Love Is Not A Victory March

Family adoption, estrangement, complicated grief, trans generational trauma—and the cost of recovery

Photo snapped by Kelly 6/18/2025

For my grandson when he’s ready

My brother died on a Wednesday. Or at least, the news reached me on that day—through social media. On Summer Solstice, we headed home from Santa Fe. We’d arrived Monday, hoping for a getaway. A week away. But then the message came: my brother had died of leukemia.

I didn’t know he’d had a bone marrow transplant. If I had, I would’ve known his life hung in the balance. The last I’d heard, third-hand, was that he was doing well after chemo. No one told me otherwise.

The story between us—two kids in a blanket fort—stretches all the way back.

My family moved to the suburbs north of Denver when I was nine and my little brother was six. We were inseparable then, playing pioneers, draping a blanket over the kitchen table, and setting two chairs in front to make a stagecoach. That same blanket a tent over the clothesline in summer, hoping to sleep under the stars. When we played school, I was always the teacher; when we played church, he became the elder.

In the basement rec room of that house, my parents hung an art print, which he loved to obsession.

A young woman stands in the foreground, overlooking a field of wheat, her back to the viewer. Her hair is long, the color of sun-kissed grain, like mine. She wears a peach-orange sweater. I don’t remember the lower half of her body; she must have worn a skirt since women in our religion weren’t allowed to wear pants. The sky fades to soft tangerine. No hard shadows. The wind moves through her hair. She gazes into the distance.

My mother always said the girl reminded her of me. I didn’t see it that way, but I wonder now if my brother did. When I hit middle school, things shifted. I was pulled into the orbit of friends, school, and the teenage world while he stayed a kid. Our closeness drifted. Sometimes I wonder if the ache was planted back then, if the distance started long before I noticed.

Once we reached young adulthood and were finally outside the high-control religion we were raised in —before he traded one creed for another, and before I learned that even freedom can feel like exile—my brother began telling a story. He said that sometimes, when he got high, he’d talk to the girl in the art print from our childhood, begging her to turn around, pleading with her, even calling her names. He told it like a joke, with a half-laugh, but always ended the same way: “I still wish she’d turn around.

Years later, my brother came to my rescue. I was thirty-seven then, seven years sober, and still struggling. I became a mother at sixteen, a grandmother at thirty-four. Born and raised in a high-control religion, my dreams had dissolved before even taking form. I was never allowed a future, only the mandate to conform and remain in the cult. At last, I was moving toward stability, back in school, living above a typewriter store, and completing my education, student teaching language arts at a progressive high school.

But both my daughters—fatherless, raised in the wreckage—began repeating the story I hadn’t yet fully escaped: teenage pregnancy, addiction, cycles that wouldn’t break.

I had clawed my way out of a fundamentalist cage only to land in another kind of captivity: poverty, addiction, relentless barriers.

That was the world they were born into. Not the same choices, but the same pain, echoing.

It pushed up through every crack.

We were all just trying to find a way out. We were all chasing freedom.

When L was fifteen, she had my first grandbaby. Months before his birth, I’d had a spiritual experience on a flight to the Women’s International AA Convention from Denver to Kansas City. I was thirty-four and sober, struggling to accept that my teenage daughter was pregnant. Somewhere over the plains between Denver and Kansas, I surrendered. With that surrender, a knowing came: the child would be a boy, the day of his arrival was revealed, and I received a transmission that it was very important I welcome him to the world.

The day Z was born, I was the first to hold him — just as the transmission had shown. “Welcome,” I said, and our eyes locked as if we already knew each other. L and her husband, who wasn’t Z’s biological father, would be divorced before Z turned one. I knew I could offer him more stability than I’d managed for my daughters. But I also knew something else, deep in my bones: there are no do-overs. Raising a grandchild wouldn’t rewrite the past. I fell madly in love with Z. And I was clear about the role that belonged to me. I was his grandmother. Nana. And I wanted to love him from there, with everything I had.

L did her best, but stability was hard to come by. She moved Z from place to place—motel rooms, borrowed couches, floors scattered with crumpled clothes, late-night laughter, and partying. She and her friends were still so young, barely out of childhood themselves, doing their best with what little they had. They spent most of their time just trying to feel okay. But they all loved Z. If he was ever mistreated, I never saw one sign of it.

I tried to help without taking over. Refusing to let L abdicate altogether, I took Z every weekend.

I rocked him and sang him an old traditional tune I’d learned, out of key, enough to make his lower lip tremble and tears pool in the corner of his eyes.

Flowers are opening, opening/ To the sun and the rain/ Flowers are opening/ to the blessings of the One

When he was sick, I fed him warm tea and fruit candies, which he called hot tea candy, Nana! I bathed him, read him stories, and took him on adventures.

