Washed Clean, But Still Silent

by Charity

There's a story behind the name of each person in our system.  Sometimes the explanation is simple and not very profound; other times it's deeply symbolic.  It's our way of validating everyone within, whether they choose their own name or allow us to choose one.

brooke is five years old.  She is one of the nearly half of the children in our system who are nonverbal.  We used to refer to them as "The Silent Kids," but then we realized that doing so could limit them and even invalidate them.

When we first found brooke, she was hiding behind a dumpster in our inner world, and she was dirty on the outside.  The dumpster was outside the brick building that originally represented people in our system who had locked themselves away to stay safe or been locked away by others to stay safe.  It was also where we locked away feelings and memories that we were not yet able to face.

brooke's older sister Lauranine had just come out of the brick building and was trying to take her away from the dumpster when we found them.  Lauranine could talk and made her name known immediately, but brooke said nothing.  As we welcomed her and helped her get clean, she agreed to let us give her a name.  We chose the name brooke, to mean "washed clean."

Since then, despite her being nonverbal, it's been very easy for us to learn about who she is.  She's serious and self-contained and wise beyond her years, although when she's in distress her emotional age (as opposed to her chronological age) sometimes regresses to three.  She's intelligent and self-reliant and know what she needs, and she's not afraid to ask us for support or comfort.

As I was thinking about the incidents that I talked about with our T, one of the things that I remembered is something that our father told us.  We have a photo of us as a toddler, sitting in our father's parents' backyard and playing with a toy, and there's a very serious expression on our face as we look at the camera.  Our father later told us that when we were about that age, our grandfather observed us playing and remarked, "She doesn't say much, but you can tell that she's thinking."

I now believe that this toddler was brooke.  We've never associated her with this incident before; we'd assumed that she wasn't around until nursery school.  But it makes sense now.

We wonder if it's because of what our grandfather said that she still doesn't speak.  Oftentimes when a child is nonverbal, it's because the child is afraid.  This has never seemed to be the case with brooke.  She's not afraid; she just can't speak.  And it frustrates her to be so intelligent and to not have a way to verbalize her thoughts and feelings.

So during the course of the last 24 hours,  I've sat with brooke and offered her the support that comes with simply being together in the spirit of acceptance.  After a time we both realized that brooke felt ready to go back inside, so I let her go.  I don't know if she will ever find a way to verbalize, but we can make sure that she has every opportunity to thrive.