Category: Foster to adopt

June 9 2012

Dear Judge,

My stomach turned as I stood next to the chair where the middle-aged man sat in front of the small conference room. Our instructor had positioned nine of us one-by-one next to the man she designated “the child.” I was a sibling, another was the mother, a father, an aunt, an uncle, school friend, teacher and a grandparent. We each had a hand touching him. I wasn’t sure where she was going with the exercise and the anticipation was growing. Again, one-by-one she told each of us to leave the “child” and take our seats until the man was once again alone with the chair. She asked him how he felt up there by himself. He said “lonely.” The lesson was intended to help us understand what a child might feel like after being torn away from their family and friends. She wanted us to fully grasp how scared and alone a kid of any age would feel regardless of the reason they were being taken away from the only life they’ve ever known. Even if that life was unstable and dangerous, it was still the only security they’ve ever experienced. It was a profound statement and I could feel my insides tighten and my shoulders stiffen as my thoughts wandered to my own daughters.

“Introductions”

We attended all-day classes every Saturday for five weeks at a private agency located in Oak Park, IL, a suburb just west of Chicago. We spent each weekend with the same small group of people going over the ins and outs of foster care in Illinois.  Even though the instructors drilled in our heads that the primary goal was return to home, it appeared that every person in the room was willing to and probably hoping for adoption.  There were six couples including us and three singles in our class, all from different private agencies.  Of the six couples only two of them did not already have children biologically.  The Pastor and his wife were the only two who I felt were comfortable with the temporary arrangement of fostering.

On the first day of training we had to go around the room with introductions and a brief statement on why we were there.  A couple of the singles who were in attendance had already taken custody of family members who entered the system and they were just completing their required training to keep their nieces/nephews/cousins/grandchildren. It was a single young girl named Raquel who touched me the most. She sat across the table from us with her dark hair pulled back into a pony-tail and she wore hospital scrubs. Raquel was a NICU nurse in the city of Chicago.  When it was her turn to talk she took a deep breath and fought back the tears before she even opened her mouth. She went on to explain that she was working one night and a 9 month old little girl was brought in with failure to thrive. She weighed only 12 pounds and her head was flat on one side because she had been lying in the same position for so long, she had brain damage and her prognosis was unknown.  Raquel explained that she immediately felt a connection with this baby and after three months of caring for her she knew that this was her daughter. Not one family member had ever even come to see the little girl. Raquel was here to complete her requirements so that she could take the baby home with her. She showed us pictures of the little one’s first birthday celebration in the hospital and you could see the maternal love on her face and hear that parental pride in the way she talked about her soon-to-be daughter. From the pictures it was clear that there were some medical issues, but she was sitting up, smiling and was up to 19 pounds.  That was the first time I cried during the training. Raquel became one of my personal hero’s that day.

When it was my turn I spoke with a shaky voice, “my name is Stephanie and this is my husband Daryl.  It’s kind of a long story why we’re here and we are still in the decision-making process but to sum it up I think that we are a really loving family and great parents.  We have a calm household, we never yell and we have a lot of love to share.” I had to cut myself off before finishing for two reasons. The first one is because my eyes were yet again welling up with tears. The second reason is because I seriously felt like an idiot with the words that just came out of my mouth. Did I really just tell this group of strangers that we never yell?  Really, Stephanie – where did that even come from? Of course I raise my voice sometimes and I’m not quite sure what inspired me to make that comment but my husband was all too happy to correct my statement when it was his turn.  His response was without shakiness but with a grin, “well, I don’t know what house she lives in because it does occasionally get loud, but we do have a loving family and we have not made our decision yet because to be honest, I have a hard time thinking about caring for and falling in love with a child only to have a Judge tell me I have to return them to a parent that I’m not convinced is ready to care for him or her.”  The instructor used this as a catalyst to explain to us how hard this process can be.

