RealMamaNoDrama

What about the kids? It's a question we hear often, a question we asked ourselves repeatedly before starting this process 3 years ago, when our bio kids were just 6 & 8. They have handled this all so beautifully so far that I almost want to quip, what about them? Obviously that wasn't our initial attitude, in fact we were quite concerned, concerned they may feel slighted, concerned they'd get attached and then have a hard time grieving, concerned we'd be introducing some tough topics into their little hearts and brains. So concerned that we almost didn’t do this, that we almost missed this and I cannot tell you how sad that thought makes me now. Like so much in life we quickly realized we worried for nothing, kids intuitively get vulnerable love, it's us grown ups that screw it up. Plus if you never afford your children the opportunity to feel slighted, to get attached, to deal with loss, to deal with all the heavy stuff, aren't you real

I’ll never forget my 22 nd birthday, it was the day that I thought to myself, “Yes! Thank God! Now I am old enough to get married.” I know what you are thinking because now I am thinking it too, ‘Wait what?!? What did my dumb self just proclaim the young age with the high enough level of maturity to get married?’ Only that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking at all because truly I was too naïve to ever question what maturity had to do with marriage. I was already engaged to be married at that time and I just thought 22 sounded like a better age to be making such a large life choice than just 21 did. I mean ‘who could take a 21 year old seriously?’ is what I was projecting . I knew I was not going to prove to myself or anyone else around me that this 21 year old girl, the age that’s basically the poster child for drunken irresponsibility, was mature enough to know what she was doing. I was truly thankful that I turned 22 in May before our wedding in June. I thought that month

My thoughts on the idea of becoming "too attached" and that fear keeping people from fostering.  http://www.adoorofhope.com/blog/

A little piece I wrote about a very special girl and the place she holds in my heart and on my wall. https://eckerd.org/2017/10/18/mom-decorates-home-pictures-entire-family-including-foster-kids/

A couple of months ago us Floridians went through Hurricane Irma together. At that time I was struck with the parallel of the trauma of that experience and what a child in foster care must experience regularly, you can read more about my take on that here: https://eckerd.org/2017/09/18/guest-blog-life-foster-care-can-never-ending-hurricane/