What Happened? What Now?

What Happened?

The very short & undetailed version:

For those of you who don't know, our placement was with us for a month before we made the difficult decision to ask for him to be moved to another home.  For many reasons (most of them legal), I can’t get into the exact details but things progressively got overwhelming – from feeling like we weren’t told everything upfront, having WAY too much of our personal information shared with those we didn’t believe it needed to be shared with, & being asked to do things we just weren’t comfortable with for whatever justifiable reasons we had.  In the end, it wasn’t a good fit for our family & the uncomfortable truth is that was enough to ask for him to be moved even though we were seeing him make progress.  For as much stress, learning curves, & uncertainty that came with him, he also brought a lot of joy & we were all attached in our own ways.   So it was a hard decision to make in the first place, but then the state didn’t seem to think it was a good enough reason & we got a great deal of pushback when we asked for him to be removed.  That said, we still know we made the right decision & our reasons were valid.  I will say that for as much ugliness as we saw & experienced, at one point before it went that way we did have a few of our requests honored by them & for that I am grateful.  I am also grateful for my agency (& in particular 2 of the social workers we work with) who really supported us through the four weeks – arranging respite care for a weekend, talking me off a ledge at times, & stepping up to deal with a very unusual case.  We have repeatedly been told this wasn’t a normal placement – from how/when it happened to case details to requests being made of us to the interactions with had with his social workers.

A few people have commented on how they couldn’t just “let go” like we did.  Truth is, we don’t have a choice.   Legally & emotionally, we have to.  We brought that upon ourselves with the decision we made.  Yes, we will be attached to our placements & that’s a given for us to have any REAL & lasting effect on their lives for whatever time we have them.  So while it’s hard, I can’t live in a state of constant questioning or wondering.  I have to let it go.  I know we impacted his life in very real & tangible ways and I have to trust that whatever family he is with now or he ends up with will provide him with just as good – if not better – care & love than he had with us.  I know God has a plan for him so I won’t carry the worry with me.  I will pray for him & I will trust that, just as we hope to find the right fit for us, that he will find the right family that fits him.

What Now?

After the post placement ‘what in the world did we just experience’ debriefing with our agency, we’re cautiously back in the waiting pool.  And by cautiously, I mean every ounce of my body still tenses up at the thought of having a repeat experience.  We opted not to take a break because if the right match is out there, we don’t want to miss it while we’re taking a break.  And we always have the option to say no or we may not be the chosen family anyways.  Either way, our hearts are still open to this process.  I think the person who searches for placements at our agency was surprised we weren’t taking a little breather, but it’s all really a game of ‘hurry up & wait’ anyways.  From here out, we’re going to make our own additional list of questions for our agency to ask social workers before submitting our homestudy (based on our experience) and we’ll also be considered in the (occasional) case that a birth mother surrenders her toddler(s) to our agency.  A surrendered toddler from a mom who seeks a somewhat open adoption would be ideal, but we’ll see what comes our way.

In the meantime, I think our last placement impacted our lives just as much as we impacted his.  We still know we’re not done growing our family, but I think for the first time in 5 years it’s not overwhelming consuming our lives.  We’ve spent so much time with doctors, at various appointments, doing paperwork, having meetings and we’re just ready to be ‘waiting’.  I may need to remind myself of that in 3 months when I start to get anxious about how slowly the process could be moving then, but right now we feel content to wait.  That doesn’t mean that deep down I wouldn’t be more than okay with it happening tomorrow, but it does mean that our last placement taught us (well, me maybe more so) to be even more appreciative of the family we do have.  B & I are looking forward to spending a summer with our daughter & taking a little more time to spend on ourselves before the right match does come around.  My bucket list of summer to-dos to come!