Today is day 3 of 30 Days of Truth. As we go along, it seems the questions are getting harder and easier at the same time. If you would like to go back and read our past entries, please feel free to read them here. Today's, as always, is another good one. I love thinking about questions like these and reflecting on things. Many times people say that you can't change the past so there's no reason to reflect on it. In many ways, this is true. You can't change it so don't dwell on it. However, when mistakes are made it's our responsibility to learn from them and sometimes that takes some reflecting. This brings us to Day 3...
Day 3 - Something you have to forgive yourself for?
This is a hard one. Being a perfectionist makes me judge myself a little too much. A little too harshly. One of the things that I need to forgive myself for is making the same mistake over and over again. I have a hard time letting go and realizing that I'm not perfect and I can't do everything. For example I have a hard time leaving my son with someone else because I don't want anyone to think that I can't handle taking care of him myself. It's something that I battle with daily and it's something that I always beat myself up about. For not doing enough with my son, for not being there 24/7 for him. It's something that I honestly struggle with.
Another thing that I need to forgive myself for is for 'giving up' on our foster daughter. I haven't shared about it, here, but before I became pregnant with my son, we had a 12m old foster daughter and we had her until her second birthday. To make a terribly long story short, we got tired of fighting with her family. They didn't want to visit her at the same time so we had 4 visitations, per week. Anytime she seen her family she didn't sleep, so every other night, she would wake up every 20 minutes throughout the night. It was so tough. We went through 4.5 years of infertility treatments and finally a LONG cycle of ICSI (and $30k) to get pregnant with our son and the stress of being a foster mom, alone, was killing me. I was sick, I was upset 24/7 and I just couldn't see putting my son through that. There was no way of knowing how much longer the stress would have went on or if my son would have made it through the endless anxiety. It finally came down to a week where her family made the state change plans about 5 different times, because anything we agreed to do wasn't good enough. They were forcing us out of the situation and it was all I could do to do what I did. I gave it my all and eventually it wasn't enough. We choose to give her to another foster home and while it still breaks my heart to this very day, ultimately it was the right decision. Her maternal grandmother ended up adopting her and even if we were willing to adopt her and it came to that, her grandmother would have been first choice, regardless. So we did save ourselves the time, frustration and stress but I can't help but feel like I gave up on here and gave her away. I can't help but wonder what hell I sent her home to. I can't help it. I need to forgive myself for this and it's something that I struggle with quite a bit.
What do you need to forgive yourself for?
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ReplyDeleteHey, all the stories I've read about foster care are like that, it's the point I am wondering how they find foster parents because, I, very selfishly, would never want to live that! I know I would be completely crushed ;o(
ReplyDeleteBest regards to you and your family!
Hi Stephanie;
ReplyDeletewhat a tremendous and honest story... first, you should be very proud of yourself and your husband and if it was God's plan for you to foster for a short while - then for that time she was in your home/hearts - she had a healthy, happy and loving home. Second, i hope you find a way to accept that and be at peace with it. i had a similar experience with two teenage foster daughters... we were asked to foster them for 60 days - the time it would take their church family to be cleared/fingerprinted/etc and then they would live with them as they were like family to the girls. We were happy to do it, but the girls got comfortable with us and didn't want to go with the other family at the end of the 60 days. while it was very hard on all of us, i knew it was the plan for me to mother them for a short time and although I did struggle with guilt for a short-time and wonder what would happen to them and what I had done, i completely feel that I gave them a healthy, happy home with love for those 60 days and gave them the start for the next step in their lives. I am at peace that i helped them when they needed it most and I don't have guilt. I hope you can find that... you did a wondeful thing for a child who needed love and a home and that is a really, really good thing.
Oh Stephanie... You do yourself a great disservice to feel that way about your situation with your foster daughter. You did what you could do with what you had to work with.
ReplyDeleteI hope that you can forgive yourself soon. I think the process has started, by you letting this story out.
This just breaks my heart. Hearing about all the pain you went through. I suffer from infertility right now and I'm too scared to even begin going through the treatments to be honest.
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