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“Thank you. We’ll start slowly, okay? What did your mom do for work?”
“My mother was a waitress at the local waffle house. My dad was a drug dealer.”
“When did you find out he was a drug dealer?”
“After I’d already been taken away—about a year into foster care. My schoolmates told me—they’d heard from their parents.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“Yes, my nickname in school was Rollin’ Rowan. Ecstasy was having a moment back then.”
“Kids are brutal.”
“So are parents.”
“What age did you go into foster care?”
“I was eleven years old. They finally took me after the sixth—the sixth—visit from CPS.” She shakes her head, the emotion boiling underneath the surface. “Do you know how hard it is for a child to be taken away from their family? How dire the situation must be? It’s an incredibly flawed system. I should have been taken away on their first visit, I know that now.” Her eyes narrow with anger. “My parents started leaving me at school in kindergarten.”
“What do you mean leaving you at school?”
“Exactly that. My parents wouldn’t pick me up from school. They’d just drop me off and never come back. The school repeatedly tried to contact my parents for them to sign me up for the bus route, but they ignored the calls. It happened so many times that one of the teachers changed her schedule so that she could take me home. Mrs. Young. I’ll never forget her… Looking back, I honestly think my parents were hoping that I would just never come home, that I’d find someone else to live with. That someone else would take me. They truly, truly, simply didn’t want me.”
“That must’ve been awful.”
“Yeah, honestly it was. I remember being embarrassed more than anything else, because obviously the kids saw, and all the teachers knew. I’d start getting crippling anxiety around the end of the school day, anticipating how I’d get home. I’d get so nervous I’d have to go to the bathroom several times, and of course, that in itself was embarrassing.” She shrugs. “Anyway, finally, with all the complaints, CPS took me away.” She picks at another nail. “It’s amazing how long they will let a child stay in an abusive environment.”
“All the while, the emotional and mental damage is getting worse and worse.”
“Exactly.”
“Rowan, is this why you chose a job in law enforcement?”
“Yes. I wanted to try to fix a flawed system.”
“Makes perfect sense. Tell me about life inside your home. Were you abused, aside from mentally?”
“No.”
“Not physically?”
“No.”
“Sexually?”
“No. I was just… cast aside. I was nothing to them. A burden, an annoying house gnat that you can’t get rid of. I made my own food from a very young age, was left alone many nights, learned how to bathe myself, everything on my own.”
“Rowan, do you think this is why you are so loyal to those in your life who have taken care of you?”
She frowns.
“Think about Aunt Jenny,” I say. “You’ve taken her in, despite the hardship on both you and Shepherd. Now, think about your marriage. You’re loyal to Shepherd because he made the ultimate commitment to you by marrying you. A commitment to never leave you or abandon you… at school, if you will. Do you see what I’m saying?
“Rowan, you have significant trauma that you have tucked away and compartmentalized—and I have a feeling that I don’t even know the half of it. But what you may not realize is that these unaddressed events are ruling your life. For example, it is solely because of your traumatic childhood that you chose your career. That’s big, right? Think about it. And because of your family abandoning you, you are clinging onto your husband, because, whether he’s a crappy husband or not, he offers stability in your life. And also you feel a sense of loyalty toward him.” I pause. “Your trauma as a child is why you need stability—no matter what the cost—and why you are loyal to a fault.”
She’s quiet now, still, the way she gets when she wants to stop talking.
“Rowan, if you want anything in your life to change, whether strengthening your marriage or having the courage to leave it, we have got to spend time unpacking your childhood. By doing this you’ll begin to recognize the conditioned behavior you have as a result of the trauma. Meaning, decisions you have made even as an adult that are rooted in your childhood trauma—and you don’t even realize it. Then, we’ll work on rewiring how you interpret your traumatic events. Once we do all that, you’ll begin to think more clearly and see things in a new light. It’s incredibly emboldening, Rowan. Perhaps enough that you will finally be brave enough to leave your husband, if that is truly what you want when we get to that point.”
