Long Overdue Update

Well hello there! It has been years since I've written and published a post and recently I've had the idea that maybe this year was the year to finally write the book everyone has been telling me I should write. And in an effort to brush off those skills, I thought a life update might be helpful.

Like many foster moms, the time for blogging got smaller and smaller as the kids got older.   I also began to consider if what I was sharing in my posts was truly mine to share or if it was theirs.  If you don't put it out there for public consumption, then you don't have to decide.  The kids and I have had some pretty lengthy discussions about that.  One day we hope to collaborate.  For now, I'll tread carefully. 

Last I shared, Gabby had moved into our home in July 2020 right as she was about to start college. She turned 22 this week and is in her last full semester of her senior year of college. She spent 6 week in Spain this past summer studying abroad! Her degree is in Spanish and her dream job is to be a translator in a school setting.  

Little Mama had guardianship of Mr. Mohawk through this past summer.  At that point, Maria had gotten out of the detention center and was able to have Mr. Mohawk live with her.  He's a junior in high school and now towers over me! LM is working as a CNA. We see them most holidays and LM makes it a point to come hang out with me and Gabby.  She is now 23 and has her own apartment. She's working on finding a better paying job so she can improve her circumstances.  

Jelly Bean is married and living in Georgia.  From what I understand, the circumstances aren't the best and she's struggling to find her way to a less chaotic life.  As Gabby and LM mature, they have put in place some pretty strong boundaries where their biological family is concerned and that sometimes includes not allowing Jelly Bean to complain about chaos she creates. 

I love having the Gabby, Little Mama, and Mr. Mohawk here. We've had such amazing conversations about their time in foster care.  Probably my biggest take away is that while they don't often remember the details, the way they felt is always present.  They will sometimes get upset about something and I'll point out that they used to feel that way when they lived with me, or they had a certain reaction to an event they don't recall and they are stunned. I've found this to be true of the Forever Four as well. 

Ahh, the Forever Four....plus Solana.

Stella is a Freshman in college! She basically knocked her Senior year out of the park and earned a bunch of awards and honors. She's taking full advantage of the DCFS scholarship available to kids who were adopted or aged out of care and has had to take out zero loans for school.  Here she is at her Senior Prom.

Sarah is now a Junior in high school.  She's a talented flute player and has a part time job at one of her favorite restaurants.  She's into make-up and fashion and will be starting a cosmetology program as part of her Senior year. 

Simon is now a Sophomore in high school.  He's also a talented musician, playing the trumpet and participating in Marching Band and Pep Band. He also has made some pretty awesome wood crafts in wood shop.  His current dream is to own his own Food Truck.  

Smiley is now a sullen teenager LOL. She still has a beautiful smile, its just hidden behind the hormones and annoyance. She's a Freshman in high school.  She also participated in Marching Band and Pep Band and we are waiting to find out if she will join her siblings in Wind Symphony next year. Her mood still dictates how the day is going to go and watching her come out of her shell this year has been exciting. Here she is trying to win "Pink Day" at Band Camp.

And last but not least, Solana. Solana is now 8 and in 3rd Grade.  I call her my shadow because she is never more than a few feet away.  She's is super creative, constantly drawing, modeling clay, or building structures out of boxes, pillows and blankets. She is still living with me full time! She's on the right, at her 1st Holy Communion Party.

As I type this, I realize that the update on SD and Sheila is also way overdue.  My relationships with them are in a really awesome and beautiful place, that has changed and grown over time. It is something that deserves its own post. 

Probably the biggest change is that my marriage has ended and hubby and I are in the process of divorcing after being separated for 2 years.  We were nesting for the first 18 months of that.  Nesting means we were sharing a house to minimize the disruption to the kids. The kids stayed in the marital home and we purchased a townhouse nearby and traded off weeks, one parent being in the house with the kids and the other parent at the townhouse, switching weekly after family therapy. 

We continued that arrangement until this past summer.  I've struggled with how much to write about the reasons why that stopped.  The most complete answer I feel I can give is that Hubby made a really bad choice, that lead to legal action and a protective order between him and one of the kids. The fall-out since the "incident" has been pretty continuous and effectively made me a single parent of 6 kids with fresh trauma. It's been a really hard road for all of us the past 8 months. 

That's why everyone keeps telling me to write a book. Or maybe that's just something people say to a Mom handling one major life crisis/event after another? 

I always thought I'd title my future book "Start with One" because that's what my Grandma said to me when I told her I was becoming a Foster Parent. But lately I've been toying with "And Then The Dog Died" because of course the emotional support puppy we adopted was going to have a fatal disease and we'd have to grieve him too....

So be on the look out for more posts. What do you want to hear about first? Drop a comment here or on Facebook and let me know! 

