Tag: foster parenting

Imprinted

Published on by RLeave a comment

I found a picture from 2017 of me holding our 4th foster child while he slept. A flood of emotions and senses bowled me over. I remembered the weight of him. I remembered how his thick curly hair smelled, and I could feel its texture under my chin. I could feel the deep warm breaths that whispered on my shoulder as he slept. I remembered the drool on my neck, and the sticky fingers on my arm, holding me tightly.

These all hit at once, and so visceral was my response to this picture that I audibly gasped, held my breath, and then the tears began to pour.

It has been 5 and a half years since I held this child in my arms. 5 and a half years since I laid an eye on him. 5 and a half years since I knew he was safe.

I shared with some friends who didn’t know me during that time, who never knew our sweet boy, and one of them said that she missed those moments with her own children when they were babies, but at least she could go give them a hug now, because they are still with her. And I sat with that and marinated in it and I realized, that’s what makes these memories so much harder. I cannot kiss the top of his almost 7 year old head, I cannot wipe his knee when he gets hurt, I cannot hold him in an embrace before bed. I don’t know if he is safe, I don’t know what he looks like now, and I wouldn’t even recognize him in a crowd. The loss is so severe and so complete that you can’t find comfort as you would with a child who stayed and who you can still see and hold.

In those 5 and a half years, I have been a mother to 7 children since, biologically and through fostering, and not a day goes by where I don’t miss that little man. My husband and I can scarcely speak of him without getting choked up. My days of fostering may be over, but the imprint of those 8 souls we had the privilege to care for, whether for a short time or long, will mark me til my dying day. They have changed me, and the way I view the world.

If you’re considering opening your home, I want to encourage you with this: You don’t have to foster forever. You don’t have to commit your whole life to it. But even saying yes once could change that child’s life, and it WILL change your own.

Marie

Published on by RLeave a comment

Our fostering journey has come to an end, now that we have 6 permanent children in our home, but I have been asked many times what influenced me to become a foster parent. There are actually several stories from my life that pushed me toward becoming a foster parent. I thought I’d share one of the many…

16 year old Marie showed up on our family’s doorstep a week before Christmas in 1994. She had on a faded blue backpack with a wooden color guard rifle sticking out of it. There were two young men with her. She told my parents she needed a place to stay. I was 8 years old.

My dad asked Marie if her mother knew she had come to our home and she said she did. It was evening, and so they said she could stay for the night. The two guys who had driven her left. She settled in on the family room couch that night. I remember being in my bed, too excited about the new guest to sleep. I had no clue how our lives would change over the next 2 years.

This Christmas sticks out to me for a few reasons. One being that it was the last Christmas with my parental grandmother, Grace. She was dying from breast cancer. Her last Christmas, she gifted my mother with a poinsettia afghan. I “borrowed” it from my mother 2 weeks later, wanting comfort at night. I have slept with it every night to this day, and it’s attended every hospital stay, been across the country, and to 2 other countries with me. This was also to be the last normal Christmas of my childhood, made special by family traditions that all vanished when my Grandma Grace died. But, normal it did not turn out to be.

We knew Marie. She had dated a boy from our church the previous year and had come to youth group on and off before moving an hour and a half away. She was a few months younger than my oldest sister Sarah, and so Sarah probably knew her best. She came from a troubled home, fraught with instability and substance abuse. She was a standout from her loud laugh and what I now assume was a smoker’s cough. Marie was often like a big kid. She acted younger and more impetuously than her peers. She was also somewhat of a chameleon, and had a strong desire to fit in with those around her.

At some point in that first week, my parents followed up with Marie’s mom to make sure she wasn’t a runaway. When my parents asked if Marie could stay, she seemed ambivalent and didn’t care, so Marie stayed. Having random people in our home didn’t surprise me. My parents always seemed to be opening our home to people.

Being a pastor’s family, my parents felt strongly about practicing what they preached. There was the pregnant and single woman sent to us from a crisis pregnancy center when I was a preschooler, the strange lady who picked almonds from the chicken salad off my plate with her bare hands and pulled my sister Beky’s hair, and there was family who burned their house down for insurance money, but needed a place to stay. There were also countless missionaries who slept in our home, exposing me to cultures from around the globe from a young age. My parents’ home is 1300 sqft on a small lot, but this never kept them from extending hospitality to people who needed a safe place to stay. My sisters and I recently asked my parents if they were concerned about our safety when strangers were staying in our home. My mom said she prayed faithfully each night for God to protect us, and He did.

Of course, Marie wasn’t a total stranger to my parents, but they didn’t know her well. I don’t even know how she knew where we lived. But when things turned for the worse with her family, she remembered my parents and that’s where she fled to.

A few days after she showed up at our home, I was moved out of my bedroom and into my middle sister Beky’s room. Marie took over my pink and flower bordered little girl’s room with her few belongings. People from church sent toiletries, and gifted clothing and treats. I recall my parents making a mad dash to buy her presents so she would feel included with us 3 girls as we opened gifts on Christmas morning. My parents lived below the poverty line on a very meager salary from our church, and in hindsight, I can’t help but wonder if they were wondering how to pull it all off— but they did.

Looking back at the home videos of that Christmas, you can hear Marie talking loudly in a silly falsetto voice, joking about the underwear she unwrapped. Something I didn’t find strange then, but did later— she was already referring to my parents as “Mom and Dad”. She was like a magnet to metal looking for stability, and she forced herself onto it with gusto.

At the beginning of the new year my parents started gathering paperwork to become Marie’s legal guardians. She had a host of dental issues and some medical needs, so my parents asked her mother if she would sign over parental rights so my folks too could tend to Marie’s needs. Her mother signed her over without a fight.

