A brief note—
This is a deeply personal piece. There is so much more that I want to share with you. I also want to respect the confidentiality of the child I am writing about and follow the regulations I am under as a current foster parent.There are parts of this piece that might feel vague or choppy. I did my best to protect everyone involved while still processing my own experiences.
It has been a month since one of our foster children moved to a new placement. I have been sitting with the complexity, grief, and heartbreak from making the call to have him moved.
I wanted to help him repair and reprogram his attachment wounds. I wanted to be a sturdy adult in his life who continued to go to bat for him inside of a system that is deeply flawed. A system that even with the best of intentions perpetuates cycles of abuse and harm.
I wanted to keep holding him at night when he was too scared to sleep in the bed, his small body curled up on the safety of the floor. Nothing terrible happened to him on the floor. I wanted to keep attuning to him, to try, despite my tiredness and my own children’s needs, to show him, this love, this connection is how it’s supposed to be. This is what he deserves.
I am so sorry that happened to you.
I am so sorry that happened to you.
I am so sorry that happened to you.
These are words that I spoke to him regularly when he shared with me in hushed tones about the pain he was in, the fear that kept him tossing and turning through the night, and the confusion between wanting to go home and the growing awareness that home is unsafe. Home is scary. Home is vacant.
Fostering children is tough. It’s a path of deep uncertainty. A path that demands you do your best each day to stop freaking out about the potential future of the children in your care and turn towards what they desperately need in each moment. Care. Attention. Tenderness. Boundaries. Sturdiness. Attunement. It’s a path that begs you to live in the present. In this moment. In this now.
Nic and I spent countless hours on the couch after all the children were finally put to bed discussing his parent’s case plan. Feeling angry that they refused to take responsibility for their negligence. There were times I fumed with rage about how our welfare system continued to prioritize reunification over the health and care of their children, children that were in our home. Children who suffered in ways that I cannot even bring myself to write about. Children who felt they had to protect their parent because regardless of how bad things are, we are hardwired for attachment. And when healthy attachment isn’t available to us, we keep hoping it will be because we literally need it to survive. These kids are doing just that. Surviving.
There is all this anger and under it, there is all this sadness. Hours of tears shed. Hours of breakdowns in the truck after work, on the way to pick up the kids from daycare because it seems to be one of the only places I can cry these days. Something about having a fraction of my attention on driving gives my body and psyche just enough space to release the pressure through my tears. Big sobs. Loud wails. It’s not fucking fair I scream into the windshield.
None of this is fair.
Because he never had a secure attachment, he did not look back or say goodbye when unfamiliar social workers came to transport him to visitation. He would happily walk off with strangers. He was also missing significant gross motor skills like balance and had no connection to his body. He did not know when he had a dirty diaper or when to stop eating. It was heartbreaking to tend to such a disembodied young child.
Despite all of the advice we were given, what became clear to Nic and I was that what he needed most was to be a baby. He missed so much in the realms of attachment and bonding in his early life. He needed to be carried around more than he walked. He needed adults who could be devoted to him without having to split their attention between other young children. He needed to feel wanted. As much as Nic and I wanted him, we realized it could never be enough for the primal demands of his heart and nervous system.
Somewhere in month four of his care with us, Nic and I recognized that we were not equipped to take care of him. We saw how much his care was taking away from our other children. Nic and I agreed early on in our fostering journey that if we did not have the capacity to give kids what they needed, we would help find them a new placement. We gave ourselves two extra weeks after this realization of how his needs were stretching our limits to see if we could dig deeper within to care for him. Four days in we admitted that we couldn’t keep going. We were growing frustrated with him. We had nothing left. It was time to make the call.
Strangely, or maybe not, the amazing woman who ran the daycare he attended mentioned that she would be willing to take him if we needed her to. She is also a foster parent. For Nic and I it was a resounding yes and thankfully child welfare agreed. Now this child could get more of what he needed. Time to be a baby. Time to be carried around. Time to go through some of the developmental stages he missed out on. Time to be loved. Time to be wanted. Time to be tended to.
No placement is perfect. There were elements that he got with us that he isn’t getting where he is now. And at the end of the day, based on all the current trauma research, what he needs most is to form attachments with safe adults who can rewire his attachment circuits. Adults who have the amount of patience and love for him that his new foster family does.
The other day I received a confidential piece of mail stating that something I was trying to get this child help with was a dead end. My heart sank. Why do we live with a system that doesn’t believe young children when they confess abuse? I know there are no easy answers. I get the system is broken. I understand that resources are sparse. None of this knowledge settles my system.
This isn’t fucking fair I shout to Nic in a fit of frustration and massive disappointment.
I know he said, it isn’t.
None of this is fair.
I struggle as a foster parent. There is so much complexity to hold and unnerving uncertainty to live with. As much as I have tried, I cannot love these kids and simultaneously detach myself from a system that prioritizes biology over all else, despite that we now have decades of research proving epigenetics, or how are genes are impacted by our environments, has such a significant influence over the course of our lives.
For the last couple of years I believed it was the uncertainty of these cases that made them so challenging. I am beginning to see that the entire child welfare system is pushing me to recognize I am not cut out to foster long term. My energy would be better served supporting change and healing at the policy level.
It's hard to admit when things aren’t working, especially when there are children involved who desperately need care, love, and safety. It’s hard to sit with the growing awareness that I cannot bypass my humanness, that I cannot be a superhero, that my bandwidth can only stretch as much as it can stretch. It’s hard to feel helpless.
Somewhere between the anger and the helplessness I pause. I take a long, slow breath. I let myself cry. I look at the oak trees. I turn towards my children. I turn towards our foster baby. I commit to loving them as much as I can and move towards giving myself permission to be a human in this process.
Dear Ashley, thank you for your humility and honesty and grace. It takes so much of our life, I think, to come to the realisation that we can't fix a broken world, no matter how we try. We believe that if we love enough and fight hard enough, and stay the course with those who need us, we can make it happen. To understand, in the end, that too often this isn't the way it works out, is so very painful, and we have to learn to start over with ourselves, and our belief in what we can do, and go forward from there, loving and hoping, despite the fact that at times nothing seems fair or right or just. Katexx
Thank you for sharing your heart Ashley