First, let me tell you, you will love them, and you will love them hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will pain you to hear them cry\u2026just as it did your own because you want the hurt to end the moment they are in your arms. It will pain you to see them struggle to make a friend at school because you know they have so much love to give to another, and It will pain you to not be able to breastfeed the newborn\u2026because you so desperately want to be able to give something of yourself to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as your time with them rolls on, you realize\u2026when you hear yourself talking about them at the end of a long and tricky day\u2026when you see them faced with seemingly impossible expectations they\u2019re used to just riding.\u2026when you remember reading details of the removal \u2013 the turmoil they have faced and the trauma that has wounded their essence \u2013 the love<\/a> you have will soar for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when it settles, it will do so in a much deeper place than you would ever have imagined possible. But that\u2019s not even the part that hurts. It\u2019s the, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t be able to say goodbye\u2019 part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thing is, you just can\u2019t foster to adopt. It\u2019s important to enter the fostering process with an authentic willingness to support reunification. You are temporarily looking after children who cannot reside at home for a period of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we all know we will be saying goodbye<\/a> to the children who come into our care. That doesn\u2019t make it easy for us. In fact, it\u2019s much harder than you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a foster carer, you are stepping into a commitment that will inevitably see your biological children suffer. You are basically allowing your own children \u2013 encouraging them \u2013 to form a loving relationship with a sibling who you know will leave them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You are modeling for them ways to fast-track knowing this little person on a much deeper level than they know their school friends or cousins, and all the while, you know that one day, sooner or later, they will be helping you pull down the books from the shelf that belong to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They will be helping you slide photos into an album of the camping trip you all took together and they will be helping you remember which scooter is theirs so that you pack the right one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Basically, you are setting your biological children up for heartbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you say, \u2018I would never be able to say goodbye,\u2019 next time picture this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lying on a single bed and facing into her, she wants to bury her head into her little sister\u2019s soul. Her sobbing cries rise and fall from desperate to heartbreak to regret to confusion. Her fair-skinned limbs wanting to merge into one being with her charcoal-skinned sister, begging, pleading, with me not to let her go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She is hugging everything she grew to love about her. Everything she wanted their lives to be together<\/a>. Everything they had already built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know that, give it a year or maybe a bit less, she will stop asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stop asking for the girl she knew as her sister. She\u2019ll stop pleading to invite her over. She\u2019ll stop wondering out loud about how her day was at school, about whether she still uses her dollhouse, about whether she has learned how to swim now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\u2019ll stop, but it\u2019s not because she will forget. She\u2019ll never forget her now. She was with us too long for her to merge into the others. She\u2019ll stop asking because she knows that she had to say goodbye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That she always has to say goodbye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s much harder than you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a child you have loved and cared for as your own is reunified, you sit at home, and the room is quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every room is quiet, even though the chatter and the television and the kettle boiling. It\u2019s just quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not unlike a death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You doze off in an exhausted but light and unsure sleep, only to be startled to wake by a noise that you thought was familiar. \u2018Where is,\u2019 \u2026and then you remember, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s right.\u2019 You need to remind yourself that the child went home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a while, all you can think about is them. There is a piece of your heart, of your whole being, missing. And it will always be that way, varying in intensity. You rush through dinner, longing for the still, longing for dark, so you can be alone in your thoughts. But then you can\u2019t help but wonder. What they must be thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does she think I just got sick of her? Maybe that she cried too much? Or that she stopped being cute? Does she think that I didn\u2019t really like her in the first place? And that she wasn\u2019t really wanted after all? Then, you go a little further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You wonder if they will call out for you in the dark stillness of night before their room becomes familiar. You wonder if they will find comfort in the familiar smell of their teddy before it gets washed again. And you wonder if they look for you, trying to recognize you in the people around them now. You wonder if they will try to write to you when they are a little older and want to make contact again. And then, you wonder if they will remember you at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the weeks pass and you haven\u2019t heard from or about them, all you can do is cling to the hope that they don\u2019t need you anymore. That they don\u2019t need help anymore. That they are safe, and happy, and cared for and forming attachments and getting bigger and stronger and that all is well in their world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s literally all you can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s much harder than you think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Time rolls on. Your family feels a little fractured. And you remember that you have never actually felt whole since you decided to be a foster parent. Even with the busiest of households, there will forever be children missing at the dinner table. You will always miss carrying that sweet babe out of her cot. And even with the most beautiful of family photos, there will be faces lingering in the spaces around the people who remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"two](\"https:\/\/lwm-a2.azureedge.net\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Amy_Banson_foster_care3-900x600.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Time After Reunification<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"kids](\"https:\/\/lwm-a2.azureedge.net\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Amy_Banson_foster_care2-900x1326.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"baby](\"https:\/\/lwm-a2.azureedge.net\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Amy-Banson_foster_care2-900x900.png\")
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