Marie had been in and out of various public schools with all of her family’s moving around. But we 3 girls were homeschooled, and so my mother set out to homeschool Marie, too. She was at a 5th grade level, and I remember my mother explaining over and over the definition of an adjective to her around our kitchen table. Between trying to get her caught up academically, carting her to countless dental appointments from her extensive dental needs, doctors visits, and whatever hushed about things were happening with her family, all while my grandmother was starting hospice and not long for this world, I got lost in the mix.

I remember learning to be self taught in my homeschool studies as much as I could, also leaning on my sister Beky for help. I went back and forth a couple of times sharing a room with Beky while Marie had my room and then at times Beky and Marie sharing a room when Beky and I were fighting too much. (Once was for reading Beky’s journal where she confessed her crush on a boy in our church, and me telling my friends and teasing her endlessly for it— yes I was the stereotypical annoying little sister!) My mother was stressed, handling the brunt of Marie’s needs. My father was tender hearted toward Marie and didn’t seem to share most of my mother’s frustrations and concerns, because he was at work much of the time that Marie was being carted off from appointment to appointment. My oldest sister Sarah was already off to cosmetology school and working most days, so Beky and I probably felt the pinch of the day to day change more noticeably, though I do remember all 3 of us murmuring at times feeling the stretch of our parents’ attention.

Looking back, I know that the extra mouth to feed, the extra needs, the behaviors, and the uncertainties mixed with their usual flood of responsibilities with the church and mourning the death of my maternal grandmother followed one year later by the death of my maternal Grandfather must have been horribly overwhelming. But despite all of that, they did their best. I know they weren’t perfect, but they tried. They threw Marie a big 17th birthday pool party at a friend’s house since she hadn’t had a Sweet 16. Her teeth did get fixed and replaced. She eventually was able to enroll in the local adult school. She got her GED. She got her license and bought her first car. She got a job. And after 2 years of high highs and low lows, my parents helped Marie find a room to rent 5 minutes away.

The day we moved her out was a big one. She had accumulated so many things since she had shown up with only a backpack of possessions to her name. She now had clothes, jewelry, books, furniture, so many toiletries, keepsakes, stuffed animals, linens, and more. This was the part where my parents hoped she would make it on her own, and live a life as responsibly out of our home as she had in our home.

Within a week or so, we got a call from the woman whose room Marie was renting saying she hadn’t seen Marie. Not long after we got a call from her job asking why she hadn’t been to work. Marie had met a guy who pulled her back into the things from her old life. She hadn’t lasted a month in the real world before she lost everything. She never came to get her things. I remember us taking everything downstairs from her rented room into the van. I remember us sorting through it, my parents trying to get ahold of her to come get her things. I remember taking them all to a donation drop-off when she wouldn’t return calls.

My parents struggled for years after. It had all been for nothing, they thought. The wild girl that they had tamed and tried to make in the image of their own daughters had failed. Years later, we reconnected with Marie brieflyw, even visited her, her husband, and her baby in their apartment. She would have other ups and downs in life, but the last I saw, she was clean and sober, living in the other half of the state near her parents, who also had found sobriety. Still, my mother had regrets about how Marie’s stay in our lives had affected our lives. She had voiced it so many times as I grew up and even into adulthood, remembering how she wasn’t able to be as attentive as she wanted to be toward our needs and education, wishing the time hadn’t been wasted.

In 2019, I got a call from our FFA social worker saying “I know you don’t take teens, but this one has a baby, and if you don’t take this one, she’ll be separated from her baby.” The first thing I told her was “I’m not inclined to say no, but let me talk to my husband.” And when I called Noah, I said “I know we said we wouldn’t take teens til our children were grown, but…” and he replied “I’m not inclined to say no”, repeating my exact words to the social worker. We called the social worker back in half an hour and said yes.

That teenager would change Noah and I forever. We had over a year of ups and downs, ins and outs, but we love her and her babies with our whole hearts. I could have said no. I could have looked at my young years with a strange teenager living in our home, who took my parents’ time and attention from me and said, “I just don’t want that for my own kids.” But the thing is, I didn’t have a childhood of wealth and ease, and it came with its share of heartaches during that season of instability in my own little life, and I see how it shaped and molded me, and knew my kids would be okay.

And so, since meeting my daughter at 17, and since loving her with a ferocious and protective love, and through loving her babies the last 4.5 years and seeing her spread her wings and make it in the world, I have salved my mother’s wounded conscience. I have thanked her for taking in Marie. I have assured her, that time was not wasted. For leading by example. For showing me the importance of living out your faith and ideals, not just talking about it. If my parents hadn’t taken Marie, I might not have said yes to a teenager when we got the call. And life without our oldest girl and our grandbabies from her is a life that Noah I couldn’t fathom.

(Marie’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.)

Note: we never refer to our foster children as our own because they have their own parents. However, by her request, we call our oldest our daughter, and she calls us her parents. It is an honor we do not take lightly.

Celeste

Published on by RLeave a comment

Our fostering journey has come to an end, now that we have 6 permanent children in our home, but I have been asked many times what convinced me to become a foster parent. There are actually several stories from my life that pushed me toward becoming a foster parent. I thought I’d share one of the many…

In 2005, I was 19, and found myself in a relationship with a guy about 10 years older than me. Bobby and I worked together at a hardware store. I was a manager and we worked in the same department one night and hit it off. I was very much into the Rockabilly scene at the time, and you could find me at car shows with my hair piled high, and wearing leopard pencil skirts. I listened to The Reverend Horton Heat and bought new issues of Rat Rod magazine every time it hit the rack. Bobby was very much my type. He also loved old cars and played guitar. His hair was a perfectly coiffed, high, black pompadour, built up with layers of Murray’s pomade. He wore 501s cuffed over his Chuck Taylor converse, and his deep brown skin glinted in the sunshine when he hung his arm out of the car window while smoking a Camel.

