It has been a minute since I have updated the blog on our fostering journey. My last blog post was called “4 Months Post Goodbye”. If you haven’t read that one yet, check it out and I will continue from there.
I wrote that post on Sept 14, 2023. We had been without our sweet boy for four months. I would say during that time we were sad and missing him, but we had also seen him, and he was doing well. We were happy for a successful reunification and proud of the work we had done with him and his family. We hadn’t “moved on” but we were heading in a good direction emotionally and mentally as a family. We were praying for them and supporting them however we could. Some of you might remember we reached out asking for help to purchase them a couch. We were able to do that, and I was really feeling filled with love for my extended family and community for continuing to help them even though we weren’t caring for him anymore. We wanted (and still want) to be a foster family that supports families in need.
On October 10 I received a call from one of his family members, while I was at work. Our sweet boy and his younger brother were both in need of a foster home and they were asking me to reach out to social services to see if we would care for them. I was (and still am) so thankful they called. We had worked hard at that relationship. My prayer had always been that if we were needed, they would call. They did. Even though my prayer had been answered, I was living my worst nightmare. As much as I wanted to care for him again, I was devastated we needed to. I would like to tell you we were the first call social services made to find a placement for the boys, but we were not. I had to call multiple people, to have them here. I remember saying “please just let me have the boys”. They were not living in our area at the time and because of this social services was looking for a placement in their current area. I was really upset. If you have heard anyone use the phrase “the system is broken” I would use this as one example to explain that phrase. We had been his caregiver almost his whole life, we were supporting him and his family the best we could, and yet other options were being exhausted due to our geographical location first before they would look at our home. Fortunately for us, there were no foster homes available in his area. Jeff was at work and getting our home ready, so I called my mom and we hopped into the car and drove half way to meet the social worker at a gas station off the highway. We said yes to both boys.
Looking back at all this now, I was in a state of shock and running on a lot of adrenaline. I remember wondering if we could do this. My brother Kyle was getting married in 4 days. I was panicked because I had no clothes, no diapers, and we needed another crib. When we met them on the highway, our sweet boy was very excited to see us. He hopped in the car and was ready to go. His little brother had met us before but only a couple of times. He came to me but he was definitely apprehensive. We got home and suddenly I realized we were no longer a family of 4, we were now a family of 6. We had doubled our kids within a couple short hours.
I took the rest of the week off. Trying to get our life in order. I needed to arrange daycare again. We had lost our spot at one of the daycare centres in town. I needed to get clothes, 2 wedding outfits, a crib and diapers. I had told some close friends what was going on and wow did they show up. My friend from work had a crib delivered to our house, my bestie picked us up PJ’s and diapers. Another friend from work delivered clothes for both boys, she set me up with their whole wardrobe. My mom grabbed a couple of wedding outfits. We had everything in a couple of days. I know this is because I have the best community and group of friends surrounding us. I was and am so thankful. I still can’t believe how incredibly everyone stepped up.
The last two times we took a new foster placement into our home it was very organized and planned. We had a lot of time to prepare mentally, emotionally and physically. This time was very different. Not only did we break our own rule of taking 2 children (we had always said only one at a time), but we also had no time at all to prepare. We also took them right before my brothers wedding, the timing was not great for us. I think this is what made the next few months harder for us. The kids came home from school and 2 new children were with us. We had all thought things were going well and it was hard to explain why our little guy was back and his brother. Jeff and I were struggling with it too. Why did this happen? How did we miss it? Him and his family had been for supper at our house 2 weeks before. We had just had a couch delivered. How did I not see that things weren’t okay? I am still struggling with this today.
I will end here for now. A lot has happened since the day they arrived, and I will write more another day. We are still processing and working on a few things. I am not sure what I want to share. I use this blog for my own documentation of our journey, and I also want to share our experiences. Its hard to do both.
I have thanked the people who supported us during those first few weeks. I don’t think I have missed anyone. If I did, I am sorry. Thank you to anyone and everyone who helped us during this time. This was the first time in my life where the help from our community (family and friends) was truly pivotal to our survival! We could not and would not want to do this without the help of our family and friends. I was told a lot of people were praying for us during this time too. I believe those prayers carried us. Thank you!
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