difficult child loved her week at camp. She has gone two previous years, but her experience was just "so-so". In the past she never seemed to have formed friendships or had meaningful times. But this time she was so excited to see us. As we got ready to leave she was hugging lots of campers and counselors. The counselor in her cabin said J was amazing! On the drive home J shared that last night was very emotional at their last campfire. It is church camp... so things are fun, but do have spiritual things to. They gave the kids paper and pencil and if they wanted to, they could write down things they "wanted to let go of or release to God" and it sounded like she wrote about her experiences with bio mom. She said there were other kids who shared some of their struggles and many stayed late in to the night talking to the camp counselors. THe counselors are mostly college kids from the same church affiliation. So over all a good experience. No, make that a great experience. We talked some on the drive home how she can keep in touch with her mom, but not to get her expectations up. And not to think when bio doesn't call or follow thru it is because J isn't worthy or deserving of bio's attention. Hopefully she won't get really excited with bio calls or skypes and not get depressed when she doesn't. We also talked that as she gets older (esp 18) bio mom might try to persuade her to live with her, or have more contact. Explained that after a certain age we can't make decisions for her, but we don't want her to get trapped in the same life style that bio mom has had.
So... tomorrow, little sis goes. I hope she has an amazing experience too. But each week is led by a different director so somethings might be done differently. KSM