One night, I accidentally became his girlfriend. I say accidentally, because he, being much older than I, likely assumed it was a kiss and nothing more. But, having been raised in purity culture and also being quite naive, I thought that one kiss meant we had to be together. When he found out how much younger I was than he, I remember him becoming a little leery, but I was impetuous, and I have always been quite convincing, so he found himself in a relationship with me.

I was (and am) a Christian who had fiercely disagreed with people being in relationships when they came from different religions. However, young love makes you question all the things you’ve ever held to be true, and I decided instead to just hide my relationship from my family. Looking back, I realize that what transpired next was supposed to be Bobby’s way of nicely getting rid of me. He told me that we should come clean to my pastor father about our relationship. He assumed this would cause me to break it off. I didn’t want to tell my dad, but he pushed, and so we did tell my father, and I was given an ultimatum. Cease to date this much older guy, who did not share my faith, who was not a good fit for me, or go find somewhere else to live. I was given 3 days to make the decision. In hindsight, I am absolutely sure that during those 3 days, Bobby was thinking he was about to be rid of this very demanding, yet very young, naive girl. I know this because later I found out he had slept with my best friend for the first time during this deliberation period while I was at home, pining for him in my childhood bedroom.

When it was time to answer my father on leaving Bobby and abiding by the house rules or finding another place to live, I was frozen. I really didn’t think, when push came to shove, that my dad would make me answer. I had been on my way to work and tried to slip out without my dad knowing, but he stood in the door waiting for my answer. The first thing out of my mouth was, “I guess I’ll leave.”

I threw everything I could fit in my 1996 Chrysler Concorde and drove away from my childhood home, with no where to live.

Throughout the next several weeks I lived out of my car, crashing at my best friend’s house (yes, the same one he had spent the night with, unbeknownst to me at the time), crappy motels, and wherever I could lay my head. A couple of weeks after my 20th birthday, Bobby took pity on his young, homeless girlfriend, and I moved into his parents’ home with him.

Now at this point, I’m sure you are wondering a lot of things, like “what does this have to do with fostering?” Or “why was an almost 30 year old man still living with his parents?” Or “why am I still reading this?” I’ll answer the first question and let you ponder the second, but only you can answer the third.

One evening, while I was living with Bobby and his parents, there was a knock at the door, and it was Bobby’s older sister, her boyfriend, a giant dog, and a most adorable, round faced 4 year old girl. The little girl turned out to be Bobby’s niece, Celeste. To this day, I do not know the ins and outs of what the situation was, but soon, Bobby’s mom and I were cleaning out the spare bedroom and making it ready for Celeste. I remember that we were preparing the house for a social worker to approve the living situation. I remember scrubbing the bathroom, cleaning the carpet in the living room, and dusting little trinkets. I also remember hushed talks about Celeste’s mother and boyfriend needing to find another place to live in order for Celeste to stay with her grandmother.

And then Celeste was there living with us. All I had ever wanted in life was to be a wife and mother, and I suddenly had this chance to test it out. Bobby and I took Celeste to the park, and the beach. I picked her up from preschool, and cooked her breakfast. I read books to her before bed, and memorized the words to Fox in Socks from reading it so many times over. I cleaned up her vomit in the middle of the night, styled her hair, and gave her snuggles. There came a point when I was becoming disillusioned with Bobby, but I loved Celeste so much, that I couldn’t fathom a life apart from her.

But of course I was not a wife, nor a mother. I was just a rudderless 20 year old in love with a dream. I could pretend I was a mother, but I never would be her mother. Her grandmother was her legal caretaker, and she had a mother, even if we didn’t see much of her. I was playing house and there would be no happily ever after for me. Bobby cheated on me with my best friend while I was nannying in Scotland for a couple of my preschool students, and this time, I found out shortly after. I tried to stick around, and force him to love me, but we were cursed from the start. The dramatic story of my homecoming after leaving him is one for another day.

One of the hardest parts of breaking up for me was leaving Celeste. I knew leaving Bobby meant losing Celeste. I kept in contact for a while, even attending her 5th birthday, but sitting across from my ex and former best friend at Chuck E. Cheese was awkward for everyone. Bobby’s mom was incredibly sweet and arranged for me to see Celeste a few more times after that throughout the following year, but understandably, that didn’t last.

I think about Celeste often. I still have her Kindergarten school picture stowed in my jewelry box. She’s now a young adult woman, living where and with whom and doing what, I may never know. I think about how when I left Bobby, it broke my heart to leave her, and yet I was just one more unstable adult in her life to vanish. Just one more person to come and go with no explanation. There were people and situations that came before Celeste, and after her that also led me to become a foster parent, but learning that I could love a child as much as my own flesh and blood, who started out as a stranger to me was eye opening. Knowing that there were children in the world living in unstable situations and needed a safe place to land stuck with me.

Our first foster placements would come into our life 10 years after I left Celeste. One of whom was a 4 year old girl with the same smile, eye shape, and round face as Celeste. Her mom was also having a tough time and she and her little sister needed a safe place to land.

20 year old Rachel was lost and confused about why God would let her make so many stupid choices that led to some serious heartbreak. 30 year old Rachel saw that all things worked together for good, and that a foolish, young relationship may have just been a catalyst used to prepare her 10 years later to love and care for children from hard places— not for pretend with a boyfriend who was bad for her, but for real with a husband who shared her vision.