“The Instructors”

Diane, our teacher, was a single woman who was raised in a hostile home environment and knew early on that this was her calling. She was a tall, very strong presence. Not only strong in the way she spoke with the assertive, no-nonsense tone but also in the passion she had for foster children. She ran the private agency that we were training in.  I admired her commitment to foster children and realized what a very special person she, as well as anyone who commits their life the way she has, had to be.  Diane’s assistant was named Ethel. She was an older, gentle woman who I would describe as a wispy “free spirit,” but others might describe her as a little ditzy.  She was clearly a very loving, patient woman and had successfully raised three biological children of her own and fostered several troubled adolescents in her lifetime.  Ethel had some hair-raising stories to tell about some of the teens that had been in her home.  She told the story of one of the first teenagers she fostered, a 13-year-old girl who had been prostituting herself for at least a year.  Instead of telling her not to do it she took a different approach.  She encouraged her to love herself more and used every opportunity to teach her self-respect. Instead of telling her what she couldn’t do, she showed her what she could do. Ethel’s persistence and unconditional love for that young girl paid off and she eventually joined the Navy, got married and has a daughter of her own now and they see each other frequently.  Another one of her foster-daughters purposefully lit part of the house on fire and when the agency went to remove her from the home Ethel’s response was “no, she stays and we’ll get through it.” When a girl (she only takes females) is placed in her home she sits down with them for a “come to Jesus meeting” where she commits to them and makes them understand that she will, under no circumstances, give up on them. I believed her. She wanted us to understand that these children are broken and every person in their lives either gave up on them or didn’t care enough to fight for them. She could not stress enough to us that these particular children cannot take any more rejection or disappointment and once we commit we have to follow through regardless of the age of the minor. Even though I thought some of her methods were a little unorthodox I did have the greatest amount of respect for her.  When we left class that day Daryl turned to me and said “it feels like if these instructors do their job properly they will scare us out of doing this.”

“Heavier Heart”

My life was changed during the five weeks we spent in that training.  My rose-colored glasses turned a bit gray.  I don’t know how anyone can sit in those classes week after week listening to the shocking real lives of these children and come out ever looking at life the same way again. We heard story after story of abuse and neglect and unthinkable conditions that kids live through.  We were told about the four-year-olds who hide food under their pillows because they don’t know when their next meal will be. Some children have a garbage bag with all of their belongings in it that they refuse to unpack because they know they’ll be moved soon. The sexual abuse stories were the hardest to listen to.  There were many times when the room would just fall silent as we all dropped our heads and soaked in the reality that these helpless little people endured.

The tragedies (that I learned are their reality) scarred my heart in a way that I could never truly describe with words. When I finish a really good book it haunts me for some time, like a cloud looming over me. I compare the obsessions, but instead of a Liane Moriarity novel, it was real life drama that happened to vulnerable little humans that my mind could not, and still has not, escaped. Every life deserves to realize their own potential and be given the same opportunities, regardless the situation they are born into. Diane had so many meaningful things to say, but one that sticks out in my mind is “every child deserves a place to call home and someone to call mom and/or dad and no one should be denied that.”

Daryl and I would drive home in silence with heaviness in our hearts. We live in an established middle-class suburb of Chicago where you can still feel comfortable letting your children walk to the park without fear.  I love to turn into our subdivision and see all of the beautiful lush trees, well-manicured lawns, giggling kids taking a break from selling lemonade to run through a sprinkler in their front yard.  Now I can’t help but wonder how many innocent children will never know that kind of happiness.  My conviction was only growing stronger.

“All In”

I’m not sure at one point my husband decided that he was “all in,” but I have a feeling he knew all along that we were going to do this. I think that most people who enter into this journey and choose not to commit are just scared. I get it. It’s a frightening thing to think about what you could be inviting into your world. In the end we decided to move forward. We sat down with our daughters and explained to them, with as much detail as we could, what it all meant. Neither one of them had any reservations. I explained to them that I was nervous and excited and ultimately unsure how this would change our lives and if they had any hesitation at all I would respect their feelings. They both continued to stay strong with their support and excitement.

We learned in class to create and have ready at all times a “question list.” When you get a call for a placement you need all of the important issues answered right away. We have the right to say yes or no to any child we are asked to take and we needed to ask the tough questions right then and there, on the phone.  We decided that we did not want an older child because Taryn was still only 9 years old and we didn’t know what to expect with whatever trauma an older child had endured. We both work and have no family support in the area so we were torn on the disabilities we could handle.  I researched babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome and I knew that these children could come with some severe disabilities and I did not feel that I was mentally strong enough to handle some of the issues that could potentially present. Studies show that drug-addicted babies could lead a normal healthy life after the chemical leaves their system and I was willing to take on that responsibility. Our list of questions was about a half of a page long. We chose to accept a child between the ages of newborn to 5-years-old even though we were told in training that we would be called with any age.  Diane also informed us that the caseworkers would not always be honest when answering our questions. She said that they would say anything to find a placement for that child or that they simply didn’t know the answer and so they would make it up. We knew that we would only accept an African-American child. Knowing the struggles that inner-city black men face there was no doubt in our mind of the race. The gender didn’t really make a difference to me but my husband definitely preferred not adding another female and her fluccuating hormones to already unbalanced mix.

