When I was younger, I had an uncle who lived near my family. We would often visit him and his kids and help around the house as needed. One time I was sitting outside their trailer house while my dad worked on replacing tile in my uncle’s bathroom. My uncle's teenage son, a cousin I guess but I didn't know him as such, told me that when he turned 18, he would leave home and never look back. He couldn't wait to get away from his family. At the time I was in fourth or fifth grade. I was shocked that this was something that a person might want. To leave their family? Sure, I had heard that teenagers were “always angry,” I am the youngest child after all, but I was still young, naïve, and thought my parents were perfect. Soon after this encounter, I would start to see the flaws in my home life, and I would realize that I too needed to leave my home and be free. Cut to 2021 and I'm now the parent of a pre-teen. Every single thing I do, I'm terrified of this child rejecting me the same way. We don't share blood. He didn't choose us. There's nothing keeping him with us. Every other person has given up on him, he’s ran away, and if we upset him too much, maybe I'll lose my chance to be his parent too. At least, that’s how I feel. This has been on my mind a lot lately as the reality of meeting my child's family has started to set in. Will I ever have a connection as deep with him as he has with his biological family? Does that even matter? My husband’s parenting is much different than mine. I feel like I'm leading with my heart, willing to be broken by this child. Maybe he's smarter for making parenting a chore. This is a job for him. For me, it’s a story. I’m expecting a proper ending. Of course, nothing I’ve learned about life or foster care has led me to believe that everything will be wrapped up with a bow. Still, I want to have the same connection with my son as every other parent has with theirs, but I have to learn to be comfortable with the fact that my connection won’t be the same and that’s okay. So instead, I’m giving myself permission to just feel things. This weekend singer/songwriter Adele released a new single called “Easy on Me.” Her last album, six years ago, came at a formative time in my life where self-love was my biggest struggle, and now, learning to love a stranger is my new goal, and it’s hard. Adele sings: “Go easy on me, baby. I was still a child. Didn't get the chance to feel the world around me I had no time to choose what I chose to do. So go easy on me” And like every Adele song, it just rips open a hole in your heart that refuses to be closed and the lyrics speak to the human existence. Personally, I’ve been lingering a lot on the choices that I’ve made and what has led me to make them. Every time, all I can come back to is this need for connection in my own life. Leaving home because I wanted to find someone who cared about me unconditionally, staying close to home in case that person was my family, coming out publicly because I thought a connection with myself would fix everything, getting married because I wanted to validate my relationship in other people’s eyes, and maybe this child is my latest attempt at figuring out how to love, be loved, or feel normal. But this chorus from Adele, “I was still a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around me. I had no time to choose what I chose to do,” well, I can relate. I don’t want to say that everything goes back to childhood, but according to Alan Downs (author of “The Violet Rage”) with queer youth, it basically always does. I feel like my past really makes me a great parent. I’m ready and open to loving this child as my own. However, the ironic part of foster care is that these children also didn’t get a chance to feel the world around them. Or maybe, they felt it more deeply than most of us ever could. So, it’s entirely understandable that my son wants to stay in touch with his biological family members. He’s looking for the same connection as I am. He just doesn’t know how to communicate it, or maybe he doesn’t even know that’s what he wants. Either way, he has no reason to equate our connection with the ones he has with his biological family members. And that’s okay, or at least that’s what I have to keep telling myself. What type of connection I need, and with who, I’m still figuring that out. I get angry at my son’s classmates who treat him differently because he’s trying to figure out his emotions, and because his family looks different from theirs. I get jealous of the parents I see with kids who act exactly how they raised them. I get upset with myself for thinking things like, “maybe next time, I’ll get a younger child” just so that I can have more time creating this bond. I get scared when teachers or the neighbors come to me with their complaints about my son’s behavior. I’m trying to stop seeing his actions as my failures. The closer I get, the more I’ll get hurt when one day he inevitably says, “you’re not my real dad” or he chooses his family over me, or he leaves our home and never calls us again. Right now, I’m trying to learn that every connection doesn’t have to be perfect. I can get different things from different people. For now, I just hope life will take it easy on me while I figure it all out. [email protected]
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Erick L. Graham WoodHello there! Archives
June 2023
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