I didn’t write yesterday. In all honesty I’ve found the last couple of days emotionally charged, and I cried three times during the day, before then shoulder-shaking sobbing my way through an old episode of BGT with Toby, to the point that my not always overly observant or empathetic 10 year old son looked at me in a confused way and said, ‘Mum, do you need a hug?’

I think I’ve just felt a bit overwhelmed by the hard stuff of life – and loss. The news stories. Baby Loss Awareness Week. Burns Awareness Day. Lockdowns and more lockdowns. And in National Adoption Week, when I want to tell people how special adoption is, I know that the truth is there’s no adoption without loss.

I read a post this week by a struggling adopter that talked about the #Youcanadopt campaign, and how, in their opinion, that shouldn’t be the focus. In their experience they felt the more appropriate question is should you adopt?

Now I don’t know their story, but the post made me sad. Maybe there should be more preparation in the training. Maybe people go into it naively. Maybe they had an image of family that was disappointing. It definitely sounds like they need more support.

I know our journey was atypical, but I’m grateful that we went into adoption with our eyes open. There are some questions that I haven’t answered yet, because they head into the harder side of fostering and adoption. Because it’s not all cute photos of smiley toddlers with blonde curls. But in the nature of authenticity, I want to be honest, so here goes.

Q: How did your older 3 find the start of fostering/adopting.

Here’s where the story gets a bit complicated, and certainly where we learned a lot about learning to say no! In a lot of ways I’ve interlinked fostering and adoption in these posts because our journey led from one into the other. But here is where it would be different if you went only into adoption. When we were approved to foster, it was for 0-3 year olds, although at the time, Toby was only 2. Our preference was to have placements younger than he was, and it should have been the fostering departments priority too. If you go into adoption with older siblings, there are much stricter requirements over age gaps between the older and younger adopted sibling. However, at the time, the fostering service was stretched beyond capacity, and we as brand new (naive) carers were asked to take a child older than our age range, ‘as an emergency placement’ (should be 72 hours, then a suitable placement would be found). Unfortunately after the 72 hours there was no-one able to take this little one, and we had him with us for several months.

I absolutely believe everything happens for a reason, and I’m really grateful we’ve got to see that child’s journey over the years. But in all honesty, it wasn’t great for them to be an only child placed in the middle of a birth sibling group, and it wasn’t easy for our children to feel the impact of his trauma. It was definitely a tough few months. The reality of the impact of all he lived through was heartbreaking. The guilt of finding it so difficult was overwhelming. The challenge of trying to support him whilst not letting our children be pushed aside was daunting. And the fear of questioning whether we’d made the wrong choice was humiliating.

But the fascinating part of it is that when we talk to our older children about it now, they don’t remember how hard it was when he was here, but how sad they were when he left. They love the fact we still catch up from time to time.

I read an excellent chapter in Krish Kandiah’s book ‘The Greatest Secret-How Being God’s Adopted Children Changes Everything.’ The book is a brilliant read on the theme of adoption that runs right through the Bible, and how that can impact us and our lives. The chapter that resonated with me was on Suffering. Krish has an adopted daughter, and after her adoption was legalised, his family continued to be foster carers. He talks about the fact that his daughter changed from being a fostered child to being a fostering child in a fostering family.

He says ‘Watching her and my other children suffer for the sake of others in the home has sometimes made my heart ache in pain for them, and sometimes swell with pride in them…watching my children grow in kindness and empathy and generosity not just despite their sacrifices, but because of them has helped me understand something of God’s promise to work all things for good for the sake of those who love him.’

Krish goes on to talk about the fact of suffering in every adoption story, the loss for birth families, the scars on and in children, the historical trauma through generations, and the way that trauma in turn impacts the adoptive family as they feel the effects too-an effect known as secondary trauma.

The truth is, of course our children have been affected by the life we’ve chosen. And there have been days when we’ve questioned whether it was fair to ask them to do it. But when we talk to the older two girls about it, they are able to honestly articulate the hard parts of fostering and adoption, whilst at the same time being adamant they want to do it themselves. (Actually one of them is continually asking us to do it again. Now. I always tell her to ask her father…).

Obviously the significant difference for Megan, Maisie and Toby when we were approved to adopt the younger three was the fact there would be no hard goodbye this time. And for that, they were thrilled. Their request with every little one we fostered was, ‘please can we keep them?!’ To which I’d always point out that that wasn’t my decision.

Q: Did you always foster with the intention of it leading to adoption?

