Three Months Ago, I Was a Mother

There’s a song by one of my favorite singers, Florence Welch, that has the line, “Sometimes, I think it’s getting better, and then it gets much worse.” It pretty accurately describes what it’s been like to live a life without my foster daughter.

I know that I shouldn’t complain. Over the twenty months that we had our foster daughter, we carefully cultivated a positive relationship with her biological family. As such, we’ve been lucky enough to see her regularly. I got to spend my birthday listening to her laugh. My spouse and I got to take her around to see family members the day after Christmas, all of whom happily loaded her up with presents. Earlier, I ordered her a Bitty Baby doll from the American Girl store for her upcoming second birthday. We get to spoil her and love her. We are so grateful for this gift.

However, one of the things that I have learned most as a foster parent of two years, is that I can hold wildly different, conflicting feelings at the same time. I can be grateful to be in her life, while also desperately missing her. I can be thrilled for her mother’s continued success, but also miss the routine that I used to have with this child who I thought of as my daughter. I miss our walks in the park. I miss getting her up and dressed in the mornings. I miss brushing her sweet baby hair. I miss preparing her breakfast and packing her lunches. I miss taking her over to my mom’s and watching them play together. I miss reading to her and singing her to sleep. I miss the artwork that she’d bring home from her toddler classes. I miss buying her way-too-expensive baby clothes. (Okay, I still do buy her those, but I’m trying to stop myself.) I miss dreaming of a future with her that I was never supposed to allow myself to dream as a foster parent. How can you not, though, when you have a child in your home for so long? We stayed the night with her in the NICU. We brought her home from the hospital.

I can hold all of these feelings at the same time. I raised a baby from birth to nearly 2-years-old. How can I not have intense emotions? How can I not have intense grief? It’s nothing personal against anyone. It’s just pain.

My grief is disenfranchised. It isn’t grief that people understand. People cannot relate to what it is like to be a foster parent. I try to relate to people sometimes, but they have no interest. That makes me sad, too. Why do people seem to care so little about children in foster care? There are so many children in need of an emotionally healthy, loving home. We foster little ones. We aren’t ready to foster older children just yet. Someone out there is, though. Someone out there is a seasoned parent who can take on a 17-year-old. Why don’t they? I’ll never understand it.

The fact that most people aren’t foster parents and don’t understand how the system or process works makes it even harder for me to have anyone to talk to about our loss. My mother just gets frustrated when I try to talk about it. She just misses the baby. She said to me once, “I just want one day with her.” Well, what about us, I always think. How does she think we feel? For 20 months, she was my baby girl; I cry multiple times a week over her. It is so complicated.

I feel guilty that I miss her, because I know that, when it is safe and healthy, it is always better for a child to be with their biological mother. I know that, when my foster daughter is 15, she’ll be grateful for the connection to her biological family. She has siblings, too, and siblings belong together, if at all possible. I know all of this and support all of this. Still, I was her mother for so long. I wasn’t a caretaker; I mothered her. How do I let those feelings go? How do I let her go? My brain cannot tell my heart how to do this.

I worry about her. I worry about what it must be like to remove a child from the only home they knew for the first 2 years of their life. I worry about her trauma. I worry that she is safe, happy, healthy, and still her inquisitive, rambunctious little self. When her mother texts me photographs (again, I know that we are so lucky), I physically relax, as if I’ve been holding in the tension of wondering if she’s okay. I just want to know that she’s okay. I just want to see her smiling.

It feels surreal that she’s gone. Her bedroom is still so very much hers. The house is filled with so much of her. I still stock some of her favorite foods for when she comes over. I buy the Growing Years whole milk, just in case. I am afraid that I will miss her forever.

We got a call a few days ago asking us to foster two young children. We spent so long trying to decide how to respond that the social worker texted us again, asking if we had decided. We ultimately said yes, but only if no other family was interested. We weren’t sure that we were ready to jump into parenting two children, especially with us still wanting to stay involved in the life of our former foster daughter — our first daughter, in our hearts. In the end, the children went to another family. My spouse and I both felt disappointed when we didn’t receive a call that they would be coming, which I guess means that we really do want another placement. I was afraid that we’d never want to foster again after all that’s happened. It is just so much pain.

Recently, our foster daughter’s mother got engaged. I was surprised when she said that she’d like us to attend her wedding. I couldn’t believe that she’d want the foster parents at such a special day in her life. It’s amazing, really. It’s an honor. I hope that it’s because she’s seen how much we love her little girl and — by extension — her. How can we not love the person who created this child? I hope that we’ve done the right things. I know that I’ve fallen short at times. I made myself a promise, though, when we became foster parents. I promised to uphold my own integrity no matter what I faced. I didn’t want to be like those foster parents that I’d heard about from adoptees online. I wanted my foster daughter to one day say something like this quote that I once saw: “I knew how much you loved me, because you never gave up on my mom.”

I hope that she’ll say that to me one day. I hope that she’ll see all that we have done to try to give her a safe, happy life. I hope she’ll see me as some kind of mother figure. I am forever hers.

And, well — I also hope that one day, somehow, it won’t hurt so much to breathe.