(Bobby and Celeste’s names have been changed to respect “Celeste’s” privacy.)

Just Okay

Published on by RLeave a comment

I do not like to be good enough. I do not like to be just okay. Last summer, my family rented an AirBnB. It was wonderful, truly the best vacation we had ever had. I privately messaged the owner with a list of minor issues with the home so she knew to repair them, because the home had been booked solid for months, I assumed she just didn’t know about them. Really simple things like burnt out lightbulbs, or peeled off wallpaper or missing towels and cutlery. I assured her that the house was wonderful, it wouldn’t affect our rating of her home, and we hoped to come back, it was just an FYI. When it came time to rate the home, I gave a detailed review, praised the home endlessly, and gave it 5 stars. Her review of me came up, where she criticized me for being too wordy in emails (guilty as charged, look at me now, I can already tell this post is going to be too long) and said I was “just okay.” JUST okay? Just OKAY?! JUST OKAY?!?! I wiped all the surfaces with bleach wipes, stripped all the beds, washed all the towels, left a thank you note, cleaned everything, swept, wiped down the fridge. Just okay?!

I tend to be a perfectionist in some aspects (not all). I like things to be done a certain way. I have high standards for myself and my children. I like my fitted sheets folded in perfect rectangles, I like my toilet scrubbed a specific way, I like my scrambled eggs cooked on a screaming hot cast iron in 40 seconds and removed immediately and topped with the perfect amount of coarse salt. When it comes to baby and kid stuff, don’t get me started on car seat safety, and I am probably the only person I know who is sanitizing bottles post-first birthday. I don’t offer solid foods before 6 months, I nurse all my bios to natural weaning age, I use rigid formula preparing protocol for our fosterlings, and I document the heck out of everything I do.

So a few years ago when we were fostering our 4th kiddo and the social worker said “Rachel, I’m not looking for his mom to be perfect. I’m not looking for her to be you. I’m looking for her to be just safe enough. Just good enough. Just okay enough to keep him alive.” I was of course flabbergasted. How could you take a child out of a home with everyone’s underwear was folded in perfect envelope shapes, and stacked like files in their little drawers and move him somewhere where the bare minimum is “just good enough to stay alive”?!

We just celebrated 6 years of fostering a few weeks ago, and I’m finding that indeed, not everyone has to be me. They don’t have to face all their canned goods the same way and have spreadsheets for their Costco shopping. They just have to be able to care for the child at a safe level. They have to feed the child 3 times a day. And sometimes those parents are going to feed their kids apple juice and Cheetos, something this mother just doesn’t do. Sometimes they are going to let their kids sleep with the TV on, a travesty in my home. Some parents are going to let their children graduate to a booster before the maximum weight on their 5-point car seat, a thought which literally gives me palpitations.

I shouldn’t look at the family of the child who is placed in my home and say “if this baby is gonna go home, they need to be a carbon copy of me.” I have to say “will this child be safe— enough?” A lot of times the answer is yes, even if I really fight that answer. And if the answer is no, being that the goal of all foster care is, what my friends? Ding ding! Reunification, that’s right! Then I better do everything in my power to set them up and help them be good enough, safe enough, okay enough. That means I have to mentor, I have to co-parent, I have to celebrate their every achievement, I have to sit with them in court and show them I’m here to cheer them on, I have to write safety tips and schedules for them, I have to help them set up everything they need to make their home safer. And the hardest part? I have to be at peace with it if and when that child that I have loved, fed, clothed, kissed, cuddled, wept over, advocated for, driven all over the countryside for appointments, prayed over, and indeed written a book’s worth of notes, documentation, spreadsheets, charts, and schedules— goes home to a house where they might eat donuts and soda for breakfast.

At the end of the day, I have no legal or biological right to that child. Yes, they feel like my own. But they aren’t my own. So if the powers that be say the place they need to be is with their family, in their home, kept just safe enough, it’s not my job freak out in the corner that their parents aren’t AS safe as me. Or AS organized as I am. Or AS responsible as I am. (Let me just be real and add here that I WILL be rocking back and forth in the corner freaking out, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I shouldn’t! 😂)

I lost my mind last year when I was rated as “just okay”. I actually cried about it. I vented to my sisters and my friends. I could not believe that someone had the audacity to rate me as “just okay”. I had to go to God and deal with my pride over how upset I was at being seen as mediocre. My incredibly talented and funny friend created this embroidery piece for me, and I have it hanging in my room to remind me that as highly as I might have viewed myself leaving that AirBnB, someone else thought my standards were just okay. Talk about humbling.

If the requirement for parenting was perfection, then none of us would be able to parent. Heck, some of you run way tighter ships that I do, and if you were the required standard, I would also surely fail, spreadsheets and all. My encouragement for you, if you’re like me, is to stop judging parents because they aren’t you. No one is you, except you. And that’s okay, and also? Sometimes being just okay, is actually okay.

(Note: I want to be clear that this is something I am working on. This is literally me preaching at me right now. Trying to tell myself these truths when I feel like every fiber in me is fighting it. This is not something I have attained, I am not some holier than thou perfect person who doesn’t judge people. I do a LOT. And so as I am writing this, my number one audience member is me. I really hope I can learn this lesson sooner than later!)

No, I’m Not Adopting Her

Published on by RLeave a comment

“But are you going to adopt her?” The question I anticipate with both glee in hopes of educating and dread because of the response the educating will bring.

The short answer is no, but the follow up questions that come are as predictable as flies landing on feces.

“But, why?”

“Did you not want her?”

