Being Real About Foster Care and Adoption

This past weekend Mark and I were lucky enough attend a foster care and adoption film festival here in Denver where we saw two amazingly thought-provoking films. The first film, Girl, Adopted, follows a teenage girl for four years from her birth country of Ethiopia to her new home in the Deep South, while the second film,  Tough Love, tells the stories of two separate families on opposite sides of our country fighting the social services system to regain legal custody of their children.

Both films were fantastic and we highly recommend them.

Girl, Adopted, was the first adoption documentary that I have seen (and I will fully disclose that while I tend to watch a lot of depressing documentaries, I am not an avid viewer of adoption films) that depicts very well the different mindsets of adoptive parents through the passage of time. Better yet, what I should say is that their mental and emotional struggles mirror our journey almost to a tee.

This got me thinking...

During this festival I cried, I was disheartened, I was even angry, but I LOVED these films. Why? Because they were real. The stories did not skip over the difficulties of overcoming demons or waiting for life's reasons. They did not paint a perfect picture of "love conquering all" - and I appreciate that.

Life is not pretty.

Being a parent is not pretty.

Foster care and adoption are not pretty.

We are all difficult and messy but it is that exact complexity that makes the end result so amazing! It is the times where we as parents rely on nothing but each other's shoulders as we cry over a difficult night. Or when a child is placed into our care and we know that because of the abuse and neglect that she has suffered her life will never be 'normal'. It is the nights that we spend hours holding our children convincing them that they are worthy of both love and life. And it is equally those days when we get to witness our children running in the surf without a care in the world.

When we, as a foster care and adoption community, share only part of our stories we not only deprive our friends and families the chance to mourn with us, support us, and pray for us, we also do a disservice to our children's story.  When we allow our children to know that their story - OUR story - has bumps and twists and turns in it, it teaches them exactly how strong they are and how, as a family, we can overcome together.

If I could share one piece of advice with all adoptive and foster families it would be to-

Be Real!

Share your stories - your whole stories.

De-stigmatize the effects of trauma and special needs and allow prospective families to know the truth about the journey they may embark on. Create a community of truth instead of false perfectionism - and vent! When prospective adoptive or foster families only hear positive stories about this major life decision they risk the chance of entering their journey unprepared and undereducated. This can be destructive to any family dynamic. Let's send our fellow families along as fully informed as possible and unafraid to reach out if times do become difficult. Most importantly let us not deprive our children of the awesomeness that is their story. Let them draw strength from their struggles and find meaning in the love they come to know. Whether we are adoptive parents, foster parents, or biological parents, it is our role to act as a bridge between the past and future for our children. We must not shelter them from the storm that is their life, we must lift them up, support them through it, and allow them to find their own sunny path.