Let Me Be Clear...

   So normally I would post a video, but today, this rain has my frazzled and frizzy. These past posts have sparked some side convos from various people about what's going on in our foster adventure, so I'd like to take a moment to clear things up.

   We've entered into this journey with an end goal: to adopt. This has always been about adopting a child as we've always had the heart to build our family through adoption. We've chosen the foster route over the independent adoption agency route for a few reasons but mainly due to cost. Some people have cheered 'yay!' for fostering some people not so keen on the idea-mainly, I assume, due to ignorance.

   We still haven't made a firm decision on what we'd like to do as foster parents. What I mean by that is by the time our 8 week training is up we'll need to decide a few things: 1- what age range of child we'd like to accept, 2- boys or girls, 3- any behavioral or medical conditions and lastly do we actually want to foster multiple children or do we want to skip that part and only accept children who's parental rights have already been terminated and they're eligible for adoption?. This last point I think is what surprises people most.... you do have the option to only care for children who are eligible for adoption. I believe they have to be in your home for at least 6 months before you can finalize that process but this is something I'll find out more in the next 8 weeks.

   The point of foster care is to place children with loving, safe families...not place families with children. These children are in the foster program because they have experienced some level of trauma and their well being has been compromised. And if I have the ability to give a child, 3 children, 20 children a loving, safe experience - to impart to them that not everyone in the world is bad, and leave them with an impression that they are worthy of love no matter how temporary they come to us- then that will be one of my greatest accomplishment to date.

   When we had our 1st home visit last Wednesday, Adrien from The UP Center, made an excellent point about fostering. He said that we should be realistic with ourselves about what we want from this experience and who we choose to foster. If we're uncomfortable in our own home with a child we thought we could handle, this is a lose lose for all involved. So that being said.... there's a lot to think about. Do we truly have the capacity to care for multiple children while we wait for our forever baby? Or do we play the waiting game on a child who's already eligible for adoption? I'd like to say the former but only time will tell in these next 8 weeks while we learn the ins and outs of what it really means to not only be a foster parent but an adoptive parent.


  As always, thanks for following and I hope this answers some questions. There's so much info we're learning and I'll do my best to relay that info for anyone who might consider going through this process.
  Be blessed.
xoxo, Kearsten.  

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