“Does he have ‘issues’?”

“Oh you’re planning on sending her home? Is that a… good thing?”

“Is someone else going to adopt him? Can I adopt him?”

“Don’t you think he would be better off with you than his parents?”

Adoption is viewed by the general public as the ultimate goal in the foster care process. The last, but most important part. The beautiful part. The happy part. The “living the dream” part. It is because of this that I have begun to become hugely outspoken in my defense of fostering to reunify. I feel like some sort of wild and fanatic preacher on the topic that everyone looks sideways at.

No, there are no reunifying parties, there are no special pictures with the judge and a stuffed animal signifying a child’s return home. There are few viral posts that number a child’s days in foster care, followed not by an adoption announcement, but by a reunification announcement.

And foster parents? Well I’m here to tell you that personally, I don’t want accolades. (In fact, I think it’s weird when people give them.) But! Foster parents are often portrayed as people who want to soak money out of a crappy system in order to furnish the high life (and all the foster parents being paid a dollar and 14 cents an hour laughed a great laugh!) while adoptive parents are seen as selfless saviors rescuing a child from an evil drug addict.

Listen, let’s cut to the chase. When I smile and answer your question with a “No, we aren’t adopting. The purpose of foster care is always reunification unless (and only unless) it is deemed too unsafe for a child to return home. So it’s actually a really great thing that his parents are doing so well and working so hard to get him back.” And you give me a bewildered and disappointed look because I am not adopting this “poor child”, it kinda makes me wanna scream until that sympathetic look off your face disappears.

Let’s hear it again: THE 📢 GOAL 📢 OF📢 FOSTER CARE📢 IS📢 REUNIFICATION.

I don’t care if I sound like a cult leader by saying it, I don’t care if I make you uncomfortable by beating this drum, I don’t care if it doesn’t fit your perfect world narrative.

Children belong with their families (full stop.)

When that is not a safe option, then adoption becomes a necessary part of that story. It is the fail safe, not the modus operandi.

—————————
End note: Before you come at me defensively with why your adoption is justified, or sharing that your friend had to adopt because the child’s mother was a crack dealer, you’ve missed the point. This post is not to degrade adoption— I am thankful for adoption. Adoption is a very important fail safe. This point of this post is to educate those unfamiliar with the system on what the actual point of the foster care system is about.

Why the heck am I doing this?

Published on by RLeave a comment

Early yesterday morning, after Milkman and I were awake 11 times through the night between the 6 children in our home, I kissed him and left for an eye appointment. While I was there, he got everyone ready for the day, fed, and read Bible with them. I couldn’t come home after the appointment because I needed to get diapers from target (in 2 sizes because we don’t know what size fits this baby best), and a bunch of other random newborn stuff. I got home, the kids were handed off to me so Milkman could work, and I had to find out how to homeschool 3 older kids while handling a newborn, nursing toddler, and preschooler (the answer by the way is not well, and with the assistance of a baby carrier, and Cocomelon). Then came calling 5 doctors to find anyone who takes the state insurance so this baby can get a checkup and getting the runaround and then a “no” after each one. Lunch and Naptime were total and complete disasters, trying to keep everyone quiet while Milkman had a video call for work, and then somehow get 3 children who all need to be held or sang to or breastfed or bottlefed or a mix of the above in order to sleep. Then came cooking beans and rice for our small group later in the evening, dropping baby off for a visit with parents (did I mention the social worker gave me the wrong address? New town, no clue where to go, and lots of traffic= complete meltdown for me and 10 minutes lost with the parents which is beyond upsetting). Drove back home, finished cooking, tried desperately to clean something, picked up baby from visit, rushed out to small group, came home, we put 6 kids to bed (a feat, let me tell you), and then I realized I hadn’t done my lesson prep for the week. The preschooler can’t fall asleep without me by the door so I lesson prepped in the hallway on the tile floor while Milkman did laundry (first time we ever washed a diaper with the clothes, that was fun for him to cleanup), and washed bottles. We both finished our tasks around 10:15, got ready for bed, showered, and fell into bed at 11.

I cannot tell you the amount of times I asked myself yesterday “why the bleep am I doing this?!” Why did I think I could handle fostering away from family and my supports? Why did I willingly take on a 6th child that is a newborn and therefore will not be sleeping at night? How did I forget the time and travel that comes with foster parenting? Why did I think I would be able to handle all this? What if I can’t do this? Should we have said no? Why do I even want to foster?

The short answer I would have given you while homeschool lesson planning for 3 grades at 9:30pm on cold tile floor last night is: I don’t know. I don’t know why we keep doing this. This is crazy. We must be actually out of our minds to keep doing this. The longer answer comes in the quiet moments when I have a chance to take a breath. I’m doing this because there is a need, and we have the means to fill this need. I’m doing this because we need more foster parents who are not looking for a free kid, and want to see families reunified. I’m doing this because we aren’t guaranteed an easy life. I’m doing this because I believe I have a moral and spiritual obligation to do so. I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do. I’m doing this because life is already crazy, so what’s a little more?

This is hard, and while not unfamiliar with difficult things, I am out of practice with all of the difficult things that come with foster parenting. I know that in a couple weeks, Milkman and I will hit our stride and our schedule will find a new normal, and we will adjust to even less sleep than the minimal sleep we have survived on for 9 years, and we will have a better handle on life.

But right now? Right now, I’m going to vacillate between “I absolutely cannot do this” and “I am so glad we are doing this”, not just daily, but sometimes hourly, and even minute to minute, and that’s okay.

