A moment in my arms, forever in my heart.
I feel like there are a lot of things about foster care that don’t ever get discussed. We hear about the children that have been in foster homes for months or even years and the grief that follows when those children are reunified or move to another placement. The goal of foster care is temporary. This grief kind of comes with the territory. If you are doing foster care right, you have to put your walls down, you have to attach and you have to love whole heartedly. These children deserve that. That’s not really what I want to talk about though.
Obviously, if you have cared for a child for months or even years, it would be expected that the foster parents who have loved and cared for them would miss them and grieve the loss, but what about a child that only spent one night in your home? Is it normal to grieve in that instance? Is it normal for the foster parents to continue to think about those children for months or years after they leave? Is it normal for a restaurant or a specific type of candy or a movie to trigger memories of that child that only spent 24 hours in your home? I don’t know if it’s normal but it is something I have experienced. Children who were emergency placements that were only in our home for 24 hours or a few short days, still hold a piece of my heart. Our family will still talk about the children that only spent one night in our home years later.
This past week I came across the “welcome” book we created when going through MAPP classes. The book was to be shown to children who were going to come stay with us, so they could see pictures of us, our house, pets and their room. In the nursery, we had originally set up, I painted a sign that said “A moment in my arms, forever in my heart.” How naive I was. That was a cute “foster care” quote I had found when we were getting licensed and I never anticipated the weight that phrase would hold. When I saw the picture of that sign in our welcome book it stopped me dead in my tracks. How incredibly accurate that quote is.
When you have a child placed in your home, especially if they are just coming in to foster care, you may be their first soft landing place. You are the one responsible for getting them through some of the toughest hours and days in their lives. It’s your job to provide comfort to a child you have never met before. They have just lost everything. Their family, their home, their pets, their clothes, sometimes their siblings. They are scared to death. Can you imagine being taken from your home and dropped at a strangers door step? As an adult, that would still scare me to death. I have seen the look of fear in the eyes of children as a social worker they barely knows drops them at our home with absolutely no personal belongings, nothing to cling on to. Their sad eyes scan the room looking for anything that may be familiar to them. I have held a child who was screaming for their birth family, I have talked to a school age child for hours with absolutely no response. Only to have my mom come over and the child responded to her immediately. My mom was her safe person for the 24 hours she was in our home and that was ok. I have had children whose eyes were welling up with tears but were to afraid to cry. You see, we are the ones there in some of the absolute worst moments of their lives. After they leave our home it is very rare for us to get any sort of update. You can’t help but wonder what the outcome of their case was, or if they are safe and loved. All I do know is for the nights they were in our home, they were safe and loved.
I would like to think that as they look back on those scary times in their lives, our family and our home are a positive memory. Some of our children have experienced multiple foster homes and placements. Some of them remember these other homes and some of them don’t. I will say that my children who were placed in an emergency placement for one night prior to their long term placement often recall that first night in their foster home. They were scared and worried but their foster parents were warm and welcoming. They allowed them to share a room, they made them good food and didn’t ask them a ton of questions. I don’t know if their first foster parents ever think of them but it’s heartwarming to know that even though they were only in those homes for one night they often recall that first night in foster care with lots of positive memories. Some of the things my children recall about their first night in their emergency placement was “they got me away from the chaos first.” If that doesn’t strike a chord, I don’t know what will. My children also noted that “they took time to play a game and talk even though it was late” and “It was scary being somewhere new but I also felt relieved and safe.” I can only hope that the children who were in our home for short periods of time are also able to identify our home as a safe, positive memory.
My hope is that even if they can’t recall our names, they will remember how we made them feel. Every time a child has left our home I have cried. I cry because I know they are standing at the bottom of a very tall mountain and there is a long, rough road ahead of them. I cry because we can’t take the pain away. I cry because I know there is still pain ahead. I cry because I love them. A moment in my arms, forever in my heart.