The Fab Four - An Update

In the fall of 2019, I had reached out to Gabby (a senior in high school) as our dog wasn't doing great.  The dog was always special to the Fab Four and I wanted to make sure if we had to say goodbye, that Gabby at least got a chance to do so.

It had been a while since I had really spoken to her beyond text messages.  The last time we had seen her was for Father's day weekend in 2018 and Maria and Jelly Bean had given her such a hard time for spending time with us, we backed off in order to prevent any unnecessary drama. 

Somewhere along the way (post reunification) Maria went from grateful for our support to resentful of our relationship with her children. That led to only Gabby really making an effort to stay connected.  Little Mama had moved out of Maria's house shortly before her high school graduation (not inviting her mother to the ceremony) and decided it was easier to hate us. Jelly Bean was being so incredibly disrespectful, that I had to block her on my social media accounts. Mr. Mohawk was not really in the picture since he barely remembers living with us....

So when I suggested Gabby come spend a night or two to hang out even if the dog was going to be ok, she replied I'd love that but I have to go ask Anna. 

I'm sorry who? 

Turns out Gabby, Jelly Bean, and Mr. Mohawk were living with their Uncle and his girlfriend, Anna and her two children.  Maria had gotten arrested for possession and intent to sell marijuana and cocaine nearly 11 months earlier and had been in jail the entire time. Too embarrassed and not wanting us to worry, Gabby didn't tell us.

The week after we found out Maria was in jail, the Uncle hit Anna's son in a drunken domestic disturbance and a DCFS investigation was opened.  When we picked Gabby up for the weekend she cried almost the entire 45 minute drive to our house.  I cried with her.

How could the police not call DCFS when Maria was arrested? How could they end up with the people who weren't cleared to be placements the first time they were in care? And there wasn't a whole lot we could do to help, aside from just show up for Gabby.

During all of this, Jelly Bean  was in a mental health crisis and ran away for an evening.  As a result, Maria (from jail) decided Jelly Bean should go live with Little Mama and Mr. Mohawk would go live with a different relative, and Gabby would stay with Anna.

It was heartbreaking to watch Gabby loose her siblings all over again.  We wrapped around her as much as we could.  We hosted her for weekends and the holidays and started to help her finalize plans for college taking her on college visits and helping her with her financial aid.

As the pandemic hit we urged her to come live with us. She could finish school remotely and get a break before she had to leave for college.  She decides she wanted to stay out so she could work as much as possible to save for school.  

Then in July she got Covid. At the same time the Uncle decided that Gabby and Little Mama needed to move out. Gabby decided that since all of her college classes were going to be on-line it made the most sense to come stay with us indefinitely.

So the last week of July 2020, she moved in. 

The last 5 months have been a joy. An absolute joy. She's slid I to the family as of she's always been here. She's managing school and work and is incredibly helpful with the other kids and things like dinner. 

We've had some really amazing conversations about her time in foster care. And we've been able to spend some time with the rest of the Fab Four as well. 

Maria was paroled and then immediately detained by ICE due to her conviction violating the terms of her green card. So we've been trying to support Gabby relative to this change as well. Maria's is likely to get deported and so Mr. Mohawk and Jelly Bean have been in a few different kinship placements. 

Most recently Little Mama (20) took guardianship of Mr. Mohawk (14) and they are living with her boyfriend.  She is struggling with this responsibility (in addition to work and school) and while we've offered to be a resource, we told them we could only agree to him living here if the Department officially got involved.

Jelly Bean (17) is living with her boyfriend and his parents who have given her a curfew. She seems to be doing well there and is working a part time job in addition to school.

The Fab Four is really angry at Maria as her choices have meant instability for them for the foreseeable future. Seperately, Gabby and Little Mama have each asked me if them going home was still the right decision. My heart hurts for them and how complicated their lives continue to be. 

A Tribute to the Hard

I spent December 30th making a sweet two year old birthday shirt for a special kiddo with another Foster Mama.  This Mama is fierce and crunchy in all the best ways.

I need to share about Crunchy Mama and her children because their story matters so very much.

We met at a support group meeting where she was holding her first foster child, JB.  A very medically complex baby with a G-Tube  who relied on machines and nursing care to survive.  I was seated next to her, her partner and this chubby bundle, with bright eyes, just in awe of how a machine would click and he would fuss and she would adjust and then he'd seem to settle in better. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't quite sure how she could possible know what to do, nor could I understand why she had chosen, on purpose, to take on such a hard placement the first go round.  In those first moments next to her, I had decided that this woman was a far better human than I could ever be. Either that, or she was too new to fostering to be jaded like me.

And then she took placement of JB's baby sister a year later. She was on the support pages looking for advice on how to support their Mom, a former foster youth herself. Asking all the right questions and trying at every turn to refrain from judgement and be supportive of the woman who birthed these beautiful babies.

Along the way, the babies' Birth Mom asked them to adopt JB.  She had recognized she couldn't meet his medical needs and the level of care he required. He had spent close to 300 days in the hospital in the previous year and needed an advocate who not only understood the medical jargon but would stand up to anyone, head doctors included, who wasn't going to fight alongside her to protect JB.

Then on New Year's Day, just shy of his 2nd birthday that sweet baby passed away. 

Crunchy Mama shared that after the emergency room team pronounced him dead she removed all of the medical tape, and tubes, and bathed him.  She wrapped him in a blanket and held him for hours until they came to take him to the morgue.  I understood instantly why that was important.  He was finally free of the tethers to the trauma. She was his mother, it was the last thing she could do. Because even though she had been the force keeping him alive as long as he had been, his birth mother had the right to plan his funeral.

I can't even begin to wrap my head around that kind of grief.
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Not even two weeks later, another baby sibling was born and Crunchy Mama took placement of that baby too.

Another Foster Mom and I sourced a fancy baby seat that Crunchy Mama thought would help with two babies.  If this was something that could bring them just a bit of comfort in such a difficult time, celebrate this beautiful new baby, and make their life easier, then I was going to do it. We arranged for me to meet her just as she was arriving home from the hospital with the baby.

Due to the circumstances that are foster care, her partner wasn't home and she was coming home to the emptiest of houses. I wish I could say my presence at that moment was on purpose but I had no idea she was going to be alone when she got there.

I watched as she placed the baby carrier gently on the floor, knelt down and began to unwrap this teeny tiny, few day old baby from the pink fleece blanket she was bundled in.

Crunchy Mama looked into the baby's eyes and then up at me standing in the doorway. In a split second, I saw all of the fear, grief, love, joy, sadness, confusion, and fatigue of the previous 2 years wash over her face. I told it her it was ok to let go.

Her cry was primal.  It was guttural. We sobbed together on the living room floor about how unreal and unfair all of this was. How shattered their family was. How much love they had to give and how they will find a way through it all.

I tried to pour as much understanding and love as I could into that hug. It can never be enough though. How do you comfort a friend when their baby dies and they bring that baby's sibling home? The sibling they will never meet.  The sibling who's life will always be in the time "after JB".

As she got settled, I took pictures and held that sweet baby as her friends arrived with lunch and to help her until her partner arrived home.

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A few weeks later the dual birthday party that had been planned was turned into Memorial and Birthday Party. Beautiful pictures and videos of JB were shared. As was a beautiful poem about two mothers each loving their prince until he laid down his sword.*

Even in the moment where she was entitled to claim him as all her own, she didn't.  Even after weeks of emotional hurt and turmoil from JB's Birth Mom she was steadfast in her vow to love their son and share him always. The Mother who was there for his first breath and the Mother who was there for his last.
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I asked Crunchy Mama if I could share their story. She agreed without hesitation.  "What good is the love we pour into words if we don't share them?" 

I'm so glad I can share how even in the worst circumstances she could still find compassion for JB's birth family.  I am proud to have a friend so committed to the principals of the goals of foster care to support families and keep them together.  I'm honored to count her a friend and I feel privileged that I was trusted enough to share these moments with her.

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*Poem by Crunch Mama

Once upon a time, there was a young woman carrying her first baby inside her belly. She was not a princess: she came from a hard place, not a palace. Oh, the hopes and dreams she had for this baby were that he would be a king, that she would make a life for him entirely opposite from her own childhood.  

As they do, however, a sneaky Trauma Goblin snuck into their life. The goblin hurt the young woman with a thousand small cuts; though they were invisible to a stranger's eye. The goblin tried to take her baby from this world: but was defeated by the strength the woman had used to protect him from her wounds. 

But the woman was wounded and she was tired and scared. She left the baby until she could she heal, but she promised she'd come back. 

And so a fresh faced warrior, untouched by the meanest of Trauma Goblins, was called upon to care for the special, fragile soul. "I'll take care of you for as long as you need" the warrior whispered. 

And alas, she soon went to war for him, because he had become a king in her heart, as well. And the boy was loved by the warrior every moment.  And his mother, the young woman, came back as she had promised her son, and was loved by the warrior. And slowly, the young woman grew to love the warrior as well, though she had despised her at first for taking her baby.

The Trauma Goblins were appalled. They shook their fists and they scratched their heads. This was not the way it was supposed to go! Their plan to divide and conquer backfired in the strangest of ways. 

Acceptance grew in place of anger. 

Love blossomed over what was once a desert terrain of resentment. And the young woman both feared and cherished these flowers because they were beautiful, but so easily plucked from her life, as she had seen done countless times before.  And so the warrior built a fence around a patch a special flowers and thought : I can't save them all for the young woman, but I can save these.  I am just a warrior, but I can learn how to garden. And so she did. It was hard work and it meant taking off her iron battle gloves and getting her bare hands dirty. And tentatively, the young woman started to trust that the flower patch would be safe. So she built a fence and tended to it from the other side. And the women could not see each other, as they were on opposite sides of the fence, but they each tended the garden. 

And one day, longer than expected, but shorter than they wanted, the baby boy laid down his tiny shield at their feet. And the women wept together because he was supposed to become their king. And when they thought all the world had gone and cold and dark, they each looked up and saw their flower patch in full bloom. And the fences were gone, for the baby boy knew they were no longer needed, so he took them with him. And all the women saw was the beauty of each other's flowers, but they could no longer tell which was whose. And the baby boy smiled, for that had been his plan all along.

Mother May I?

I took a brief break from blogging. The beginning of this year has been busy with life and I didn't have the energy to word vomit all of my feelings. I'm still stuck in a space where I resent trauma and want to pretend we aren't impacted by foster care. But that of course, is not the truth.

I have a bunch of draft blog posts that I started but I'd start to write and just get frustrated. I focused on offering my advice to local support groups and new foster parents instead.  Writing here is often one-sided and I get a high from knowing I helped someone (don't we all?). But hanging out in those public forums, is exhausting as it's a glimpse into the general public and the stunning realization that all kinds of people become foster parents, including those that shouldn't. Do you ever think- Wow that person just wrote that in a public forum, what do they think in the privacy of their own head?

I shared that Sheila took off out of state around Christmas. Well  she is back. And she brought Big Brother to live with her here. And of course now that she is back she wants a visits with Solana and the kids.

I have all kinds of feelings. It ranges from - Oh Hell no, you took off for 3 months not my problem to It's great that my kids could possibly have a relationship with their older brother, that's fantastic. Then it swings back to, oh holy Hell, now we have to decide about a teenage boy with likely the same if not more trauma if/when The Department steps in.

I'm sorry, but this is not a great situation. The Mom who had 5 kids removed from her is all of a sudden healthy enough to parent a teenager who she has barely spent any time with and just moved cross country?

We agreed to a call. And for the first time she violated a boundary I had set and it really ticked me off. Each of the kids take turns speaking with her and Big Brother. We use video chat because it’s easier to keep the kids engaged. The calls are always on speaker and I am always nearby.  In speaking with Sarah, Sheila she said I can’t wait to see you guys! Maybe we can get together this weekend and if not this weekend, next weekend.

She hadn't asked me and we were very clear when the surrender happened that any and all visits were at our discretion. The kids are the ones making plans and me now saying no - make me look the unfair one. I told her very clearly after the call that what she did wasn't okay. And then she started with my favorite response.

"I know but you have to understand....I want.....Big Brother needs....."

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Fast forward to a week later and now she wants another call.  (Because cell phones don't work out of state? Like why all of a sudden? Radio silence for 3 months.) I say she can have a call with Solana because SD said it was fine and its up to him.  And she responded with, well are the other kids going to be there? I was honest. I told her we need to take things slow with Big Brother.  That I was still upset that she violated the boundary. We set up a time for her to call Solana, the same day, 8 hours later.

And then she blew right past the time she was supposed to call, by an hour. I had rearranged my schedule to be home for the call.  Solana was asleep.  And when I told her I wasn't going to re-schedule, that she would see the kids 3 days later at a school function, she told me I was unfair, mean, using her kids against her, judging, making up the rules as I went along, and uncaring.

I said none of those things.  And I've always been really clear that I will re-schedule a missed call if she tells me before the call that she can't make it. If you are a long time reader, you may remember posts on missed calls. Here. Here. Here. Here. She gave me the same story about how her anxiety is so bad that she loses track of time and even forgets to eat.  I reiterated that she needs to be on-time for calls and if she can't be, then she shouldn't schedule them.  I also reminded her that I don't have to supervise anything.  That I do it as a favor, as visitation is at SD's discretion with no set frequency, minimum amount of time, or required calls.

I did offer to meet with her therapist to discuss this incident. To explain how her inability to consistently show up and on-time affects the kids.  But let's be serious, while she says she's seeing a therapist and taking her medication, if she took off out of state for 3 months, she likely wasn't being treated during that time. (Its highly unlikely she arranged care out of state as she didn't even bring her ID with her.)

So of course she was late a nearly missed the beginning of the school function. But the visit went fine. It was awkward with Big Brother because he is a teenager and doesn't know these kids. But everyone survived. She was cool towards me, but that was okay also because I didn't particularly care.  I am worried she is on a downward spiral and what that means for Big Brother but I can't borrow trouble.

It will be interesting to see what happens this week as we have a birthday and Mother's Day.  We've already seen the write-up for bad behavior from school from Smiley and I'm trying to decide if I wan't to attempt breakfast on Sunday or find an excuse to leave the house by myself.