Foster Parenting

We have been facing a hard reality lately, and have had to accept the fact that we will probably not be able to have any more birth children. For the past few months we have been considering different options for adding to our family, and the one option that we kept coming back to was foster care. There’s a huge need for normal loving families and we definitely fit the bill there.

Each child that enters the foster care system has experienced some level of trauma in their home life. Addiction, neglect, abuse, abandonment, and the list goes on and on, none of it good. So we asked ourselves, if all we want and need is more children in our home, why not provide a home to children who really need a home?

Flashback to August 1988. I was 12 years old and my parents were unofficially fostering a baby girl. She was full blood Blackfoot, and absolutely the most beautiful baby girl I’ve ever seen in my life. She had eyelashes that were so long they brushed against her chubby cheeks when she blinked. She had enough shiny black hair to tie back into two little ponytails. She was quiet and gentle and she stole my heart from day one.

Her birth mom was battling an addiction to alcohol and my mom was caring for her baby while she was in rehab.

This tiny little baby had a lot of health issues. She had been severely malnourished, surviving on skim milk powder water in a bottle and oreo cookies, sometimes abandoned for hours in a trailer on the reserve while her parents went on drinking binges. Complications of her malnourishment meant she was often sick with ear and throat infections. Her little body’s immune system was shot. I remember her fever spiking so high a few times that she would go into convulsions. It was terrifying, but she was resilient and eventually her health started improving with proper nutrition. She soaked up our love and adoration as much as we soaked in hers.

Her birth mother never overcame her addiction and eventually my parents adopted her and she became my sister. The picture above is my grown up sister today with her own daughter, and I’m proud to say she has broken the cycle of addiction in her family. I couldn’t be prouder of her. I just wish she lived closer so I could be Auntie April to my adorable little niece. Aren’t those little cheeks just dying to be kissed?!

My heart has longed for a daughter ever since my baby sister came into our life, and I am thrilled that my husband and son are just as passionate as I am about foster care. The hardest part will be the inevitable good-byes, but we know they will always be family in our heart.

Just before Christmas I did a google search for BC Foster Care, found the number to call, and we have now been referred to the ministry. The adventure begins!