Once we returned home - clarity began sinking in. Our foster caseworker came for one last visit before we were going to be transferred to the adoption team and assigned a new caseworker. We had to tell the kids and knew that their emotional response would be even more complex than my own. We told them - and mostly there was silence. Then little side-bar conversation leaked out throughout the week - in Walmart, in the car, at bedtime. My husband and I knew we wanted to somehow create space for a ritual, a marker of transition, an opportunity to reflect and share together as a family. This was a big deal - full of lots of questions, concerns, and feelings needing to be delicately unpacked.
So we put "dinner and family activity" on the calendar for Sunday night and created a visual tool to help us all see our winding road to one another - to acknowledge the story and all its light and shadowy bits. We told the kids that we are choosing them and we hope they can choose us. We made sure they knew that choosing us didn't mean NOT choosing their bio family. We had room in our hearts for everyone. We assured them that their mad, sad, glad were all welcome in our journey. We talked about hopes for the future.
My husband asked if everyone would be willing share a thought, feeling, question or concern - J (fs10) hid his head under a fuzzy blanket for a while, then tearfully peeked out long enough to share that when the strangers came to pick him up from school and told him he couldn't go home he felt hatred. We asked him if he knew where that hatred was directed and he said yes, but he didn't want to say. Later, in the sacred space of bedtime tuck in, he whispered to me that it was at himself. Oh Lord - these kids aren't ready to hope for the future. They have so much pain they've been mostly holding in for 22 months - hoping their mom could get herself together and they wouldn't have to face it.
Although it has been many months since either one of them has hit their heads against the wall or hit their self or voiced desire to harm their self - that self-hatred is lingering in their souls and leaks out in tiny tender moments. And we are doing our best to bind their wounds, to irrigate them, to not be afraid of the puss and blood and salty tears that come with these type of wounds. We are doing our best to not look away and offer love as a salve.
