It’s taken 11 years but it’s happened: Mothers Day is finally being celebrating in our family – there’s even presents that we haven’t organised buying ourselves!!
Like so many fostered and adopted children, mother’s and father’s days have been difficult for my boys since they came to live with us in 2008.
Initially it was the complexity of having another mother out there, someone who had been unable to care for them as they needed. What was involved in understanding that part of their story left little room for celebration. For us as foster-adopt parents, it was about respecting their birth mum’s existence and our children’s right to chose whether or not to have an ongoing relationship with her. Consequently we arranged gifts for her and tried to make that the focus of the day. This led to a mother’s day experience that was very testing. I grew to dread the day that schools would make mother’s day cards, knowing that the evening that followed would be challenging, to say the least.
When our boys chose to stop having contact with birth family, a period followed of many years of resistance to accepting us as their new parents. They were understandably reluctant to allow us to parent them when being parented had previously caused them so much pain. People tell my children they are lucky to have us as their mums. But there’s nothing ‘lucky’ about not being able to live with your birth family.
Mother’s Days at this time were emotional for me. My experience of parenting was often that of being continually rejected. Whilst it was lovely to see my friends post pictures online of the ways their children had shown appreciation that day, I couldn’t help but feel jealous. It wasn’t about feeling unappreciated though, it was about wondering if my children would ever recognise our relationship as being something worth celebrating. Would they ever see me in the loving way I saw them?
Then we entered the years of testing. A time when the underlying question was ‘will you love me no matter what?’. Consciously or unconsciously, mothers day celebrations had to be sabotaged. Either they had to see how we would respond or they felt they didn’t deserve the love we offered them anyway. This was a challenging time. It’s hard to consistently behave in a loving manner towards someone who shows you a lack of love in return. This is no different when that ‘someone’ is your fostered or adopted child.
This is the time that there was a great chasm between my head, my heart and my body. Logically I knew that my boys had to test me, that they had every right to never love me in return and that whilst I had chosen to foster, they had never chosen to be fostered. My heart felt otherwise. I longed for them to understand that I did love them, no matter what. I desperately wanted them to see that whilst I had not given birth to them (and continued to honour the woman who had), I could still be a mum to them if they wanted me to be. I was invested far more than a ‘carer’ would be and equipped to meet their needs if they would only allow me to do so. My body often told me that I was exhausted and their ‘testing’ was taking a toll.
I never knew if a day like today would happen in our family. In many ways I had come to accept that the very notion of celebrating parents might be something that would always be too hard. Could it be that we have now entered the stage of being a relatively functioning family? Maybe.
What I do know is that the boys we bought into our home over a decade ago are very different to the young men who live with us now. And the mother I was back then has equally changed and grown. We say in therapy ‘the only way out is through’. Well, I’d go through it all over again now I know what the results can be.
I wonder if any of my story relates to yours? Why not let me know below…..
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