The Girl Behind the Door: A Father's Quest to Understand His Daughter's Suicide

The Girl Behind the Door: A Father's Quest to Understand His Daughter's Suicide

John Brooks

Language: English

Pages: 224

ISBN: 1501128345

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


An award-winning, candid, and compelling story of an adoptive father’s search for the truth about his teenage daughter’s suicide: “Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly” (John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa Crisis Center, and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge).

Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room to make sure she was getting up for school and found her room dark and “neater than usual.” Casey was gone but he found a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry.

Several hours later a security video was found that showed Casey stepping off the bridge.

Brooks spent months after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey’s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for the first fourteen months of her life, to her adoption and life with John and his wife Erika in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey’s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers.

In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks shares what he learned and asks “What did everyone miss? What could have been done differently?” He’d come to realize that Casey might have been helped if someone had recognized that she’d likely suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy—an affliction common among children who’ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. This emotional deprivation in early childhood, from the lack of a secure attachment to a primary caregiver, can lead to a wide range of serious behavioral issues later in life.

John’s hope is that Casey’s story, and what he discovered since her death, will help others. This important book is a wakeup call that parents, mental health professionals, and teens should read.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir

Shadows of the Workhouse (The Midwife Trilogy, Book 2)

My Lost Brothers: The Untold Story by the Yarnell Hill Fire's Lone Survivor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

for ice cream or leaving Toys “R” Us just a moment too soon, could send Casey into a fit of screaming, thrashing, and flailing about. Just getting her to calm down for bedtime often left us feeling as we did that first night in Warsaw—like bomb disposal experts. She refused to yield to authority at home without a fight, and had to be in control. Simple requests to clean up her room, put her dishes in the dishwasher, turn off the TV, or do her homework often triggered howls of protest. We had

for a girl. If we found her behavior unacceptable we just had to lay down the law with her. Eventually she’d come around. The staff psychologist at Casey’s school, Dr. Klein, repeated what we’d already heard from her teachers—good student, well-behaved, played nicely with other kids, thoughtful but sometimes a bit pushy. That was a good thing. It meant she stood up for herself. She’d never had even the mildest disciplinary citation. We talked about Casey’s early years in the orphanage, but had

met in front of the High Camp outdoor restaurant. She sat outside in the snow with one boot buckled into the snowboard, looking disheartened. I slid up next to her. “Hey. How was it?” She poked at the snow and shrugged. Maybe she was just tired. “Do you want to ski a bit? I’d love to see what you learned.” She remained silent. “You wanna go inside and get something?” “Yeah, whatever.” She pulled herself up and unbuckled her boot. We got hot chocolate inside and sat by the window. I tried to

stifled whimper. Crocodile tears. I was losing patience and spoke firmly. “Casey, you need to stop crying and acting like a two-year-old every time we have a serious conversation.” Her whimpering turned into bitter sobs. Erika picked up the exchange. “There’s something else, Casey. I found a pack of cigarettes and a pipe in your pocketbook.” She pulled out the evidence and showed it to Casey, who looked at it wide-eyed, not with fear but with rage. “WHAT? YOU WENT THROUGH MY POCKETBOOK? HOW

Erika asked. “At this point I don’t have enough information to say one way or the other, but I wouldn’t rule anything out.” I laced and unlaced my fingers as we sat in silence again. We’d failed at parenting and failed at therapy. And now we were told that the root cause of Casey’s problems was either a lack of bonding or drugs or both. Was she a hopeless case or was there a magic pill that could fix her? Medication had always been my last resort. “Dianne, what do you think about medication?”

Download sample

Download

About admin