Two Challenges to Foster Parents

Published on by R1 Comment

Last Saturday I did my very last foster care training panel with my old county. I started paneling over 3 years ago, while pregnant with my 4th and fostering the most incredible little boy. (Foster parents who have had multiple placements and been doing this a while, you know that one placement that you cannot stop thinking of, worrying about, and praying for long after they’ve left? That was him.)

I got on this panel and became a foster care ambassador with our county because that little man’s therapist had connected with us during his placement and we talked a lot about reunification and foster care (oh wait, those are the same things… 😉🙃 who’s feeling snarky today? I am!) She told me about the foster care training programs that she ran for our county and told me that there were panels that would present in front of each new crew of prospective foster parents consisting of a foster parent, a reunified parent, and a former foster youth (FFY). That panel became one of the most mind blowing and life changing things to happen to my foster care journey.

For over a year, I sat next to one FFY who pleaded with foster parents to take teens, and I sweetly smiled and nodded, while internally thinking “not me, but yes, those people should definitely do that!” About 14 months after the first panel where I sat next to her, we said yes to a teenager. See what I mean about a life changing experience?

On this panel, I gained newfound empathy for those parents struggling with addiction, for those in a familial cycle of child abuse, for those who didn’t just lose their kids once— but multiple times. I gained an incredible insight on FFY who had awful experiences with foster parents, those who wanted to be loved and accepted but gave their foster parents hell for fear of being hurt, and those who never found their forever home. I often felt in those panels, where I was a Johnny One-Note beating the drum of reunification, that I was the weakest link, because nothing I could have said would have mattered as much as the stories of the other two panel members. They were the ones who had experienced very real and serious trauma.

As I’ve shared, we moved away from our county, but I continued to panel via Zoom (which was such a blessing!) When we completed our training in our new county, I was so saddened that they didn’t have a similar segment in their training, as I can’t imagine anything being more impactful in training than to hear from 3 experienced key parties in any foster care situation.

I was informed a couple of weeks ago that my former county had changed their rules and I would no longer be able to serve on the panel since they were not including non-county residents in the trainings. My heart dropped. The one last tie I had to my former county’s DCFS system was to be severed.

And so, this last Saturday, I served my last panel, and once again I was amazed at the stories my other two co-panelists shared and what they had lived through. I was overwhelmed once again at the heartbreak that causes the need for foster care and the heartbreak it in turn causes.

As it was my last panel, I was given the opportunity to share any last remarks on being a foster parent. While I’m just one foster mama, with no special talents, I wanted to share those last thoughts with you, in case anyone might find them helpful.

1. You aren’t just fostering a child. You are there to be a resource to an entire family. If you cannot support reunification until rights are terminated, then you aren’t fulfilling your role as a foster parent. Is it easy? No. Is it scary? Yes. Frustrating? Mhm. Appalling, mind blowing, overwhelming, angering, and exhausting? Check, check. But seeing a family reunified at the end of it is infinitely worth all of that pain and drain (and before my adoptive parents come at me, yes I’m grateful for you too, but that is so often the emphasis of foster parents, that we aren’t talking about that today!)

What does supporting the whole family look like? Making sure sibling visits happen if their siblings are elsewhere, keeping in regular contact with their parents and giving updates, advocating for their parents to get services and transportation. It means pushing when the social worker says they can’t find a parent, it means asking for extra visitation support for parent and child to make the most of their time together, it means at a minimum, telling that child every night that their parent loves them.

2. My very last uttered sentence on the panel this weekend was “Please take a teen.” The same words I heard from the incredibly brave FFY panelist I sat next to on more panels than not. Maybe you’re like Rachel in 2018 nodding and smiling outwardly at that statement right now while internally screaming “fat chance, Rach!” Okay so maybe you feel a teen isn’t right for your family right now, but step a little further out of your comfort zone. Maybe be willing to do emergency placements if you’re only adoption minded to help dip your toes into a different mindset, maybe it’s take an elementary age kid if you only take tinies. Maybe it’s to take a special needs kid or a child from a different religion from you. Stretch yourself, and stretch your family. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: I bonded more quickly with our teenager than I did with any other placement. I didn’t think being a 33 year old mother to a 17 year old and a grandmother to her baby would have ever been something I was comfortable with— but it changed our lives and it changed theirs, because I get to be in their lives forever, a privilege which we didn’t get with all of the littles who left before.

I am very sad to be mourning yet another severed connection to the place I called home for 34 years, I am sad to not have the opportunity to hear and learn from other reunified parents and former foster youth, I am sad to not get to tell new foster parents about the tragic beauty of reunification. But man, am I ever grateful for the last 3 years I had, because without that voice to my right telling me to take a teen, we might never have said yes to our daughter and grand baby.

I hope that wherever you are in your foster care journey, you are ready and willing to support whole families and stretch yourself!

I Hate Postpartum

Published on by R1 Comment

I hate postpartum.

I know, I know, we are supposed to relish every moment of motherhood, and love our bodies at every stage, and be amazed by ourselves, blah, blah, blah bull crap. I hate it.

First off let me clarify, because I hear a lot of people who automatically think the word postpartum means a mood disorder because we associate it with postpartum depression (PPD), anxiety (PPA), or psychosis. It doesn’t. It literally means the time after you’ve given birth, and while I have plenty of stuff to say about postpartum mood disorders, I really just hate a whole lot about what happens after giving birth. Secondly, I know it’s not like me to be a downer in this space, but in case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t been in this space for well over a month, because I have been so far in a postpartum ditch I haven’t been able to find my way out. My reappearance to write is really difficult for me, and to be honest, I’m only doing this because the therapist I’m seeing for postpartum depression and anxiety made it my assignment to return to something I find fulfillment in as I struggle to get a handle on my mental health. Writing is one of the few things that helps me process, so forgive me as this is some of the rockiest writing I’ve ever shared.

