Loss Experts!

When a child has been placed in foster care, severed from their parents and possibly placed in another adoptive home, they will have faced tremendous loss. Not necessarily the normal losses we have as we go through life, but losses that are unexpected and cause deep grief.

This basis was the framework for our third class. The job of an adoptive parent is to recognize the process of grief in a child's behavior and meet that child's needs with strengths that we as parents have. The tricky part is recognizing our strengths.  To do this we recognized losses we have experienced and realized that as we have processed through the grief cycle we become an EXPERT for that loss. "For when I am weak, then am I strong." (2 Cor 12:10)

For example, at 12 years of age I moved from California to Kansas. I left most of my friends, my family and all I had known for 12 years - and believe me, it was a great childhood! I did not want to move. I thought this city girl would enter the land of farmers. I thought I would go to school with kids in overalls. Sorry fellow Kansans; I know it's not so now, but I was very anxious about the move. The feelings and emotions I went through (crying sometimes at night) were all part of dealing with my grief. In the end I loved living there and love going back to the place where many happy memories were made. And that is why I am an EXPERT for someone who has been removed from their home, away from family, friends and all they have ever known. I can connect with them, know the emotions they are feeling; I can understand the grief they are working through.

You may be wondering, at this point: what are they getting themselves into? Of course our ideal is to receive a baby who cannot remember the traumatic things that have happened in their life. (As a side note, the training we are receiving at this point is focused on foster care.) But the fact is, we don't know the specifics of where this journey is leading us. We don't know at this point what losses our Baby O will have experienced. Still our objective: add Baby O to our family. And so we become Loss Experts.

Our homework this week is to identify areas of loss and recognize if we have turned that loss into a strength or if we need to work through so it becomes a strength.

We are starting to enjoy the classes more. We are making friends and becoming more comfortable with our instructors. These too will be resources for Josh and I as we travel this journey.