We met all of our requirements on July 9^th and we received our license on August 31, 2013.  Now we just had to wait for the exciting phone call that would forever change the dynamics of our home.

“Next Time”

As you can see Judge, the classes were definitely beneficial and covered a lot of ground. I do feel like the instructors were as honest as they could be. The information made me view the world differently. I was able to put life into perspective in a way that I can’t put my finger on and I don’t sweat the small stuff the same way I once did. In retrospect, I wish I had gotten names and numbers of the individuals that we spent those five weekends with because maybe they could have been a support to us.

Fourteen days after we got our license we received our first of four phone calls from the placement department. I’ll tell you all about them next time.

Stephanie

*Names have been changed.

May 5, 2012

Dear Judge,

As I sit around the long conference table with rounded edges I try not to stare at everyone around me. I daydream about what journey has led them here.  Was it similar to mine? Are they wondering about my journey? Today is the first day of our DCFS training to “consider” becoming foster parents.  I have been researching this decision since January and finally convinced my husband to at least explore what it was all about.  I know this is a calling that isn’t going to abandon my heart anytime soon and I feel certain that one day I will be foster mom to a child who was meant for my family.  My husband, however, is not so certain.  He agreed to take the classes and reserve his final decision until after we complete them.  His biggest concern is the same as every single one of us crowded around this table, and that is falling in love with a child and having to return them to a home that isn’t ready, or will never be ready to parent. But it was my darling spouse that originally opened the door to this next portal of our lives, even if he didn’t realize it.

“The Decision”

Our original conversations about adoption began nearly 25 years ago when we were in the first stages of dating. It was one of our late night/early breakfasts at a diner in Iowa where Daryl went to chiropractic school when, over coffee and through casual conversation, we realized how much we had in common. We both had outside influences growing up (both biological and non-biological) that helped us become the successful adults we are today and we both knew that we wanted to have two children biologically and then adopt one in our respective future lives.

Fast forward 20 years and we had a pretty chaotic life with a business to run, two pre-teen daughters, and absolutely no family close to us. It was a serious conversation over drinks and dinner on a much-needed family vacation in Hawaii when we decided that our family was complete, we even toasted to it. It was just seven short months later when my big-hearted husband opened the door again.

I was shopping in The Party Store for Halloween costumes with the girls when my cell phone rang and it was Daryl.  He has this way of letting me hear the smirk on his face when he is about to say something absurd and I detected it in his voice right away as he blurted out “what would you think about adopting a baby?”  After almost dropping the phone I walked down one of the aisles and looked around the store to make sure no one could hear him and see the shock on my face.  I whispered, “Uh, A:  are you crazy and B: what the hell are you talking about?”  He proceeded to tell me that a woman he just met was pregnant with her 7^th child and was planning on aborting because the father had recently died. All I could mutter back was “tell me that you didn’t offer to take her baby?” And with that smirk I could still detect in his voice he said “well, yeah, kind of.”

To make a long and tedious story short, this woman had come into the office for an appointment and when asked if she was pregnant before routine x-rays she responded “yes, but go ahead with the x-rays because I’m having an abortion.” She continued to confide in him that she recently lost her husband and had no intention on keeping the baby she was three months pregnant with. He got caught up in the moment and just wanted to help her so he cracked the door open for her to consider another option. We had several meetings with her and her family and even acquired an attorney to move forward, but in the end there were just too many obstacles in her way and she did end up aborting her pregnancy. When I found out her decision my heart sank for two reasons. The first one was because I was really getting excited about the prospect of a new baby. The second reason was because of our involvement in her life she had a late-term abortion and I felt that instead of helping we made things worse. The very next day I was on the internet googling adoption and fostering.