After being pregnant during a pandemic, being secluded from my support network of family, friends, and church, adding a teenager back into our home, deteriorating physically to the point of being in a wheelchair again, my husband temporarily being on furlough due to said pandemic, our landlord raising our rent a significant amount during the pandemic, trauma parenting an adult and toddler in the system, giving birth during a pandemic, experiencing the worst PPD and PPA of my life, all while attending multiple phone meetings with our girls’ support team, advocating, saying goodbye to the baby I had raised for 13 months and her mama that I raised for 5 months, and trying desperately to find a place to move since we can not afford the rent increase here, but finding nothing so just spending hours looking and packing… I. Am. Exhausted.

If I hated postpartum in the past, I have hated it all the more so this time. 

As I was in the hospital being induced unexpectedly due to my baby girl having extreme decelerations during a non stress test, I thought “I don’t love being induced, but I could do it again.” As I had yet another failed epidural, I thought, “it sucks that my body hates epidurals, but I could do this again.” As I passed the 18 hour mark of my induction and still hadn’t progressed, I thought “I hate that my body still doesn’t know how to labor after 6 pregnancies, but I could do this again.” During transition on 12 units of pitocin as I went from 4 centimeters to 10 in an hour, as I was breathing through contractions, I thought, “I forgot how intense transition is and how much this hurts… but I would definitely do this again.” As I pushed out my tiniest baby ever, I thought “that was easy, I could totally do this again.” And then moments after she was in my arms, and I was being given shots to prevent another life threatening postpartum hemorrhage, and I was being cleaned up, diapered, and moved and poked and prodded, and the postpartum contractions started up, and I was shaky and weak, I thought “I hate this so much, I would be happy if I never, ever, had to do this part ever again.” And that feeling has stuck with me every, single day since I gave birth 2 months ago. 

I hated postpartum with every nursing cramp  that sent me into a dizzying pain (these get worse with every baby). I hated postpartum coming home to a house full of unrest, trauma, anger, and too many emotions outside of my own. I hated postpartum every trip to the bathroom as my body poured blood for 5 weeks. I hated postpartum as I tried to get back on my feet again physically. I hated postpartum hormones as anxiety crippled my body completely. I hated postpartum hormones as I went into a dark tunnel of depression and nothingness. I hated postpartum as I struggled to bond with my baby because I needed to be available to an entire team of people supporting our girls as they readied to transition and reunify, and I couldn’t connect with my own child. I hated postpartum hormones as they made saying goodbye to our girls so much more intense than I thought possible and as I felt totally conflicted from one moment to the next about how I felt regarding that goodbye. I’ve hated postpartum for making the process of trying to find a place to move to during a pandemic that much more frustrating. 

I’m not sharing these things for sympathy or a pat on the back. I hate nothing more than friends, family, and therapists giving me a sad “there there” look with a outstretched lower lip. I don’t want pats on the back for making it through a tough time, I don’t want people saying “it’ll get better”. I am not sharing this because I’m triumphant on the other side and have some great wisdom to impart to you wrapped in flowery paper with a bow on top. I am sharing this because I’ve talked a lot of moms through PPA and PPD, and I gave them all the right answers, but having never been in it this deep, those were just nice words. I’m sharing because in case you’re going through this right now, I’m going through it too, so you don’t have to feel alone. If you’re feeling like your anxiety is a pool of battery acid eating you up from the outside in, then I want you to know I am feeling that too. That when the laughter of your children physically hurts your ears and makes your skin burn because you cannot handle any more sensory input, I have felt that way, too. And if you can’t stop crying for no particular reason, I am feeling that way, too. When you are staring into space and your partner cannot reach you because it feels better to shut down than to feel anything, you aren’t alone, because I’m there too. When you have a fuse so short that you explode over someone leaving their toys on the floor and have to retreat to your room to calm down, I want you to know it’s not just you. When you are smelling your baby’s head, doing skin to skin, nursing, staring into their eyes and all you see is a random baby, but not your baby, remember others have felt this, too, because I have. When you’re used to being the caregiver and fixing everyone else’s problems, but you can’t even get out of bed, you aren’t the first. If dialing the number for behavioral health feels like a 20 foot wave is barreling you over, keep dialing even if it feels like you’re the first person to fail this hard, you aren’t the first to feel that, and you certainly aren’t a failure. Because that was me, and I felt scared and like a failure, too. 

Your postpartum experience is different from mine, because it’s your own. It’s your story. It’s your struggle. Mine struggles aren’t bigger or more important. Yours aren’t less important because you have less kids or different responsibilities. We may have differences in the exact details, but I need you to know that you have other mothers who have walked this road before you, are walking it alongside you, and others will follow behind you. I need you and I to remember that this is temporary, even when it doesn’t feel like it. That it’s okay to get help. It’s okay to talk to someone. It’s okay to take meds if you need them. It’s okay to be vulnerable to a therapist. It’s okay to tell others that you aren’t okay, because maybe they aren’t okay either. 

So for now, reach out to the ones ahead of you, hug the ones alongside you, and once you’re out of it, help the ones behind you.

The Last Mile

Published on by RLeave a comment

I have never run a marathon, and I never expect to. But I imagine how I am feeling in this moment is similar to that last mile a marathon runner runs.

After 13 months, our girls are reunifying and moving out.

I am elated. There’s no other word for it. We have advocated and pushed and done whatever we could to help make this happen. There is no greater joy than a family being put back together and getting a fresh start in a new place. Parent and child are finally starting a new chapter of their lives together. Sure they’ve been living together here in our home, but now they are on their own. It’s the next big thing.

