Love Makes a Family

Before we adopted our daughter, I knew a fair amount about adoption. I have a step-brother who was adopted, a cousin who was adopted, and my best friend from childhood was also adopted. Adoption was not a bad word or an uncommon word, and I learned from an early age that families are made in a variety of ways.

The foster care system, though, is something I know very little about. I did not know anyone who had come up through the foster care system. All of that changed earlier this year.

I have family that is going through the motions of (hopefully) adopting two brothers through foster care. These are adorable, passionate, fun-spirited, and energetic children.

Circumstances led them to where they are now, and it is hard to see the hoops that they have to jump through just to be placed in a loving home. It’s equally as hard to see the adults have to suffer in silence because their needs come after the needs of the children and the biological family.

Since my daughter is adopted, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to raise a child who came from someone else’s body. We have an open adoption and at each bi-annual visit, I have such anxiety in making sure everything goes well that I drive my husband crazy. Our daughter is four and a half years old. I know I am on borrowed time before I have to explain who her birth mother is and then have to brace myself for what my daughter wants to call her. Ultimately, it is her choice, and I hope that we are raising her to be accepting and to have room in her heart for all the people that love her.

We signed up for all of this when we decided to have an open adoption. We have a great support system and a pretty good relationship with our daughter’s birth mother. We all have the best interest of our little girl at heart, and I have confidence that everything will continue to go as well as it has these past four and a half years.

In the foster care system, the rules are different. From what I understand, the birth family is not as present, and it is not always their decision to place the child or children. There can be resentment and ill will. The best needs of the child can easily get buried under paperwork and bureaucracy. Any joy that the foster parents feel in becoming parents falls to the bottom of the pile of emotions. I have witnessed the children being confused as to what to call the foster parents. Mom and Dad seems disrespectful to the parents they know, and yet Miss and Mister seems formal for the people that have taken you in, clothed you, fed you and loved you.

In foster care, there are so many elements that need to be met before the child is placed permanently. Often the biological parents are still involved and maybe even resentful that foster parents are raising the child or children that the state decided they could not raise themselves.

While you are fostering a child, you can’t brag about that child on social media because the child is often split between the home they knew and the home in which they have been placed. It can be months or years before the courts decide what is best for the child. In that time, their lives are in flux. It’s stressful and complicated at a time in their lives where normal, everyday childhood events can also be a burden.

I am naïve just to want kids that need homes to be placed with the adults that can provide them. I know I am, and yet I want it still. I want every child to know the feeling of a safe and loving home, and it makes me so frustrated that is not the case.

I grew up in a far from perfect home, but I always knew I was safe and loved and wanted and that I would always have what I needed. I want all kids to feel the same way.

I am not trying to take on the foster care system. There are many out there who know way more about it than me. I just see two people that want to be parents and two boys that need to be parented, and I wish the road was easier for them all that it appears to be.

Love makes a family – pure and simple. Adoption and foster care exist so that there are homes for all children that need them. Love is the common bond that families share. If only we could use love alone to build all families. Instead, we have to rely on the systems that are in place and hope that they are enough. My fingers are crossed.