“The Cradle”

My travels through the internet led me to The Cradle, an adoption agency in Illinois. I signed us up for one of their all-day meetings to see what it was all about, but we never actually attended.  As I read through many bios’ of the couples waiting to adopt a baby I began to realize that this was not for us.  It felt wrong to compete with these couples for a baby when I could physically have another on my own if we chose to and most of these couples could not.  Adoption was their only choice. I also wasn’t convinced that we needed to adopt an infant. That is when I started to research foster care. The more I found out the more I was drawn in.

“Licensing”

Most of the information you find online explains the process of becoming foster parents, but it doesn’t give much information on how many are adopted and what the actual time line is. There are several private agencies throughout the Chicagoland area.  I called the few that were closest to my home to find out more about what was involved.  I left a few messages and did not get a return phone call for weeks.  Knowing how desperate the state of Illinois is to find homes for the thousands of children in the system in Cook County alone, I was surprised that it was so hard to reach an agency. When I finally got someone on the phone I explained that I had some questions about the process and was trying to decide if this was right for our family.  The tone of the woman on the other end was sharp and accusatory when she asked me “are you willing to take a special needs child because we have a lot of those, in fact we have two right now we are trying to place.” I was a bit stunned with this question and stuttered my rambling response, “well, we are currently in the decision-making phase and would like some more information, but I guess it would depend on the severity of the disability, I am really just looking for more information.”  She took my name and number and said that she would have a licensing worker call me back.  I never got that call.

At this point I was telling myself that maybe this was the Universe telling me that I should leave well enough alone.  But I couldn’t.  I felt such a strong pull in this direction and couldn’t explain why.

It was through pure persistence that I finally got a licensing worker from an agency located on the south side of Chicago to come to the house and meet with us.  When she arrived she handed me her card and we sat down to discuss the process.  The first words out of her mouth were “you do understand that with foster care the goal is always return to home, right?”  My husband asked her if this was the “poor man’s adoption”.  Her response was “it’s the hardest way to adopt.”  She proceeded to explain to us that it takes a couple of months to get through the licensing process and then after placement it could take anywhere from 9 months to 5 years for a judge to release parental rights for adoption. I asked her if a child is ever returned to their bio-families after several years and she said “definitely, the longest I have personally seen is 3 years.”  I cannot grasp what it would be like to live three or more years of your life with one family and then be forced to move to another. It just doesn’t seem fair to formidable minds or to the families opening their homes and hearts. The agency caseworker gave us the fingerprint card and paperwork and said that the first step is to have a thorough background check done.  As she left our home she handed me a few more cards and said “if you know of anyone who might be interested in fostering please give them my card, we are in desperate need of good families.”  That was the last time I saw that specific worker, she was gone by the time our background check was done.

“My Why”

After doing some really heavy thinking on how hard it would be to care for and become attached to a child, love them and open myself up for heartache, I inexplicably felt more confident than ever that this was something I needed to do. The question “if I don’t do it, who would” haunted me. It nagged at me that there was a specific child I was supposed to raise. I began seeing “signs” everywhere… big billboards on the highway asking for foster parents, commercials that tugged at my heart-strings as they showed kids looking for their forever homes. I love the Michael Jackson song “Man in the Mirror,” and I started hearing it all of the time. The lyrics were speaking to me… like, all of the lyrics. I started to hear of more people who were fostering. Things just started to make sense to me. My father adopted me as a toddler so I knew that biology made no difference in parental love. I’ve never felt confident about what it was I wanted to do with my life but I always knew that I wanted a family. I used to dread the question “what do you want to be when you get older?” My high school yearbook says I wanted to be a social worker and I only said that because I didn’t know what else to say. There is no “career” that ever spoke to me or that I felt passionate about. I didn’t go to college right out of high school because I didn’t realize it was an option for me. My mother lost both of her parents by the time she was 15 and was taken care of by her sisters after that. If she didn’t have four older sisters she could have been a foster child herself. It felt like I had figured out what “my” purpose was.

Because my husband loves me so much and because he wasn’t saying “no way,” he agreed to take the 27 hours of training which we split up over four weekends. He did the fingerprints and health requirements and conceded with “let’s see how we feel after the classes are over.”

