Loss

I know what you are thinking...loss, hasn't she talked about this a lot lately? I have. The loss of my dad was tough but I have been feeling the loss of something else and struggling with it for quite awhile

We have open adoptions with our adopted children's birth parents. What the open adoption looks like is different with all of them because of different reasons. I had a vision of what this would look like and it hasn't really panned out the way I was hoping. I have felt like I have failed somehow because of this. I feel like I haven't reached out enough, that I am not open enough or maybe even that I don't care enough. Although my head knows this is all not true, my heart struggles with it.

Right now we don't have much contact with some of the birth parents in our kiddos life. I am sure there are a variety of reasons why we don't hear from some of them. I don't know what it is like to be in their shoes. To have lost custody of your child. To not be raising your child, watching them grow and learn and become wonderful little people who will become wonderful adults. To be watching them being raised by someone else. My heart breaks for them because I truly cannot imagine how they are handling their loss.

But while I struggle with my sadness for their loss, I also struggle for my children's loss. They lost their birth parent for reasons that are hard to understand. They may have gained my family as their own but they still have a loss that they will have to grieve as they get older. They are all too young right now to understand the complexity of their family dynamics. We have photos of them with their birth parents in their rooms. We look at these photos every day. My hope is this will help them know that their story is a wonderful story and they have many, many people who love them.

I think the impact of losing my dad has left me feeling loss even stronger than I normally would. I don't understand why we have lost contact with some of the birth parents. I look at my children and my heart if filled with joy and I wonder who wouldn't want to have that opportunity to be around them? I feel like any contact, however minimal it might be for the time being as we establish boundaries and establish our family, that any contact would be wanted.

I feel the need to protect my babies from having people in and out of their life as they grow up. This world can be very disappointing and I feel like this is one thing I can control for them...by not allowing people in and out of their lives.

At the end of the day, I am not judging...I just feel sad. This is not what I envisioned. I hope one day soon, things will turn around but for now, I just have to keep on protecting my babies.

A new year and it's flying by

A lot has happened since the last time I logged on here. We have adopted a little boy from foster care. We now have six children (three of whom are adopted). The day after we finalized our adoption, we officially closed our home as a foster home. It is a very strange feeling to no longer have anyone needing to come to my home and inspect it or check-up on any kiddos in our home. I will admit I cried the first day when I realized we were done and now I feel at peace. I was and still am disappointed that we could foster for four years, adopt three children, have 12 children in our home and be given no thanks at all for our service. I didn't foster for the gratitude but at the same time, it would have felt nice to feel like our agency had appreciated what we had done. A simple note of thanks would have meant the world to me.

We registered our oldest daughter for her high school classes. I am not sure where the time has gone and have no clue how she can fourteen already! She is excited and nervous...and so am I!! I know how quickly these next few years will go and it saddens me to know she won't be at home much longer...saddens me for me because I will miss seeing her everyday :)

I also marked two years since my dad's passing. I think out of everything, that's the hardest for me to wrap my head around. It feels like yesterday that he passed away. I miss him. I miss calling my mom and talking to her only to realize that my dad is listening in on the conversation :) I feel like I see signs of him letting me know he is still with me...is that crazy?!?

I have been struggling a lot lately with some different emotions. I will leave that for another post and it won't take too long to get that written. It's a bit more personal and I'm trying to find the best way to discuss it openly.