I haven’t written much in awhile. It’s been a year in fact. My last posts were so encouraging and uplifting as we muddled our way through the beginning of the pandemic. I kept my positive attitude all through the summer and as school started to get pushed back and worries if school would ever start, I began to panic. Okay so panic may be too harsh of a word-I began to worry, or question the way things were going.
I’m a teacher. I teach fourth grade and I’ve been teaching in person in a classroom since September. Masks on and social distancing in place. It’s been amazing. The growths and gains from students are present just like any other year. Are there struggles? Absolutely. New ones that we’ve never dealt with before. Like how do we sit on bleachers during a pandemic? How do we social distance during lunch? How do we spread out when we line up in the hall? It’s all so new and so frightening at first, but now, it’s just second nature.
But I’m okay with it going back to normal next year. Safely that is.
Our family has also had some big changes. Being a foster/adopt parent has always called for thicker skin and more patience than a kindergarten school teacher. But our family treaded some new waters this past fall that really taught us a lot about life.
Our son ran away…three times…in two weeks. The first time he went 10 miles away…on a bike. The next two times he just ran out the door and went a few blocks away. Every time we questioned what went wrong? Where did we fail him as his parents? Was there something else we could have tried? So we sought out more help from organizations and people we had never heard before. And they answered our call. With their help and with him advocating his needs, we were able to find him somewhere that would get him the help he needed.
And it sucked. He packed a bag and moved into residential care. My heart wasn’t sure how to feel: happiness that he was finally getting the help he needed or heart break because he wasn’t at my house anymore. And then there was the guilt. The guilt that things improved dramatically when he left. Our daughter blossomed and came out of her shell. The stress and worry that weighed on our shoulders disappeared.
Sigh.
There’s so much to unpack so I’ll share that for another time. As an adoptive mom, I feel that I can’t be real and describe what’s really going on for fear of judgement. When you become a foster/adopt parent, you tend to lose some friends. I knew that. I knew that friends and family members may not always be the most supportive. My family has been more than supportive, thank God. But dear friends, when you have to make tough decisions for your child long after adoption is over, your friends and family may still judge you. People in your community, the school, the workers involved, everyone seems to have an opinion on how to parent your child.
And it sucks. (My mom actually hated that word, she would make me change it to vacuums.) So it really vacuums when your close friends make accusations and judge how you parent. And this goes for all parenting, not just those adopted.
So where am I going with this? Hold each other up dear friends. Stand together whether it be your opinion on in-person or virtual schooling, your opinion on politics, your opinion on love, your opinion period. Just stand together and love the different opinions. We are humans that have to make human decisions daily. And they are hard and really, really vacuum.
If you need me, I’ll be working on loving myself more over here.
Peace. Love. And cupcakes.
Jessie
true life hot mess mom 