Important Decisions

My CHOR family case worker sent me an email asking to meet up with me and also if I would be on the local TV programming to talk about foster care since May is the Foster Care Awareness month. I agreed to both but I was perplexed why she was asking to meet with me. Her response was, “As to meeting, the end of the day is fine but this week I would only have Wednesday available  - and it would only last as long as you wanted it to – It just seems that you may have some important decisions to make that you may want to bounce off of your family worker??” Important decisions I need to bounce off my family worker? I can only guess she was referring to Chica Marie and the impending adoption.

 

Maybe it’s fear of a disruption or worry that I can’t handle it all, maybe they just want to cover all their bases, but I feel like I have made the decision to adopt Chica Marie at least three times by now. When she first moved in Chica Marie’s case worker (who is still with CHOR but not the case worker we have now) mentioned she was also considered a legal risk placement like her brother and asked me to think about being a permanent resource (that’s foster care speak for adoptive family). I contemplated the possibility and eventually came to the conclusion I would be considered a permanent resource for both siblings. Then, a year later, I was expressing my frustrations to my then family worker (not the same one I have now) and she posed the question of adopting Chica Marie knowing how hard things were with her. Once again, I did some soul searching and hard thinking and came to the same conclusion. More recently, Chica Marie’s previous mobile therapist suggested I seek counsel to persuade the courts to split up the children, keeping Love Bug with me. She went as far as to ask our CHOR case worker about it, who in turn asked the county worker who replied it would really be up to the judge on how the whole thing would play out and I’m not a betting person, so I didn’t want to gamble with those odds. My assumption is my family worker got wind of this transaction and now wants to talk to me a fourth time about my decision. I could be wrong, but I’m probably not. No one has ever batted an eye at me adopting Love Bug. I think sometimes they forget he isn’t already my son.

 

So, here’s the thing. For whatever reason my motherhood is not and will never be easy. Not to say being a mother is always easy, because it isn’t, but there is an extra lay of ish added to being an adoptive mother. There just is. I didn’t necessarily choose the easy path when I agreed to adopt Primero. Adopting a teenager is not an easy thing. And, I’ve written plenty about the emotional hardships that I’ve overcome and the ones that still slay me to this day. Learning to be open with extended bio family and the yo-yoing contact with his biological mother have not been easy. I’ve done a lot of hard things – like taking him to his brother’s baby shower 90 minutes away, sharing all our holidays with his extended family, spending the day at the mall with his mother, helping his siblings in the ways I can. I don’t think I could be accused of shying away from the hard things. My point in saying this is, why should it be any different with Chica Marie? She has been with me for nearly three years and I never asked to have her removed from my home. Just because she has challenging behaviors, does that mean she should be tossed to the side, left to flounder from home-to-home like her sister was until she moved in with their grandmother? No one deserves to feel unwanted, least of all a child. Might Chica Marie be better off in a home as the only child with a stay-at-home parent who can dote on her night and day? I don’t know. No one could really answer that question and who defines “better off” to begin with? There are no guarantees in life. I could very well struggle with Chica Marie until she legally becomes an adult. But, I could have that same struggle with Love Bug. My parents endured many years of turmoil from my brother, who was their biological child. The teenage years are rough on everybody, I know I wasn’t always a peach with my parents and I consider myself a pretty straight-laced “good kid” who stayed out of trouble. As long as we are both drawing breath there is hope for me and Chica Marie to improve our relationship. If anything, I think she deserves someone who can see her at her worst and still say, “I choose you.” Sending her away from the most stable home she’s ever had would further damage her emotionally and add to the trauma driving her behaviors. Our story probably won’t be an easy one but it will be ours together. And, I will keep making this same decision as many times as necessary to make it happen.