I am terribly sad. Sad is such a general word, but it’s the only word I can find. I watched baby’s first steps, heard her first words, took her on her first Disney trip, held her when she cried, kissed her booboos. I’ve received countless kisses and cuddles from her, tickled her til we both were in stitches laughing, watched her bond with Milkman grow stronger than with any other caregiver, and felt her sleepy breathing belly on my back in the carrier for so many naps. For over 13 months she has slept in my home every single night, and awoken every single morning to the sounds of her 4 (now 5) siblings. I’ve been greeted by her big smile and loud voice yelling “MAMA!” Every time I came out of my room in the mornings. How could you not be sad saying goodbye to a child who has been as close as your own for over a year? And her mommy? The teenager I have seen from a minor to a legal adult, the girl whom I have held many evenings working through things, the girl whose gorgeous long hair I have braided countless times, with whom I have laughed so hard we’ve almost peed ourselves and cried so hard we’ve emptied ourselves of all emotion. The teenager who moved out in a fury months after she came, the teenager who returned back to our family a few months ago. This teenager that I bonded with quicker than I ever bonded with a foster baby, is leaving my home forever.

I am relieved. Both for selfless and selfish reasons— yes, I am a human and I am sometimes selfish. I am relieved because we worked so incredibly hard to make this happen. I am relieved because families belong together. I am relieved because this is the next step. But I am also relieved because I am tired. I am tired of meetings, specialist appointments, so many therapies, so much paperwork. I am relieved because I haven’t had time to bond with my 2 week old baby because from the second I got home from the hospital I have been on calls and doing interviews for next steps and trying to calm storms and repair old wounds for a hurting soul. I am relieved because I haven’t been alone with my husband in months. I’m relieved because 5 kids will seem like a breeze after 7 kids. I’m relieved because I’m tired— I’m so so so tired of having to model perfect parenting 24/7. I’m relieved because my family needs a break from the constant trauma that has washed through our home for these last 13 months, and the behaviors that trauma results in.

I am grateful. I am grateful we said yes to a teenager last year after saying we wouldn’t do that while we had young children. I’m grateful we said yes to her and her baby when we thought we wouldn’t foster moms and their babies til we were much older. I’m grateful I bugged every provider, therapist, and social worker til we got the safety nets in place for these two to set them off on the right foot. I am grateful my children have grown in patience and selflessness, sharing their mama with so many others. I am grateful that I have been stretched— not TO my limit— but BEYOND my limits, til I thought I would break and shatter into a million pieces, but didn’t. I am grateful that my life has been forever changed by these two souls.

I am hopeful. I am hopeful for their future, that they will be successful in their reunification. I am hopeful they will stay in our family’s life forever. I am hopeful they will break old cycles.

We are on the last mile. The finish line is so close I can taste the rest at the end of it, feel it in my aching soul. I can’t wait for it to be here— but I am also so scared to cross the finish line, and everything to be forever different. This is foster care: where we take the bitter along with the sweet, where our family is ripped apart, so another can be made whole.

A Time to Bathe, and a Time to Cuddle

Published on by RLeave a comment

I have been uncharacteristically private in regards to our current foster placement. With past kiddos it has felt appropriate to share snippets here and there while protecting their privacy and stories. For this placement, it has not felt appropriate.

However, last night as I rocked Little One and the tears were flowing I wanted to share something on my heart.

Many times when we get a child back from a visit, we are tempted to bathe them immediately. Sometimes this is necessary if the child comes back obviously soiled, caked in grime, or sticky from treats. I’m sure there are also many germaphobes like me who like the ritual of the after-visit bath to cleanse away the host of germs you imagine them to have touched in a county visitation room where countless children have been snotting, slobbering, and chewing on the same objects all day.

Yesterday, Little One came back from visit smelling very strongly of their parent’s preferred fragrance. The smell of this fragrance was incredibly harsh. I am really sensitive to perfumes and colognes, perhaps more than most, but this time it was particularly bothersome. I began sneezing, my eyes were watering, and I even broke out into hives on my face as I cuddled Little One after the visit. As I was scratching my chin and blowing my nose while rocking this very upset, post-visit child, I thought “I’ve gotta bathe this baby.” As soon as I had the thought, Little One went into another fit of screaming, and I thought “Wait— this is all this child has. This scent. There is no physical touch from their bio parent to cling to, no article of parent’s clothing, no face to reach out and touch. There is only this scent.” If I bathed the child there and then, I would be stripping away the one sensory reminder this child had to hold on to as they went to bed. So I didn’t bathe Little One. Instead I put my head down close to theirs, ignoring the itching hives and runny nose I had. I prayed and sang over the child, and though this baby usually goes to sleep without any rocking, I rocked Little One to sleep.

Once I left the room, I cried. Yes, Little One is secure with us. Little one is loved, cared for, and knows us, having spent over half their life living with us. But Milkman and I are not, nor will we ever be Little One’s blood relatives. There is an invisible bond that this child will have to their biological parents that has and will continue to confound me, no matter how infrequent visits may be. The fragrance may have been offensive to my nose, but if I washed that away, Little One would be devoid of that lingering memory of their parent.

I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t bathe or shower a child after visit. I’m not here to say that you should always choose to suffer with an unpleasant or lingering cologne or perfume. I’m not saying that if you immediately bathe them that you’re a bad foster parent. I’m just saying these are the things we should seek to remember when we are caring for other people’s children.

Keep up the good work, foster parents. The little unnoticed things you do may go a longer way than you think at helping shape a child for the rest of their life.