When Love Is Not Enough: Parenting a Child with Trauma, Reactive Attachment Disorder and Borderline Traits

What happens when love isn’t enough to save a child from their trauma?

This raw, honest memoir follows one adoptive family’s journey through the storms of Reactive Attachment Disorder, borderline personality traits, and a young girl’s unhealed trauma that erupted into chaos, danger, and heartbreak.
Julia’s early years left invisible wounds--wounds that shaped her identity, her relationships, and her ability to trust. What began as hope for a new start quickly transformed into a cycle of manipulation, aggression, lies, running away, self-destruction, and emotional unpredictability. For years, her adoptive family fought to provide safety, structure, and love, while struggling to survive the daily crisis her behaviors created.

When Julia left home to live with her biological mother, the chaos followed: School emergencies, drug use, theft, threats, and abandonment repeated the same painful pattern. No matter where she went, the trauma went with her.

This is a story of love--and of letting go.
It is recognizing when saving someone is no longer within your power.

Also by RJ Koehler:
What He Didn’t Break
Choosing Life After Loss
The Weight of Silence