer to how we can, as a society, be of greater use to kids with parents who do not want them, what I should have been saying was, I wish a system like that had been in place for me.

I wish it had been in place for you, too, bonny. As well as for the kids who need it today.

The system sucks hard for kids. As bad as they could be, orphanages really can serve a purpose and I hate that our society just stopped them altogether and have so few things around like the Methodist homes and Boys ranches.

OK, now I'm watching the finale of the West Wing, and is it really true that they actually have the movers at the White House during the inauguration ceremonies?? That's bananas. I mean, I guess it makes sense -- you can't kick out the sitting President, and he's in until the minute he's out, but still.

The system sucks hard for kids. As bad as they could be, orphanages really can serve a purpose and I hate that our society just stopped them altogether and have so few things around like the Methodist homes and Boys ranches.

So exactly true.

The pendulum swing away from institutionalization of any kind has not turned out to be much better. Homeless vets and cast off kids. Unfortunate by-products of deregulation.

I'm not an advocate of snake pits, by any means, but the lack of social support for outliers seems to be reaching epic proportions.

Hopefully all this Nebraska stuff might serve as something of a wake-up call that there are so many families out there who are desperate for some sort of solution, that those middle areas really don't exist for most people.

bonny, I have the same sort of reactions to news like this. I'm currently obsessed with the Caylee Anthony story from a personal history perspective.

My eldest sister would frequently abandon my niece with my parents while I was growing up. She lived with a succession of losers (one of whom abused my niece). At one point, my other sister got custody of my niece while her mom spent over a year in Texas. When K came back, D didn't have the heart to fight her over custody of my niece so she gave her back.

I have hot-button reactions to news stories like this--I can usually track down the emotional reasons but it takes some hard introspection.

The idea behind getting rid of the big mental institutions and orphanages, which had too often served as not much more than warehouses, was that they would be replaced by community-based facilities. They did the first part, but never got around to the second. Homelessness and a highly dysfunctional foster system are not really an improvement.

Oh Cash, that sounds like an exhausting pattern. Thank goodness your sister had such a supportive family.

I have hot-button reactions to news stories like this--I can usually track down the emotional reasons but it takes some hard introspection.

This is me. And a case of the good news and the bad news being the same.

Yes, it's an old hot button issue and one that, at least today, took a lot of deep thinking.

But the good news in that is that my past no longer defines me and is not uppermost in my mind. Ironically, it's the thing I promise my clients and yet sometimes forget why I am so passionate about it...that by creating new habits of thought and behavior, the way you choose to be in the world becomes second nature. You don't have to think about being well anymore, you can just live well.

My emotional freedom may not be absolute but it is so much greater than ever before that I actually have the luxury to forget why something might upset me.

I'm going to chalk that one up in the win column at the same time I wish I'd figured it out before bringing it here!

In totally other news, when did the puppies get a new bed?! They're getting so big. Sniff.