#fostercare

By that I mean, if you're 8 and lived with someone for 3 years and treated, raised, and lived as siblings, wouldn't the logical conclusion be that those kids are going to, at least in some part, view each other as siblings? Which is to say wouldn't it be fucked up if you decided one day to split them up and have all adults in their lives punish them if they even hint at missing that sibling, or anything about their former foster "family"? Wouldn't that be mean? At least all the belongings they're allowed to keep were kept in garbage bags, that'll certainly help them out!

Which is to say that as much as I care for 2 of my former foster siblings, I also despise how easy they got it. Their birth parents sucked and were horrible people, that's how all my foster siblings ended up in fostercare. But their birth parents still had contact, their social worker actually fucking cared, they'd take them out sometimes for visitations and they'd get food and gifts and their social worker would check in on them at school to make sure things were going okay. They were two half siblings and they got to stay together despite being years apart and looking nothing alike. They got to stay with each other and have someone throughout the fostercare experience that they knew from the start. They've actually have had someone in their live that's known them their entire life, how amazing is that!

They went from their birth parents to the fosterhome I was in, and then got adopted! Their adoptive parents did sleepovers and then a week living there, and a smooth transition into being adopted. They kept some contact for a bit before cutting it off (because they thought I was a fucking contagious freak for being intersex. How Fun! I love losing the closest thing I could call family for something I can't control. Not the only time I've been disowned because of it.). They only had 1 foster sibling and 2 foster parents in their whole experience in fostercare, and a caring social worker and a proper avenue towards adoption.

And yes even being in fostercare that much sucks, but! They're lucky! They are so extremely lucky!! They actually had someone in their lives from the start, their birth parents actually consented to giving them up and they got to keep some contact. Their adoptive parents are nice people that gave them so many opportunities from the moment they were adopted to their now university years, and I made sure that they were as protected as possible in our shared fosterhome so they wouldn't face the worse of things. They actually had people that cared about them. They've never actually been alone.

I'm glad they're safe but at the same time I'm so deeply envious because why did they get all that? What made them more worthy of being cared for? What made the system look at those kids and declare that they are worth being treated more like people than a broken thing? Why did they get all these opportunities? Why did they get options? And nothing to say about the very offputting fact that they sent me to screen out potential adoptive parents for them and they coincidentally ended up with those same adoptive parents..

But my birth parents were worse (not to make it a competition per se because all pain is pain, but my birth home was so bad I quite literally should be dead multiple times over), my social worker didn't give a flying fuck about where I was or what happened to me, I had far more foster siblings than them and more foster placements and no connections anywhere! The fostercare system never cared about what happened or where I was because it's not like there'd be any repercussions to anything bad happening, right? There's no one to care if anything happened. So why did it matter? No one cares about the orphan with no family.

Those 2 foster siblings don't remember half the weird shit that those shared foster parents we had did because I would protect them and keep them out of the way! I took the worst of it because I hate adults that can and will prey on children when possible. I've protected every sibling I've had from the worst of it to give them the best opportunities and I will never get to see any of them again, most of them end up getting adopted somewhere else and while they end up getting people and support and a fucking family, I never did. And I'm glad they get those opportunities, but it's so unfair. They got one foster sibling and social workers that actually cared, and maybe a few years in the system at most. Why are some people luckier than others? Why is it that even in fostercare, where all of us should have the same shitty hand in life, I still have to fight tooth and nail just for the same opportunities? I literally had a paying working job at 8 to save money for when I age out of fostercare, and they got fucking family.

And this is a very long way of saying that the fostercare system should put at least a modicum of thought into the impact of placements and foster sibling dynamics because guess what. If you live with someone for years as a kid you will care for them (perhaps maybe not as birth siblings do because you're lucky if you get to keep connections with your birth siblings. I'll never know mine.) and even if they end up with a better future or better placements, it's cruel to treat those bonds as garbage. Even in the last placements I had I could never mention former foster siblings because "why do you care about them?" and "you only lived with them for a few years". You can't criticize the system without being called a "devil child" or ungrateful for the generousity of being given the opportunity to earn a family, because if you aren't the perfect independent "basically they need to do nothing to raise you" child that they want all pretenses of family gets abandoned.

Compared to other foster parents I've had she was the only one that was actually nice and/or showed any interest in me as a person. It was the only time in my life I ever tried fresh baked cookies and muffins, she's the one that showed me some basics for playing the piano, she found out how much I liked puzzles and would have new ones when I stayed for us to complete, she'd let me get books from the library..

It wasn't anything special, or I suppose others wouldn't think so? I still slept on a couch and had my clothes for however long I was there brought back and forth in a garbage bag. I wasn't allowed to leave her sight beyond her sleeping in a separate room, but it's strange how you may not think of someone for years until something reminds you of them. Technically, she isn't dead (or if she was, no one would tell me), but where does the line fall?

I think that's a question a lot of people in fostercare may ask themselves? At what point does living with someone for years and losing them, never seeing them or talking to them or hearing anything about them ever again, become a similar loss? If you only lived with them sometimes for only a short period of your life, can you even say you knew them? Can you miss them? Can I make the claim to mourn anyone if there's no one I've known for even half my life? Or even a third, or a quarter?

A person that was a foster mother of mine died a few months ago and I only heard about it this week, and it wasn't treated as serious news yet still I'm surprised I even got told about it in the first place. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel about it, if anything at all. She never viewed me as a person and just as a paycheck, I suppose I miss what she represented as someone that had, in some way, knew me in the past, but I don't miss her per se. It doesn't help that, unfortunately, the notion that I am a "cursed" or "devil" child whose mere presence causes things to go wrong in other people's lives is being brought up again.

Building a strong bond takes time, patience, and understanding—especially in foster and adoptive families. 💛

Every child comes with unique experiences, and creating trust and emotional security is an important part of the journey. With gentle parenting, consistency, and love, meaningful connections can grow stronger every day.

This guide shares practical parenting tips for foster and adoptive families to help nurture trust, attachment, and emotional well-being: