I took a little break

From blogging this past week. Truth be told I have some serious emotions going on and blogging while upset only leads to complaining. I don't want to complain.

I realized that being in limbo has started to really scare me. I'm frustrated. I'm tired of going up in down with the roller coaster. Its hard to put on the brave "everything is going to be ok" face every day for my kids. Some days it's even harder to do it for myself.

I went to family therapy with Mom this past week. Her and I and the family therapist translating. The case worker was there to observe. I'm not sure what I expected but I did not expect to come out upset. I'm not sure WHY I didn't expect to get upset. My kids come home upset - but they are confronting their abuser, their fears. Maybe it was because their abuser was confronting me.

Mom asked if I had ever spoken badly about her. She told me she felt I was over protective of Gabby after the incident that stopped visits. She told me she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her kids and could we please get these outings with all 7 of us going.

I got a chance to respond. I got a chance to tell her I'm not like the other foster parents. I got to tell her my job WAS to protect her kids. (Maybe she should pay attention to what that looks like.) I told her that pushing her kids isn't the answer and that this isn't their fault. That we are the adults and sometimes they are going to hurt our feelings. I registered the pain in her face when I explained that sometimes her kids yell at me too but it doesn't mean that they don't love me.

Then she laid on me that she moved 45 minutes away and that Saturday visits were going to be smack in the middle of the day because she needs to get home and "prepare for them".

An then the real honesty began. Prepare for them? "You need to do that the day before. It unfair to take away my entire weekend because you can't prepare for them ahead of time and you need another 1 1/2 hours. Which means i have 4 anxious kids until 10 am who return at 3 who might be able to handle life by 5. Every time you move or change jobs we've accommodated your schedule. It's not fair."

"But I need to get home and shower."

I about lost it. "Shower? I'd love to come home and take a shower. Heck I'd like to come home and pee without being interrupted but that's not how it works when you have 4 kids. You have to come home from work and be Mom. I don't get a chance to prepare. You don't either."

I asked her to explain it to me. She works a factory job. It's for health reasons. Ok so why do you need 90 minutes? Don't you see instead of the 1 1/2 days of a weekend your kids are getting now they get 1 day. 1 day off from foster care. And do you care at all that it also means Hubby and I get only 1 day off then?

Ultimately, she didn't. She ended up saying that she was the Mom and she gets her time with her kids and she didn't care if it upset me.

I understand why the kids get so frustrated. I pointed out that she just got done asking me to spend extra time with her so she could see her kids more but she couldn't knock off an hour of shower time? Where is the working together. Where is the flexibility? And I walked away feeling two could play at that game - which isn't how I want to feel or approach the situation. And in the end it won't be because it would only hurt the kids.

In the end the visit supervisor took care of the schedule issue as she told Mom her visits will start at 9 and she'll have to make it work. Even though I had no input and this person didn't know about the issue I'm sure it will be blamed on me.

Working through relationships is hard and I've just has so much hard lately. I'd love something easy. Like a trip to the bathroom without interruption...