From the Heart of Alicia Marie: Foster Care--Part 2: Two Months

In my last post, I told you about our first placements, the two little children that instantly stole my heart. The children whose absence I mourned for another month and a half after they were gone to be a part of another foster family. Thankfully, time does help heal a broken heart, and so do new placements. The day that I found out that our first placements were going to be leaving the following day, I was talking to my friend who went through foster care classes with us. I was asking her if she had gotten any new placements and how things were going with her current placement at that time. She told me they had gotten several calls for huge sibling groups or really young kids and that they had just turned down a placement for a one and three year old little girl. Immediately I began asking questions. “How old are they again?” “Have they found a home for them yet?” “Do you know how to get a hold of the caseworker in charge of those little girls?” My friend was very helpful and gave me all the information that she knew. By the end of our conversation, I had the caseworker’s name and phone number. As soon as the conversation with my friend ended, I immediately called the caseworker. There was no answer (Granted, it was 8:30 at night), and I got the voicemail. Through tears, I left a long voicemail telling her how our placements were leaving the following day and that my husband and I would love to take the girls if she had not found a home for them yet. I knew that I couldn’t wait a long time for the next placement. I was so heartbroken, and I knew that the only way to help me move on was to get new placements. It’s something that I was told by another foster family, too. They said, “don’t wait too long to get new placements when yours leave. It’s easier that way.” To an extent, they were right, but it took a long time let go of the hurt we had from losing our first placements. After leaving a voicemail for the caseworker, I went to bed. I had been crying all day and my heart felt like it was in a million pieces.

I went to work the next morning a complete mess. I locked myself in my office and cried until I ran out of tears. My anxiety level was through the roof. I knew that in just a few hours I had to leave work and drive home to meet the caseworker so she could pick up the kids and take them to their new foster home. As the hours at work passed, I kept checking my phone in hopes that the caseworker for the girls might have returned my call. Eleven o’clock came, and I left work to go home. On my drive home, I called the caseworker again, and she finally answered! She told me that she had been meaning to call me, but that she has been trying to contact my licensing worker to make sure it was okay for us to take the girls. She was finally able to get a hold of our licensing worker, and after a few other phone calls to her supervisor, we had the OK to get the girls as our new placements. At that time, the girls were in respite care after being moved two times in two weeks. I had a few more days of work to finish before I was off for the summer, so six days after our first placements left, the girls were dropped off to live with us. That was May 15. Today is exactly two months since the girls came into our lives. If you had asked me the day I said goodbye to our first placements if I would ever love another placement as much as I did the first ones, I would have told you absolutely not. But, thankfully that was not the case, and these two girls (who I lovingly call “Little Momma” and “Miss Curly”) have stolen my heart, too. I don’t feel as though they’re my foster children. I feel like they’re my own children, like there was never a time in our lives where they weren’t around.

I really can’t describe how the last two months with the girls have gone. There are so many emotions that come with foster care, and I’m pretty sure I’ve felt all of them all. Every day that passes I fall in love with the girls even more, and I am filled with even more joy because of them.