Endometriosis

A little over 6 months ago, my partner suggested that I make a doctor's appointment after a motorcycle ride where I spent close to 24 hours curled up in a ball, unable to move much. Following that motorcycle ride, every few days or weeks, I would be reduce to a blubbering, angry mess because I was in such excruciating pain.  I had been experiencing increasingly painful menstrual cycles for the past several years, and figured it was the way things went.

I went to my doctor and she said that I was likely dealing with endometriosis or a thyroid issue, right away. I had no idea what endometriosis was, remembered hearing my mom discussing thyroids when I was a younger, and nodded my head at the doctor like I understood exactly what she was saying to me. I googled everything the moment I left her office. I was sent for blood work and an ultrasound (which turned out to be a transvaginal ultrasound at the technicians request). 

My blood work came back perfect (the words my GP used), but my ultrasounds came back with a cyst on one of my ovaries. My doctor explained that cysts are 'normal' to develop on ovaries, but that I should be sent for more blood work to rule out cancer (which came back negative), and a follow-up ultrasound in a few months to see if the cyst went away on its own. I asked if the pain and its location could be explained by the cyst and its location, and then was referred to a gynecologist because the two could be, but didn't seem to be related.

I went through much the same process with the gynecologist as I did with my GP, but he told me that there was also a polyp on my left ovary and not just the cyst. He seemed unconcerned and assured me not to worry. The gyne gave me 3 options/solutions as he also believed that I was dealing with endometriosis: an IUD that would slow-release progesterone; Visanne which is a newer drug specifically developed for endometriosis (the only one available); or surgery (laparoscopy and hysteroscopy). He said that he wanted to see me in a month after another round of ultrasounds, but that I should think about how I wanted to move forward.

Over the next few weeks, I did a vigorous amount of research. Some of which took me down a dark rabbit hole, but most of which told me one thing: the pelvic and menstrual pain that I was experiencing was not normal. It is not normal to be doubled over in pain, and debilitating menstrual cramps aren't anything to try and push through. I don't know what I've been thinking for these past few years, but having someone tell me that the pain I was feeling was not okay and had a cause beyond my menstrual cycle was like a weight lifted. I don't know how many years I was taking more than the recommended dosage of Advil and/or Motrin because I thought I simply had painful menstrual cycles, and that it was normal to have more pain as I got older, and without ever being pregnant.

Now, I know better. They estimate that about 10% of women suffer from endometriosis and that it typically takes about 10 years to seek help for it because the symptoms are normalized - exactly what I did. 

I opted for surgery because it is the only way to conclusively diagnose or rule out endometriosis, and I've had not great experiences with progesterone hormones. I'm about 5 weeks post-suregry now, and that change in my life has been dramatic. 

I'm hoping that by writing this, anyone who may also have some sort of chronic pelvic pain, has to take more over the counter meds just to make it through your menstrual cycle, or is staying home "sick" when you're really in a tonne of pain that you not write it off as normal, and go see your doctor and if they say "some women experience more pain than others," push your doctor to figure it out with you. 

In the recovery room, shortly after waking up from anesthesia.

Fostering 301

Instalment 3 - Letting Go (aka Grieving)

It’s been over a month since our first foster kiddo left our care. By all accounts this part of fostering has to be the most convoluted and complex. Not only are there little to no supports from the system for foster parents when a child leaves your home, but in our experience, there is a scramble to know where the child will be going exactly. For us, we had set a clear time-limit and were working with the child and the Ministry towards a specific goal.

Our time-limit was pushed to our maximum from even before the child entered our home, then was extended (we agreed), and then we were asked to have it extend again (we had to say no). We agreed to everything we put ourselves through, yes, but I’m not sure that we truly understood what we were agreeing to, nor did we entirely understand how that would effect us individually and as a couple. 

Personally, I believe that the Ministry failed us as new foster parents, and did little to help us understand the system and the barriers that we all faced. Additionally, the Ministry attempted on multiple occasions to lengthen our contract by nearly double, and it was one of the hardest things to have to repeatedly say no, all the while having no answers for the child for what came next for them - couldn’t we just extend so that the child had some semblance of stability? No - our bodies and minds were overextended, and our emotional reservoirs drained. 

We had done a lot of work with the child to explain what we were able to provide and why to have them understand why decisions were being made. This had us divulge a lot of really personal information about our lives that perhaps typically foster kiddos aren’t privy to. We felt that this child was old enough to understand, and had a right to know why we were making decisions that affected their life. But, with all this work it wasn’t until 3 days prior to the end of our contract (which is the day the kid moves) that anyone was able to say what was happening and where the kid was moving. I can’t express how incredibly unfair this was for the child, and how much unnecessary stress it added to our lives.

To be fair, MCFD is an imperfect system. Here in Northern BC, they constantly operate with inadequate staffing, deal with high turnover rates, and a perpetual shortage of foster homes. All while attempting to work in the best interests of children. When you’re talking removal from parent(s) care, you’re talking about a pretty crappy situation off the hop. Though, as a foster parent, that isn’t your problem. It’s something to be aware of, but the Ministry’s failings aren’t the foster parents - they have to be understood in order to have realistic expectations of what is actually happening, but they should not compromise anyone’s understanding of what the Ministry’s job actually is and that they are duty-bound to fulfill it, at a minimum. This shouldn’t be an ideal or something to be laissez-faire about.

