The Five Little Ducks Blog

Back and forth, back and forth.

Forever going in circles, always cycling back to the same question. The same conclusion.

Can we really keep doing this?

In early February my husband decided that he didn’t think we should care for Miss A and Miss L anymore. I was devastated, but really, I agreed.

The lying, manipulation, stealing, bullying, the hands-on-hips attitude and oppositional swagger, the threatening to run away, the meltdowns and the lack of remorse or empathy, the declarations that Miss A didn’t want to live with me anymore and she wanted to live with her grandparents/mother/father/anyone else on the planet… it was all too much. Not to mention the several comments by my eight year old (at the time) son where he was so enraged by his foster sister that he shared the desire to kill himself or the wish that he had never been born. We talked to our caseworker, and my husband and I agreed to give the placement six more months, hoping that getting support services and therapy for Miss A in place, plus trying new strategies and having more frequent respite, would make a difference to the stability and overall happiness of our family life.

One day as I was driving, I felt confused. Wonderful, happy memories congregated on one side of a scale, juxtaposed with awful scenes and horrific stress on the other. I asked myself the question: do the good times outweigh the bad?

My answer was grim. Good times don’t weigh anything.

I went into fostering with the best of intentions. I wanted to rescue Miss A and Miss L from the broken foster care system, give them a stable home, a loving family and make them whole. In doing so, my own brokenness has been revealed, and my family has been pushed to the brink time and time again. We have been surviving day to day for so long, walking on eggshells, wondering what will trigger the next meltdown, what can go wrong today? We have been doing this for five years and I know that it is not going to get easier. If true feelings of unconditional love and attachment have not emerged after this many years, I don’t think it is ever going to happen. Even when things are “stable”, I cannot be my true self. The strength to carry on, carry on has to be drawn up from deep within- and the well is dry. Even when it is relatively calm, I am biting my tongue, putting out spot fires and feeling the tension.

I feel like I hardly know my own daughter, Miss R. The only instances where I have interactions with her are when she is wailing and miserable because Miss A or Miss L have upset her and she is begging me to send them away. The rest of the time, she is busy playing with them, laughing raucously as they get into mischief. The three girls have become an entity, a co-dependent trio. At its centre, Miss R, ever the buffer between two sisters who don’t get along. I still grieve the loss of little Miss R, my sweet sunny toddler who had to grow up instantly when her family doubled in size overnight. She became so tough. Now she is so fragile. I feel remorse for Mr E who lost his happy young hippie mum- in her place a frazzled nag, only a shell of her former self. Then there is the guilt for Miss A and Miss L; I have never been able to shower them with the unconditional love, affirmation, affection and attention that they deserve. It is not their fault that they were placed in our care, that they have suffered from attachment trauma, or that I am the broken individual that I am. The “fake it till you make it” approach has been tried for so long- they need more. More than I can give them.  

I could keep going. I could keep being stubborn. Living one day to the next, living respite weekend to respite weekend, forever setting myself deadlines- let’s give this six more months, ok, let’s just get past her birthday, well, our ‘Famiversary’ is coming up, might as well meet that milestone, then Christmas, can’t change anything before Christmas… What am I hoping will have changed by each deadline? Am I waiting for their behaviour to improve? For the latest therapy or respite schedule to kick in? For my kids to stop displaying so many traits of depression and anxiety at their young age? No, I am waiting for my heart to change. I am waiting for my maternal instincts to kick in. I am waiting for the battle in my head to end. Surely respite care is just a band-aid solution, delaying the inevitable.

I have not been coping well for a long time. Tears are always simmering beneath the surface, erupting with the slightest provocation or disappointment. Chronic stress has manifested in physical symptoms: churning guts, nausea, an elevated heartrate and headaches. I am not made of steel, even marshmallows would be more resilient than I am. I keep trying to build up walls to protect myself, but my ego is so fragile, I am too easy to hurt and offend. This constant state of crisis is not sustainable.

I have been practicing “reality acceptance” for so long, making do with “it is what it is” and being “good enough” and “OK” and “taking one day at a time”… Recently a situation occurred where I thought that I had been given a sign from God to persevere, and for the first time in years I had felt hopeful about our future. To imagine a reality different from the one that we were accepting made me immensely happy. When that opportunity was taken away and therefore the “sign” disappeared… I crumbled. To quote my mother who has a saying for every situation, “hope deferred makes the heart sick”. Living without hope was all we knew, and when we allowed hope into the picture then lost it, we were worse off than before. My emotional outburst was so overwhelming and uncontainable that I knew that it was symptomatic of a deeper reality- something big in our lives must change. I lost faith in “reality acceptance”; shouldn’t this strategy apply to situations that are outside of our power to change? What if I choose to change my reality?

When asked what it is that I really want, this is my answer.

I want to be their Aunty. I want to be their respite carer. I want to be one of many within a village loving and caring for Miss A and Miss L; sharing memories and capturing beautiful moments on camera, baking, going to the beach and taking camping trips, having movie nights and pizza picnics and watching cousins bounce on the trampoline and giggle in the dark, continuing to do the things that we do well. I want time to gather up my strength so that when I am with Miss A and Miss L I can devote myself to them and be kind to them. At the end of the day, I would like to be able to hand over the responsibility to someone else who has more time and patience for them than I ever did, then I want to switch off and just be myself. I want to be present for my four biological children, to hug them and tell them how much I love them, without two beautiful girls watching and wondering why I could never look at them like that.  It isn’t their fault that I do not have what it takes to be a full-time foster carer. I want my nine year old son to not have to try to take care of me all the time, to ask “what’s wrong Mum? Why do you look so sad?” In the same conversation he says, “I understand Mum. I have a deep hole of sadness inside me too.” My mother’s instincts tell me that I need to protect my son. I want Miss R to have the space to be herself, to not grow up amidst constant chaos. She has become so moody and anxious. She and Mr E have asked me many times to send their cousins away, and it breaks my heart feeling like I have to choose between my children.

I am not so naïve to think that life with just my original four would be completely without stress or strife. I am one of four children myself and remember full well the fighting and annoying nature of siblings. What would significantly reduce, I imagine, is the manipulative and malicious nature of the fighting, the constant turbulence and blood-curling screaming, the tension and drama rollercoaster. I need to help my children heal.

If we persevere, chances are that our situation could get better for a season. For all the hardship- we *are* a family, dysfunctional as it is. Over the last five years, I have been in this place many times before; feeling like we are at breaking point, then we have a happy little holiday and for a week or two all is well, before the decline starts again and we are back at the same place as we were before.

Back, forth.

Back, forth.

Up, down.

Up, down.

Coping, not coping.

Coping, not coping.

The problem with seesaws is that they don’t go anywhere.

We have a big decision to make. I only wish that we had spent this long talking about taking the girls in as we have discussing the possibility of letting them go.

Please pray for us.