Fostercare is a dirty word...

I have not blogged in a while.  It has been a crazy year that was filled with curve balls thrown at me and I was not always ready to bat.  However, I am still in the game!

We are working with an organisation called Kin Culture and recently in collaboration with other foster/adoption organisations they launched the first ever WORLD FOSTER DAY.  The effort and the work done to promote it was amazing and I was blown away after years of working on Child Protection Week and other children’s campaign initiatives, how far this small little team were able to come and what they achieved.

However, this day, this launch and this story was very difficult for me.  I was not sure at first what was going on in me.  I realised however at some point that I was in trouble, when by the famous May 31, 2018 in the early hours of the morning I found myself in a ball of tears at my dining room table after watching a clip that had been aired on National television about the day.

Then it blurted out of me, I never wanted to be the picture family for foster care, I wanted to be the picture for Adoption.  I wanted forever, I wanted to ADOPT!  The 18 months since I took these little ones into my life the challenge to that dream has been great, but I had not laid it down yet.  This was a serious and very difficult realisation for me and what made it worse was I could not shake off my real disappointment about it.  I was not ready to face the day and at that moment was disrupted by a surprise visit from two beautiful women who had been working very hard on the project and whom I am very proud of, showering me with gifts and thanks for what I do for foster care.

How could I express to the world that I do not want to be associated with this day, after my face and family are all over it in the launch year…I was shocked by my feelings and felt a little afraid of my attitude. 

I realised in the last few weeks that  the way an adoption is done is a very big deal.  I have had to admit in a big way in the last two years that it had had a huge impact on my life. Foster Care was hard because of unworked parts of my story.

When I eventually got adopted as an 11 year old, it was a relief, a flight away from my “old” self that was made to feel unwanted, dirty and ashamed… that is serious and very sad.  I realised now looking back that there was a lot more that could have been done to help me stay in my whole story, but everyone was doing the best with what we knew back then.  

I am learning of getting to a place of retelling my whole story and honouring the Dutton side of it has been a big task.  I was born a Dutton and I am not sorry I became a Simmons, but I see now, that it was not done in a healthy way.  I was only able to identify this in a big way this past weekend, after confronting it for the first time 2 years ago. Thanks to WORLD FOSTER DAY!

How this impacts my little foster children is this… I do not need to own them, I can FOSTER forever… telling their whole story and honouring their beginnings and their families of origin, they belong to two families.  This is a huge and a significant shift in me and I had no idea that maybe my big block to fostering is to try and protect my children from their hard story, from their feelings of rejection and abandonment… but I realised in a big way that adoption does not fix that.  It had not done that for me.

Fostering care and looking at a child’s whole story and helping them come to a place of peace about it all is the best way to help them be at peace with themselves and their families, as complex at this picture may be.  I must foster the best care that includes their origin in it if that is what they want and as they lead and are ready, but I must sure not block it.  I never realised until today that I risked doing to them what was done to me.

The story then, the whole one becomes one of redemption and hope and healing of the hard stuff all around.  The beginning gets the honour it deserves too!

Obviously, I am not closed to adoption now, but I am a lot more open to fostering care for life… forever.  Embracing and holding the whole story in all of it's complexity as I honour my own!

I will be a lot more fun on WORLD FOSTER DAY 2019!