We had several conversations with our daughters about what it would mean and did our best to be as honest as possible with what we knew. As they did their homework I would pretend to cry incessantly and when they would get annoyed I would explain that a healthy baby cries a lot, but if we were to get an infant who was born with addiction issues or with any special need it was possible that they would cry A LOT more! Ravyn was 12 at the time and Taryn was 9 so they would just roll their eyes at me assuming I was being dramatic. As confident as I was that this was the direction my life should go, I knew that this had to be a family decision.

“Next Time”

So you see Judge, I firmly believe that people are put into our lives for a reason. Sometimes they are only there for a fleeting moment but the impact they make is profound. I believe in God, but I am far from religious. When I think about the events that led up to us taking those classes I know that there was some sort of intervention. Maybe it was divine, or possibly just human interaction that made me hyper aware of the opportunity that was right in front of me. I’m not sure.

In my next letter I will tell you about those classes and how they changed my family’s life forever.

Stephanie

*Names have been changed.

Adoption Day

With tearful eyes and one of those really good and genuine hugs, a friend recently choked out the words “my wish for you on adoption day is that you go to sleep that night breathing easier.” I look forward to falling asleep tonight because I have no doubt that will be the case! I feel lighter and my mind is clearer. Today, Malachi is no longer a foster child. Four years and six months later and he is legally our son.

When we made the decision to become foster parents our biggest fear was falling in love with a child and having to hand him back over to someone not equipped to parent. Reunification with biological parents is always the goal with family court and we did know that up front. The word “hard” does not begin to describe the reality of foster parenting. But then again, the word “love” does not even remotely begin to describe how I feel about my son.

I have become very familiar with every emotion that my brain can comprehend and now I feel like an expert at juggling several of them at once. I didn’t know it was possible to get news that could make me feel anger, frustration, hope and excitement in the same breath. In addition to the intense adoration and development of love that happens when you watch your child grow, my mind has been full of emotional instability during every stage of his young life. I anticipated that today would be nothing but joy, and even though I am definitely over-the-moon happy, I am also experiencing some upset that I wasn’t expecting.

Maybe it’s because I don’t really believe that it actually happened. There have been so many setbacks and mistakes made throughout this wonderful, miraculous but VERY bumpy journey, that I keep waiting for someone to call and say that there was a conflict of interest or that a form wasn’t signed or that there was a part of the process missing altogether (all things that have happened). I definitely wasn’t counting on feeling ANY form of sadness on this day, but the fact that there are so many children who need stable homes is forefront in my mind, just like it has been since we started this life-changing adventure.

I can’t help but reminisce today about the day we picked our little man up from the shelter downtown Chicago and the one-day of prep that I had to get ready for an 9-day-old infant. The excitement, fear, anxiety and utter shock I felt those couple of days has been forever tattooed in my heart.

That first day at home was intoxicating, exhilarating, scary and surreal. As guarded as we wanted to be, it was impossible not to fall in love right away. The time since then has been spent like any other family with a new addition – minus the visits with bio-mom and dad, sibling visits, licensing visits, case worker visits, medication logs, parenting classes, attorney meetings, required development screenings, fights with said caseworker, hoops to jump through for quality healthcare, diagnoses that I’ve never heard of, DCFS case reviews, court dates and several other ridiculous requirements that have nothing to do with anything important. I am so grateful and proud of my daughters at how awesome, supportive and helpful they have been with the whole process and the strain that it put on our family… they are the mega stars of big sisters.

My favorite part of early motherhood with my girls was nursing them. I loved the way their innocent eyes studied me and how their tiny heads fit perfectly into the crease of my arm with their bodies curved around my mid-section. It was magical then and it was absolutely the same feeling when I fed Malachi his bottles. There was unquestionably no difference in the maternal bonding. I felt protective and defensive and I loved him more every day, every moment. I cherished watching him explore the world and observed with adoration as his little personality got bigger and more charismatic. He has taught me so much about living in the moment and how powerful love is.

From day one, the constant barrage of required visits with bio-mom and dad, siblings, caseworkers and licensing home checks were extremely stressful. I had done quite a bit of mental gymnastics to prepare for the onslaught of emotions that would come with “sharing” him with his bio-mom, but in the end it was an epic fail. Not something you can prepare for. It was a bewildering thing to feel the teeter-totter of emotions that went between compassion for this woman who was doing her best with what she’d been born with and the melancholy of what might actually happen if she’d been given another opportunity with my son. Her son. The shame I felt when I started to look forward to her failing was not a shining moment for me as a woman or a mother.

