A Long Awaited Ella Update

     Ella is alive and kickin'! She is still with Ms. C and is continuing to work through her "stuff". She has a lot of anger in her and over the last few weeks she has FINALLY let it show in the way that we saw it here at home (not pretty). This is a HUGE step for her. She is learning that her way won't work in this life and that the emotional power she may have had in this house, won't work where she is. We were hopeful it would come sooner, but she IS our Ella and does everything in her own sweet time. :)
     All that will-power may make this part of life harder for her, but she will also be a woman that will move mountains when she is grown. I am excited to see her continue to take steps forward. I talk to her just about every day and as much as it is hard to hear her voice, her language and tone are also a good indicator of change that has happened and change that is to come. I am encouraged. The girls would not be as far along as they are if they were together.
     As much as it is painful for all of us, we know that she has to get through the surface coping methods so we can't get to the heart of the hurt. Once we get there..... then we can start talking about coming home.
     At this point we are looking at December as our month to reunify. We will be spending our Christmas break with Ella where she currently is, getting used to longer stretches of time together and then the final week of the break we will be in a much more intense setting with some of the nations best and most experienced attachment specialists in the field. It will be a very hands on, specialized week for our family alone where we will all receive hours of counseling each day as a family as well as marital counseling and preparation for the transitions that are ahead. When we leave there, we will leave as a family. The four of us, changed and united as a family (to be honest it scares me to death to even type those words. It is so frightening to hope for that, but I do.).
What this means in the here-and-now, is preparing everything else. There is funding to worry about - not a shocker there- but much more importantly the hearts of those with Ella, as well as our own. We are all vested in her, in both of the girls and we want hearts to be prepared, whole and excited to come together and to let go as well.
Macie and Ella have started talking on the phone. Of course, it's over speaker phone so that I can monitor things, but it's going well. We have some backlash coming up- but it's fairly minimal and getting worked through pretty quickly, so those calls will increase.
We are keeping physical distance for the time being. Ella's progress is substantial enough that I don't want to disrupt it by myself and Macie showing up to say "hi". With the backlash just from a phone call, we have decided it best to hold off another couple of weeks for another visit.
However, once those weeks pass, and if we continue to progress with both girls, the visits increase quite a bit in the following months in the hopes that over the Thanksgiving break we might be able to have Ella to ourselves for a few days before the final transition in December.
Anyway, so that's the hope and the tentative plan.
We continue to hope and we are thankful for progress.