Joseph … its meaning is "Jehovah increases" - Think Baby Names

Josephine … its meaning is "Jehovah increases" - Think Baby Names

The baby name Joseph is of Hebrew origin. The baby name has been on the charts since baby names started being recorded in 1880, when it ranked #7. The baby name has not dropped below #16 (in 1968, 1970, and 2009). The baby name enjoyed its highest ranking at #5 from 1912 through 1917. See Popular Baby Names.

To date Katie Kramer does not have a perfect match for a bone marrow transplant she desperately needs. If you are interested in being tested to be a bone marrow donor for Katie or anyone else in need, please check click here for more information.

This is one of the latest updates from Katie’s mother on Katie’s condition:

The appointment at Stanford has been rescheduled for next Thursday. Katie will have a GFR test (for kidney function), then we will meet with the cardiologist and then the oncologist. It will be a very long day, but we are hoping to come home with a plan for the transplant. It has been four months since we learned that Katie has relapsed, so we are ready to move forward with this transplant. It appears more and more that she will either have a transplant from the 9/10 donor they have found, or have a transplant using double cord blood units.

A reader would like to talk about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and an obsession with safety. Being obsessed with safety is a common aftereffect of PTSD. The term used for this obsession with safety is hypervigilance.

Most police officers and soldiers are hypervigilant because they know what it is like to be unsafe and will instantly react to keep themselves safe. You might be able to sneak up on a friend without any hypervigilance issues and get her to scream before laughing about startling her. However, you don’t want to sneak up on a police officer or soldier like that or you might find a knife at your throat!

The same reasons that a police officer or soldier are hypervigilant apply to foster or adopted children with PTSD. Just like a police officer or soldier, the child knows what it is like to be hurt, so she is on guard for being hurt again. She is constantly scanning her surroundings, just like the police officer and soldier, for signs of danger. Her reactions are going to be quick because she is always in “sentry mode,” prepared to take action to protect herself, if needed.

Today Faith posted an interesting blog in response to a query from a reader about “the burden of gratefulness” placed on adoptees by some adoptive parents. The comments following this blog were varied and excellent as well.

I decided to put in my “2 quetzals” on this issue as it is one I’ve thought long and hard about. From the first month I brought my precious daughter home from Guatemala, and she was a mere 7 months old, all the way up to the present, people have remarked in her presence that she should be grateful that we adopted her.

Although I’m fairly certain that my daughter’s life would have been far from easy had she remained in Guatemala, I detest her hearing that she should be grateful to us. Like Faith, I am forever grateful to have the opportunity to raise such an amazing child and I don’t want her to live her life feeling “beholding” to us for having adopted her. What child needs that dark cloud hanging over them?

A reader, who is an adoptee, wants to discuss the “burden of gratefulness.” I have heard this term from numerous adult adoptees online. The adoptive parents would tell the adoptee repeatedly that the adoptee should “feel grateful” for being adopted. That is a bunch of hogwash, and I hope that my words (coming from the perspective of an adoptive parent) will help release adoptees from feeling a “burden of gratefulness.”

I did not adopt my child for any reason other than that I wanted to be a mother. Yes, I believed that I would provide him with a loving and safe home, but that was not my primary motivation. I did not adopt him as a charity case or because I expected him to feel “grateful” that I “rescued” him from a different life. None of those thoughts even entered my mind! I wanted to be a mother and was infertile, so I adopted my son to become a mother. End of story. There is no reason for him to have to feel “grateful” for my choices.

I believe that telling a child that he should feel “grateful” for being adopted is a form of emotional abuse.