Q was pretty unhappy when I told her my plan to buy a stocking for Esme and recycle Wren’s stocking for Adrian. She made it very clear that his stocking is the only tangible thing we have left of the baby brother that turned our Christmas 2016 and most of 2017 upside down and stretched our hearts bigger than we knew was possible. I stood in Target in the Christmas aisle holing my crying daughter. To Quincy, Wren
needs a stocking to visually show he holds a place in our hearts and a place in our family.
So I bought two new stockings for the twins and that was that. There are 9 stockings on our staircase.
Quincy did the honor of hanging Wren’s stocking on his birthday, last week. Hard to imagine that the 4lb premie I carried around tucked into my shirt is now a two year old, the age Sloane was when we brought him home from NICU. He is no doubt undecorating his family’s Christmas tree and delighting everyone with an adorable toddler voice the same way Sloane did 2 years ago.
That night, I joined Kasey, Lacey S, and Naomi W. to see the movie Instant Fanily. I laughed and cried and was triggered by raw and oh so relatable scenarios. Great movie. Absolutely horrible language though. And my other critique is that the same two characters/DHS workers do everything in the movie. They play the roles of about 60 people from the recruiters to training classes, resource workers, visit supervisors, transporters, matching event coordinators, licensing, family service workers, and running the support group. Ha. Ha. Ha. but it’s a nice thought, and super convenient for a movie script. Just highly inaccurate.
Other parts were spot on. The roller coaster of back and forth reunification status. Foster parents being last to know critical case changing information. The awkwardness of matching events. Hearing your child call you mommy the first time. Honeymoon phase. Working with birth family and feeling like you’re just the babysitter at visitation. Food issues. Trauma. Trauma play. Family members not acknowledging birthdays or holidays because they’re “not permanent”. Public meltdowns where people look at you like you’ve created a monster and tell you what they think your kid needs instead of offering you a hand. The rude comments about being a white lady raising Hispanic children.
So much accuracy and I could relate and laugh or cry with so much of it. The audience had many Project Zero supporters and fanilies from The Call. They all cheered and applauded when a character in the movie replied to a judgmental criticism with something like “And how many children have YOU adopted from the foster care system? Zero? Hold your comments. You don’t know this life, or their lives.”
Such a mic drop moment. Most of the audience clapped.
I’m honored to be in this foster parent gig. I’m thankful for my exhausted brokenness and my weary heart and body that wept all day today for the hurt and trauma that surfaces in ugly ways. It hurts that my children have these memories and have to carry such heaviness.
I feel very much like a medic in the front line trenches, grasping for bandages and whispering hope to wounded soldiers that battles end, but with an ever present knowledge that it might take me as a casualty instead.
Many people do not understand that simply picking up children and putting them into another family does not erase the hurt they’ve endured. “They’re too young to remember” is just not true. Period. A healthy, safe home and loving family is 100% the most effective “treatment” for brokeness, and scars fade, but trauma is real and living with a brain that has the belief that you will be hurt again is haunting and constant and appears to be far more painful than the initial wounds.
I’m thankful to get to be part of a solution. For my arms that get to mother and hold and heal and help all of my brave and selfless children carry their much too heavy burdens. I’m thankful for new found strength to pick up and do it again tomorrow. Satan worked hard to break me today and took me by surprise and this attack really got to me.
Thankful for my sense of humor! I’m thankful to be able to laugh about some of this stuff. Like realizing your kid is frantically shoving the abc gum from under the table at the library into his/her mouth, and you taking it away triggers an epic public meltdown. And bystanders watch wide eyed and gasp when your child recoils and shouts “don’t hurt me!” when you pick him or her up. You make your library exodus carrying three three year olds who are now ALL kicking and screaming in holy terror, one yanking on your hair, and one of your older children is mouthing off that you’re the worst and she hates you because we can’t go anywhere without a scene and you just laugh and cry and agree because this is us. It’s our reality and laughter is sometimes the only way to survive. Foster chaos is prevalent but calm will come, even if it’s not in a way we choose, it will come. The movie was pretty accurate in showing all of this. Thanks to the creaters and writers of Instant Family for getting conversations started all over the country that ordinary people can become foster parents. You do not have to be a perfect (who is, anyway?) special saint of a super powered super human to do it. Anyone can help the cause of “one less” waiting child in the system. We are all just regular, tired, flawed, average people who love. I’m thankful for the gifts of tenacity, compassion, strength, vulnerability, self awareness, grit, faith, wisdom, and requitted love of precious children that I’ve received through this experience.
1+1= 0!
Happy Birthday, wherever you are, “Wren”!
We root for you! Our hearts hold you.