Short answer – no. We certainly didn’t go into fostering with a hidden agenda, and social services would have been very cross if we had! One of the reasons we were aware of the risks of asking to be considered to adopt the little three was that social services really need to retain their foster carers, and are never that keen on them adopting as that generally signifies the loss of another foster carer.

However, we had a lot of friends who were adopters, so we could see the differences between taking children as foster placements, right at the beginning of the court process, fresh from trauma, and being their safe place until a long term plan is made, and the differing challenges of adoption, in being yet another move, in being there for the long term difficulties, of being the ones to be called Mummy and Daddy, and being able to assure them of this being family forever.

So when it came to the little 3 having a permanent plan being made for them which looked like they would be split up, that was the point when we started to question if we were the ones to offer them a home together, forever.

Q: How do you cope with the grief of letting foster children move on?

The truth is that when we started tentatively asking each other the question of ‘should we ask the question?’, we were still hurting from saying goodbye to other little ones. When people found out we were keeping these ones, they would comment things like, ‘oh did you just fall in love with these ones too much?’

Actually, we fell in love with all of them. Saying goodbye was never, ever easy. And considering them potentially staying but then maybe still having to leave was a far far scarier prospect by that stage.

I think the hardest thing in our early fostering years was the isolation from people’s incorrect assumptions, ignorance, and misunderstanding. And maybe that is why I feel so strongly about sharing our story, and raising awareness. Fostering is not ‘just a job’. Saying goodbye isn’t easy even though you know that’s the plan. To truly care well, you have to genuinely care. You can’t hold back a part of your heart to shield yourself from pain, because that’s the very part of your heart a broken little person needs to start healing.

In other parts of the UK, they offer ‘foster to adopt’, also called ‘concurrent care’, or ‘early permanency’. These are situations where foster carers will also be approved as adopters, and offered a placement which is highly likely to become an adoptive placement. The benefits of this are not primarily in adopters being able to have a baby placement, but in the risk of uncertainty being moved from the child to the adult. The adults have to be aware that, like us during our adoption assessment, they may have to say goodbye to this child. However the huge benefits of the child potentially being able to stay with minimum disruption and moves and further trauma far outweighs the risk. It is one of the things that really bothers me that this system isn’t offered in Wales, because I can see firsthand with Micah the huge benefits to a baby to be placed from birth and never having to move again.

So in terms of the ones we had to say goodbye to, and how we handled that grief? Obviously, we knew it was the likely outcome, and for most of them, seeing them transition to the right home definitely helped the sense of loss. By far the hardest was the one who we questioned the wisdom of the decision, and we ultimately lost touch with.

In practical terms, it helped me towards the end of the placement to create a photo book as a record for them and for us, of the time we’d spent together. It felt like fitting a piece in their jigsaw, to have the time documented, and to be able to see how much we’d invested in them. To feel that we’d done a job well. In the transition stage we tried to fit in a little goodbye tea for the friends and family who’d supported us and who would also be saying goodbye to a little one they’d fallen in love with. And we made some family time once they had moved to just be the five of us. Whether a holiday, or a camping trip, or just a day out, we took the opportunity to do something special together, and to celebrate our three in the role they’d played too.

We have been very lucky in moving several of them on to families who have kept in touch with us, and that is something we never take for granted. And obviously in adopting our younger three, life has got busier, and our commitment is to celebrating our family now.

But there are definitely still times we allow ourselves to grieve those losses. When we moved home, and cleared out boxes of baby girls clothes, it knocked us both sideways. Looking at outfits worn by three little ones we’d moved on, all the memories and love wrapped up in those clothes. There are still moments in church when I remember fondly the baby who would rock back and forth vigorously through every song. Or the little one who would lift her arms up to me and call me Mummy.

How do I cope with the grief? I think I’ve learned to accept it and allow myself to feel it. That in feeling all those feelings, I gave them everything I could to be able to attach well wherever they went. That they needed someone who would love them as their own and cry when they left, to be able to form their own healthy attachments and relationships in the future.

And, ultimately, I keep having to remember that all of the children I’ve opened my arms to are lent to me. They are not mine to objectify and hold on to. They are gifted to me to nurture, to love, to embrace with all I have for the time I have them. From the moment Megan arrived, she was nothing like I expected. She was a whole individual being of her own, whom I get the honour of guiding, of coming alongside, of being there, until she’s ready to fly. And the truth is I don’t know how that will look for any of my children, or how easy or hard or long that road might be. But it’s the biggest privilege I have, to be given the honour of being the one who gets to kiss the bumped knees, make the birthday cakes, write the emails, wipe the tears, listen to the fears, show up when it’s hard and prove that I’ll keep showing up however hard it is. Because they are chosen and precious and beautiful and I am the lucky one.