New Covenant is a participating host location for The Hope for the Journey Conference in Spring 2023. This conference is designed to equip and encourage parents, caregivers, and volunteers in meeting the needs of children impacted by adoption, foster care, and/or those who have experienced trauma. New Covenant staff member Renee Kim shares her personal story of how a young person with RAD impacted her life—for the better.

The Hope For the Journey Conference (formerly the Empowered to Connect conference) has a special place in my heart.

Before coming to work at New Covenant, I worked for a boarding school with a mission of helping families who had adopted or who had experienced trauma to find healing and build stronger connections within the family unit. A lot of how we lived alongside our students was based on Karyn Purvis's Trust-Based, Relational Intervention. This taught us to see past behaviors to the beautifully broken child who was created and loved unconditionally by God.

During my second year of working at the school, a little boy—we will call him K—enrolled, who had been diagnosed with Radical Attachment Disorder and who had experienced loss and trauma in his life, I couldn't even begin to fathom. Shortly after K started at our school, his adopted parents terminated his adoption, making him a ward of the state. He felt unloveable and instead of connecting, he did everything he could to push people away. His subconscious was telling him that it would be less painful if he kept people away, than if they left him.

K easily became overstimulated and would act out violently. During one such occasion, we had to remove him from the dormitory because he was upsetting the other students and threatening to hurt others and himself. Our policy was to remove the student from the harmful environment, so I took him out on the grounds. K ran. I ran with him. He yelled. I stayed with him. He started banging his head on buildings and—if you have ever read the Harry Potter series you'll recognize this next part—yelling, "Bad Dobby, Bad Dobby!" I firmly said to him, "If you are Dobby, then I am Harry Potter. And Harry Potter loves Dobby." K paused and looked at me, "You love me?" I had surprised even myself, but I did indeed love this little boy. "I do!"

At Thanksgiving, all students were to go home to their parents to practice the social skills we had been working on, hopefully having a pleasant connection time with family and so that dorm parents and helpers could have a break. K, being a ward of the state, would go to a foster family, which was not ideal considering the other children who might be there and his tendency to become overstimulated. I had a niece and nephew on either side of K agewise and my parents lived on a farm with lots of space and hands on activities. I thought, maybe coming to my parent's farm would be a good place for him to spend the break. I obtained the approval of my boss and K's social worker.

Though the visit was not without its bumps, K settled in and, overall, we all enjoyed each other. At the end of the visit, my parents believed they felt God calling them to bring K into our family. Our journey of integrating this young boy into our family, showed me even more poignantly, the way God loves us unconditionally and never gives up on us.

There have been times of doubt and fear since adopting K. He, still working through his trauma, reacted violently toward my mother on multiple occasions. He was removed from the home for his violent behavior more than once. The principles of TBRI and the Empowered to Connect (Hope for the Journey) conference gave hope and tools to continue to move toward healthy connections and healing for my brother, my parents, and the rest of my siblings and extended family. People who look at K and just see his behavior automatically dub him a "bad kid." Those who understand the way of TBRI see past the behavior to the scared and hurting little boy who desperately wants to be loved, but has developed coping mechanisms which do not promote connection or healing. Instead of ostracism and punishment, he needs real relationships that don't give up on him, but come alongside him as he learns better ways to navigate life.

K is just one young person that God has allowed into my life to show me the power of grace, trust and connection. Praise the Lord!