This too shall pass —I sang—This too shall pass/ Like the moon on the rise/ Like the look in your eyes…

We went to the Tivoli Center in Denver, where I bought him a Delta kite. He ran across the greenway, laughing wildly, chasing the bright orange triangle dancing against the Colorado blue. We watched Superman and Batman movies on repeat. I bought Superman PJs for Halloween; he wouldn’t wear anything else. The Batman action figure had a parachute, and he flung it into the air again and again, giggling as it floated back down.

I couldn’t afford a babysitter, so I sometimes brought Z to my 12-step meetings. On the way to the meetings, I would remind him to be quiet there. We played a game, “Shhh! Can’t talk in AA!” I’d whisper, and he would mimic me. One night, when I stood to share, he hollered: “Nana! Shhh! Can’t talk in AA!”

One Fourth of July, when he was about two, I took him to an AA picnic in a member’s backyard, where we had a perfect view of the County fireworks. As night fell, I held him in my arms and pointed toward the streaks of light unfurling overhead. When I lowered my arm, he grabbed my hand. “Again, Nana! Do it again!”

I was already part of his rhythm: weekends, stories, lullabies. I loved being his Nana but did not want to be his mother. Soon, I was in a dilemma. L was overwhelmed. The expectation was that I’d take care of him while she came and went, disrupting the routine. I couldn’t keep finding Z in circumstances that felt unstable.

“Leave him here with me,” I finally said. And she did. Even though she was struggling, I knew giving him to me wasn’t giving up. It was trust. She trusted me with what was beyond her capacity.

But I had no idea how I would manage. I couldn’t afford a babysitter, and I was still doing my student teaching. Something in me knew to take it one day at a time, that a solution would come.

Z cried all night that first night. My heart broke. I never told her. How could I?

For a few days, I relied on the landlord to babysit while completing my student teaching. Then Paulina, a neighbor. She didn’t speak much English, but we practiced together; she taught me Spanish, I helped her with English. She was a good mother. I trusted her. But even Paulina, who had always been reliable, wasn’t the long-term solution I needed.

Then, one day, Z said Paulina pinched him. I asked her. “Le pellizcaste?” Her eyes widened. “Nooo, no.” I didn’t know what to believe, but suddenly, she was unavailable.

“I don’t know what to do,” I told my mother.

I saw the struggle creeping back: food stamps, babysitters I couldn’t pay, junk cars, thrift stores, stretching every dollar. I was close to escaping that life. But Z needed me. I took him, trusting my higher power to provide a solution—and I thought my Higher Power had, when one came.

My younger brother knocked on my door.

He had flown into Denver on business from back east, where he lived with his young family, and learned of my situation when he stopped by to see our parents.

He took in my little one-bedroom apartment above the typewriter store and arranged his long legs awkwardly on the futon sofa. I’d hung a long bar by chains from the high ceiling and draped it with plants—spider, purple shamrock, goldfish. I remember the KFC sign outside the window flashing red and white, the way dust motes danced in a streak of light as the sun began to set. I put Z to work setting up his little race track, then sat beside my brother.

“Let me take him,” he said. “Your kids are grown. M and I are raising small children anyway. He’ll fit right in.”

He was the only boy of five children. I decided he must be my Higher Power’s answer to my desperate prayers.

“When do you go home?” I asked. “And how does M feel about this?”

“She wanted to take him from the beginning,” my brother said. “I fly back in a few days.”

“Let me talk to L,” I said.

Z ran the little cars around the track. “Look, Nana! Faster, faster!”

Night fell hard. The KFC sign kept blinking through the window, throwing shadows across the floor and walls in steady intervals.

Had it been his idea? Or my mother’s? Was he stepping up as the hero for her?

I couldn’t quit school. I kept praying.

And my broken heart told me the truth: you must let Z go.

L agreed and signed the guardianship papers. Part of the arrangement was that I would remain in Z’s life, visiting and staying involved. I would not raise him, but I would always be his Nana. I chose not to replace my daughter as his mother, but I fiercely held onto my rightful place as his grandmother.

My brother flew home with the plan that Z and I would soon follow. First, I needed to prepare him for the transition and get time off from student teaching and my part-time library job. The most I could manage was a week. L left it all to me. I understand now that she trusted me. Z was in my hands. And at eighteen, even though she loved him, the responsibility was overwhelming.

I had to rely on my brother for the plane ticket. Z was tiny, and I lied about his age so he could fly for free. I’d be holding him the entire six-hour flight from Denver to the east coast.

I talked nonstop to Z about the upcoming trip. Whenever we were driving, we had a routine: Z could drive when he was big. “When can you drive?” I’d ask, and he’d shout, “When I’m big!” Then we’d chant together: “Big, big, big, big!” Now I told him we were going to fly in a big airplane up in the sky! “Big, big, big, big airplane!” we chanted, and I pointed out every plane we saw overhead. At bedtime, I made up stories about the journey ahead, how he’d live with his uncle, aunt, and two cousins in a big house far away. I told him Nana would come to visit. That we’d talk on the phone. That his mama would always know where he was. That we’d write letters. I said it all over and over, hoping he’d carry it with him.