Nature versus nurture… that is the question. Five years ago you could not have convinced me that nurture would not win every time. It’s easy, right? Provide a stable home filled with love, discipline and follow through. You teach values, respect and consequence and good behavior just falls in place. Reality has completely kicked my ass in this regard. Malachi has taught me SO MANY lessons but I think one of the biggest ones is never to judge a book by its cover (or a “bratty” behaving child and their parents in public). It’s such a cliché but it’s so accurate to say that you never truly know what’s going on in someone else’s life. I am acutely aware that we have many battles ahead of us and we face those hurdles with optimism and confidence. There have been times when I have been blurry-eyed, bone-aching exhausted and disheartened with the process, the assistance (or lack thereof) regarding the special needs that have come with my son, and the challenges of actually dealing with those needs, and I picture how life would be so smooth if we hadn’t made this choice. I have actually allowed myself to whisper “what did I do to our life?” Within seconds of allowing that thought to creep into my already drained frontal lobe, I would feel an obnoxious and almost painful nausea creep throughout my body… and then sob into a mound of guilty goo. As I melted down I would picture where he would be if not here and then I would cry a bit more. He is right where he is supposed to be. The choice we made to foster is the same as the decision we made to get pregnant. The ultimate commitment.

He is my son and has been since November 1, 2012, but now that his name is legally the same as mine there is no one that can take him away from me, or threaten me, or force me to take him somewhere I’m not comfortable. I never again have to get permission to take him on vacation and provide the sleeping arrangements planned for the hotel, give him a medication or take him to a specialist doctor. I don’t have to violate my babysitter’s privacy by asking for their social security number so that I can hand it over to the state of Illinois. I no longer have to welcome people into my home to check on my parenting and act as if I am their babysitter. Strangers can’t invade my space and ask me if I’m feeding him the same foods that I feed “my own” kids or check his closet to make sure he has clothing. No more explaining the way I discipline him and then taking advice from a know-it-all, 20-something-year-old with no children on how to properly handle ADHD tantrums while staying within “DCFS guidelines.” If I am not happy with a doctor we are seeing I can just find another one without being placed on a nine-month waiting list and pending approval from the state.

I often hear compliments like “he is so lucky to have you,” or “I hope he realizes how blessed he is.” I do appreciate the kindness behind those sentiments, but want those people to understand that WE are privileged to have HIM. He is such a light in our lives… sometimes an overly energetic and difficult light, but definitely a bright one. There really is something so special about him. He greets me in the morning with his head cocked to one side, middle finger up and pointing like he is discussing a very philosophical topic and with a furrowed brow and narrowed serious eyes he says “how was your sleep mom?” Regardless of my mood he makes me smile or laugh every single day with his over-the-top excitement as he tells me one of his train facts or the way he assuredly, but politely tells me “no thanks mom” when I instruct him to pick up his toys. I adore him. Now that adoption day is over I can watch him develop and grow with a lot less weight on my shoulders. I am so eager to see what my little man will do in this world. We are honored to be his parents.

Our reality is best stated quoting the chorus from a song the famous big purple dinosaur sings: “A family is people and a family is love, that’s a family. They come in all difference sizes and different kinds but mine’s just right for me.”

As happy as I am today, I am still heart-broken for the thousands of children who will not be afforded the same opportunities my kids have.

Thank you to ALL of our friends and family who have supported us throughout this process. We are so lucky to have such a strong network of people who love us. Your kind words, hands of help and cheerleading did not go unnoticed! We wouldn’t change our current lives and our decision for the world and cannot imagine life without our beloved and precocious Malachi.

What’s Next:

When I realized how little control I had in my son’s life, it became therapeutic for me to write “letters to the judge” so that I could communicate to the one person who, in the end, was going to make the decision about where Malachi would ultimately spend his life. I never intended on sending the letters, it became a chronological diary that helped me cope through the past four years. This has been such an eye-opening and perplexing process for me that I feel compelled to share it. My goal is to publish those letters on this blog one at at time. The topics range from why we decided to embark on this journey, the classes taken, all of the visits and obstacles that stood in our way and why it took so long to reach this awesome day. The good, bad and the ugly!