Foster Love

He’s okay.

• after 13 years, I officially closed my foster care license

• the kids are growing like weeds and are 5, nearly 9 and 13 years old

• parenting three incredibly different children is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done

This is how life feels like lately. Behaviors on top of behaviors.

It was a hard year. The climate around education has changed so much post Covid and the burnout rate is so high right now. Behaviors that would’ve been flagged pre-Covid are almost the norm now. Us educators are tired.

My oldest switched schools in November from our home district neighborhood school to a completely special ed school. Quite frankly, it broke my heart (still does). A lot of stuff went down in our home district that should not have, but my boy was telling me “I’m sad” everyday as I had to shove him out of the car. To go from such a great, inclusive elementary school experience to what happened at the middle school level, sucked big time.

I’m glad the year is over. I love my job, but my future there is up in the air due to lack of before school care now that he’s not at a school within my district. Finding any reliable care for my disabled preteen has been damn near impossible.

I’m not one for resolutions or words at this point in my life, so here’s a quick life update.

•I just finalized my third (and final) adoption last week.

•The kids are now 12, 7 and 3 years old. They’re great, but they’re also a lot. Sometimes it feels like too much for one parent, but here we are and here we’ll be.

•My foster license is good for another year, but I doubt I’ll take anymore placements. Finding daycare is hard and really we are already outgrowing our tiny house. Once my license expires, I’ll likely just offer respite vs renewing and doing full time foster care.

•For the first time in my parenting journey, due to a policy change at work, I’m able to take a maternity leave after this last adoption. For so long maternity leave at my job has been unpaid (as a single parent, I could never afford the time off), but now it’s paid, so I’m looking forward to having a little time to myself. It’s not super long, but it’s something.

Life is hard.

There are days where I hate being a mom.

A lot of days actually.

The struggle with one of the kids is real, but help/therapy/meds are months out and even though I’ve been fostering for nearly 10 years at this point, the “village” is nonexistent.

Work is fine, I mean, as fine as it can be in the education field in the time of Covid, with kids far too young to be vaccinated 😫.

I have a lot to say, but it all comes down to today was hard.

You know those people who have that one little word for the new year? Yeah, I’ve never been one of those people…until this coming year I guess. As I was sitting here thinking about the last decade, one little word kept coming to mind (I’ll get to that in a minute).

Let’s talk about the last decade.

I started a career in early childhood special education and am still working in the same school with coworkers (now friends) I adore and kids who keep me on my toes. I became a single foster and adoptive mom. Over the last eight years I’ve welcomed 10 littles into my home/family, 2 of whom became forever mine. Crazy!

Those were the biggest/positive events I’d say. There were other happy things I’m sure, but nothing else really stands out except the losses.

Two years ago I lost all three of my grandparents in a span of four months, including my only grandpa who died on my 32nd birthday, merely 36 hours after his wife of 69 years, my grandma died. While all of them were in their 90s, they were still in pretty good health, until they suddenly weren’t. It’s still hard without them here.

Looking back, loss has been a word for the decade. Not all huge sudden losses, but subtle losses that added up over time. As I started fostering and my big boy came along, I poured everything into him. It’s what needed to happen. It’s what he needed. What I didn’t realize (at the time), is that I eventually lost me. My identity became his (foster) mom. I drifted away and lost friends. I lost my interests mostly because of lack of time. I’ve definitely dealt with some depression (which I think I hide pretty well/don’t really talk about it) because of all of it. I don’t regret any of the last decade other than wishing I would have taken people up on their offers to help, babysit, hang out (even if my house was a mess), etc. I wish I would’ve made time for me, for things I enjoyed doing, for my friends.

Which brings me to my one little word for 2020.

•Reconnect

I want to reconnect with me (pre-kid me), with hobbies I used to love, with old friends, who I think about all the time and miss dearly.

While this past decade has brought me the two best things that have ever happened to me, it’s also been the loneliest. So incredibly lonely. So many tears.

It’s been pretty quiet here, for quite some time, on the foster care front, other than my three week stint with respite babe Goldie. My license is due to be renewed at the end of January and I think I’m going to close it. I don’t really want to, but between the crazy disorganization of CPS, which only seems to be getting worse, and lack of calls (even though the county is “raining babies”), it seems to make sense to close. I don’t feel like I’m done with fostering, but maybe for this season I am. I don’t know. I go back and forth all the time because I absolutely love fostering.