On the plane, I found our seat in a row of five in the center aisle, wedged between two large men in business suits. The flight attendants asked me more than once how old he was. “He’s big for his age,” I said, half-smiling, though in truth, he was small for his age; it’s why I thought he could pass for two.

I held Z in my arms, his body curled into mine, warm and trusting, his head on my shoulder as he slept. His hair smelled of sleep and sunlight, warm milk, and the crushed Cheerios I’d packed in a baggie.

It was the longest and shortest flight of my life, six hours of anguish toward the moment I would hand him over to my brother’s family, and a future I couldn’t see but tried to trust.

The weight, the feel, of Z in my arms – I still carry it.

Children always know more than we think. Z knew. He climbed into his new bed with the cowboy sheets and his old blankie, wearing the Superman pajamas, cuddling the Batman action figure I brought. He readily adjusted to the new environment, which said everything about his first three years.

“House with blue carpet,” he said, his bright brown eyes sweeping the unfamiliar world around him, mapping it for security.

We stood side by side in the new bathroom of his new home, brushing our teeth together. He followed his new toddler sister’s instructions as they played, looked for approval from his new big brother when he caught the ball tossed his way.

The morning I left, Z stood at the upstairs window, watching my brother drive me away to the airport. He waved, his little face pressed to the glass.

A part of me died.

Eventually, I came to understand the only way I was able to leave him at my brother’s—and stay sober—was by surrendering to guidance and trusting something greater than myself to give me strength. Even though it was the only viable choice at the time, as the hardest choices often are, it wasn’t necessarily the best one. It was an impossible choice. Not one I could have made without tapping into an unsuspected inner resource.

I couldn’t let go of this boy - the one I held onto even as I let him go - on my own strength. I still can’t.

“He’ll be okay,” my brother said. We didn’t talk about feelings in our family, but that day, he didn’t need to say more. That small acknowledgement of my pain stayed with me.

Tears poured down my throat, into my chest, into the reservoir of my heart, an ocean of pain. Where does that kind of pain go? It remains.

---

I won’t try to explain the estrangement. It wasn’t just with my brother. It was with the whole family system. He and I just got caught in the undertow of the rupture. People want tidy stories, answers that resolve. But families aren’t tidy. And grief doesn’t ask for permission to be complicated. Recovery gave me myself. But claiming that self meant losing my place in the family.

---

Painting of Nana & Grandson by Kelly Thompson

He was only three when I took him to my brother’s home.
Does he remember the hot tea candy? The lullabies?
The fireworks when he was two?
The way his legs raced toward me every weekend like I was the whole world?

The stories.
The phone calls.
The letters. The visits.
The travels cross country I made.

I thought it would be enough.
I thought the thread we spun between us would hold.
I thought the bond we formed the day he was born would carry us.

It carried me.

He stood at the window, watching me leave.

His little hand pressed to the glass.

And I—I’m still standing there too.

I never left.

All names in this piece have been changed to protect privacy.
The story remains true.

---

ON REPEAT 🎵

“Orange Sky” by Alexi Murdoch

My brother once played this song for me.
It haunts me now, especially because we were estranged at the end.
The care package I sent when I heard he was ill went unanswered.
But I’m sure he got it. And though he didn’t acknowledge it, I think I understand.

How could either of us have known how complicated family adoption would be?

I’m grateful my last words to him were a message of love.

---

AND A MYTHIC AFTERWORD

The day after I learned my brother died, I picked up Women Who Run With the Wolves and opened it without thinking.
It fell open to the story Sealskin, Soulskin.

I had never read it before.
But as I took in the tale—the woman who leaves, the child who watches her go—I began to sob.
Then I read it aloud to my husband.
It felt like the story had been waiting for me.

“At last they tore themselves away and swam out to sea, and with one last look at the boy, they disappeared beneath the waters. And Ooruk, because it was not his time, stayed.”

If you’re sitting with grief, surrender, or the ache of letting go —this is for you. Read by author Clarissa Pinkola Estés the story begins at 8:45:

Fallen Woman #266 ~ Sealskin Soulskin!

Or, you can read a written version here.

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ONE THING

I communicate with life this way.

The night I first heard the news, I asked my brother for a sign. I didn’t see one. Still, I snapped a photo.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I glanced at the photo, that I saw it: an
Orange Sky. The song he once played for me. The last bridge.
That sky—and that photograph—were his answer.

The day after he died, I picked up the book Women Who Run With the Wolves—and it fell open to a story I’d never read: Sealskin, Soulskin.

On the road home from our getaw in Santa Fe, I meditated and reached for his spirit again. Then I hit shuffle on Spotify.
The songs that followed—seemingly random—were unmistakably on purpose.

Your turn:
If you want, try it.
Sit quietly.
Ask your question.
Open a book.
Take a photo.
Shuffle a playlist.
See what life says.

And if you want to borrow the songs that showed up for me - here’s the playlist:

“This above all: to thine own self be true.” —Hamlet