For those of you that follow my blog (both of you!), this post is going to be completely different than what you normally read here. As you know, this blog is meant to be just chatter in the kitchen, between friends. Almost anyone who has walked through the doors of the shop know the story of my life, or at least bits and pieces of it. I have pictures on the walls of my daughter (holding cookies, of course), and photographs pinned up of our precious little foster daughter. I have struggled with writing too much of our foster/adoption journey here, because I feel like there is this line between business and personal that must not be crossed. Why? I really don't know. My friends and customers (and a lot are one in the same) know what is going on, and are so faithful to ask the latest. So I've asked several of you recently if you felt this forum was an ok one for me to process this journey, and I received nothing but positive feedback on that. And today I am really pondering and processing, and feel the need to write just to get things out of my head. I know I have to respect boundaries and privacy and all of those foster parent rules, and I will do that, so please understand that I say what I can.
We've had our sweet foster girl, K, for a year this month. We had an instant connection the second she walked through the door and into our arms. She jumped into my arms, and as her caseworker was saying "she's generally shy of men," she jumped into Daniel's arms. When I look at her I see my own child. Which is what you're asked to do as a foster parent. Which is what has happened with her. I struggle with my role as a foster parent, because there are, again, boundaries. I'm starting to think I don't get along with boundaries so well. But I want to be one person who is willing to fight for this child. I want to be one person who never lets her down. But I can only go so far, I can only do so much. There are things I don't like about "the system." There are things I don't understand about "the system." And therein lies my struggle.
K had started on the process of reunification with her parents. Then some things happened, and it was put on hold. When you see adults putting their attitudes, and their desires, and their battles, ahead of their child, it makes me angry. And it makes the Mama Bear in me come out. When I see K struggling with this on-again off-again randomness that her little life has become, I just can't stand it. And thus is my inner battle. I know the life I could give her, and the life she'll likely have. And I know the opposite extremes that those lives are from each other. But now, in the struggle between those two worlds, I see her struggling. I see her getting so angry because she's two, and she just can't verbalize this frustration that the rest of us talk about over and over every day. And as I see her struggle with worry, and with fear, and with acceptance, it just hurts my heart. Those are the struggles of grown ups. Those should not be the struggles of babies.
I feel like the mother in King Solomon's court who was fighting the other woman for her own baby. And when Solomon, in his wisdom, suggested the baby be cut in half, the true mother was instantly willing to give up her baby rather than see her baby harmed. And now I am that woman. Finding myself almost willing to give K to a life I would never choose for her, rather than see her continue to struggle in this war between the two worlds. Almost willing. She had come so far in the past year. She was speaking, she was behaving, she was sweet, she was learning what it meant to love and be loved. And now I see her digressing back to where she was when she came into our home. Back to yelling instead of speaking, back to throwing tantrums, back to pushing away anything and anyone who tries to love her. And it breaks my heart. So where is my role in this? As a foster parent, what are you to do? I don't know, honestly. I actually have no idea. I just know that my heart is breaking alongside hers. A mother's love is not dependant on blood. That much I do know. And a mother's love does not wait for permission to love, does not wait for "the system" to sanction that love. It just is.