It came as a surprise how quickly things have gotten back to our version of normal within the first week or so of not having a child in our home. At the same time though, it seems to me that each of us haven’t completed the grieving process. To me it feels like some combination of break-up and death, or a very important person (friend/family) moving far away - it’s a numbness, a freedom, and a sadness.  Grieving is a process and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Recently, I had a conversation with an couple that had been interested in fostering a few years back. They were interested because of infertility problems and knew that they wanted kids in their lives. They opted not to because of some wisdom (I use that word lightly here) that their social worker shared with them. It seems that they had much more direct and upfront conversations about letting go that we were privy to. This couple was told that you couldn’t let yourself fall-in love with a child - that you had to guard yourself and keep the child at a distance so that when the time came for the child to leave that this could be done without having done damage to yourself. 

I don’t agree that you don’t fall in-love with the kid because they will understand, more than they already do, that they are different and that you’re holding back. That child’s life is already in turmoil, and maybe has been for their entire life. They deserve to know what unconditional love is and feels like. Not only do they deserve it, but they have to experience it in order to be able to form healthy relationships in the future. 

Yes, loving a kid this way will be harder for you to let go, but their experiences with you will be that much richer and will have a greater impact. I know this is true, because when we were finally able to tell this kid where they were going after living with us, they took a moment to register the information and the first thing they said was, “I hope all your dreams come true.” That kid, if we hadn’t loved them completely, wouldn’t have cared what was going to happen to us in the moment they were told what was happening to them, if we hadn’t open our hearts without barriers. I won’t let anyone tell me that this isn’t true.

Over the past month, my partner and I have had a number of conversations where we figured out, together and individually, how we grieve and then move forward. I don’t think there’s one way to do it, or a list of ways that you can do it, but for us this is what we did. The first weekend after the child left, we went on a mini-vacation away from cell-phones and the internet where we could simply be together;  we decompressed and slept a lot. In the following week, to encourage conversation about what we just experienced, we came up with mental lists that we shared with each other - some of these were thoughtful lists, and some of were spontaneous. These lists included things that we missed, were thankful for, that we learned, that we hated, what was the most stressful, what we appreciated about the other in these parenting roles, and what we were thankful for. In the first child free weeks, we actively took time to reengage with things that we enjoyed individually and together that had fallen on the way-side. I think next time, we’ll grieve with a little more grace than we did here, but I’m proud of how well we did.

During this entire experience, we constantly talked about if we would like to continue fostering or not, what our time-limit is, and how frequently we are able to have a child in our home. These conversations have continued to this date, and I anticipate that they will continue until we decide to not be foster parents anymore. I can’t stress enough how open communication is the most important thing to surviving and thriving through being a foster parent, while also understanding that talking might not be in the cards for your partner at the moment, or that your partner just needs you to listen without offering suggestions. Knowing yourself and your partner’s strengths and quarks is key to being able to support each other throughout having a kid in your house and especially when you’re getting ready to say goodbye.

We’ll that’s the end of this. I hope that I provided some useful information to anyone considering being a foster parent, or to anyone simply interested in what it’s like. Please, understand that all of these blog posts are based on personal experience, and may not be duplicated if you or someone you know fosters, and may not even be the same for me if/when there’s another kid stomping around my house.

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me - I am more than happy to answer what I can and speak of my experience.

Fostering 202

Living with a foster kiddo Part 2 

As a foster parent, you are not the legal guardian of a child, you are a caregiver. The ministry’s guardianship worker (the child’s social worker) is the legal guardian of a foster kid. So, every school permission slip, after school organized activity, bank account they want to open, summer camp they want to attend, the part-time job they want to get, that baby-sitter you want to send them to for a night out for yourself, or that over-night trip you want to take to the city, all of that needs the ministry’s signature on it. And you really want to get everything the ministry says to you about what you can and can not do to be in writing. If it wasn’t written, it wasn’t said – words to live by.

You also track anytime you drive anywhere for or with the child. Say you go to the grocery store and they come along, write down that trip – you’re teaching life skills. What if you drive them to school because it’s raining, write that down too. Want to go out for dinner as a family? Don’t forget to reset your trip counter on your odometer, or remember to google the distance later, and certainly don’t forget to write that down either. In fact, you should just go ahead and start documenting everything you do and where because that’s what you’re expected and required to do. Try it for a week. I dare you. It isn’t as easy as it sounds.

As you might be able to tell the day-to-day documentation of life isn’t my favourite activity, but I do understand its purpose. Luckily, my partner has taken on most of the daily documentation because I was going a little crazy with it. Basically, as the primary care-giver of a foster child, you are required to  keep a daily log of the child (what they did, where they went, who they were with, and any minor or major injuries). It sounds invasive about the child’s life, and it is, but it serves a few purposes: at the age of 21 the child can access their foster record, where they will be able to see these daily logs. It’s like a diary of their lives, kept by a third-party, which is kind of cool; it tells the Ministry what the child has been up to; it potentially protects the foster parents from abuse allegations down the road. We’ve been told more than once that it is not a matter of if we’ll be accused of abuse, but when – memories can be fickle and parents can be angry. It’s really in everyone’s best interest to keep the log. I’m just grateful that my partner has taken that responsibility on for us, because I couldn’t.

Other paperwork includes a monthly report where you list any spiritual, mental, physical, cultural concerns you might have, visits and phone calls with bio family, activities participated in, school attending including teacher(s), milestones achieved or celebrated, etc. The report is about 8 pages (including room to write) and I have two different versions at the moment. To be honest, I’m not sure which is the most recent, but no one has mentioned anything about that. So, I won’t worry about it.

Besides the paperwork, you’re required to get the kid to family visits (which could be supervised and could not) at court ordered times, be available to answer your phone as specific times for family phone calls (don’t forget to write these down, the ministry wants to know when they happened and if anything negatively impact the child happened during them). And then, like any other kid you’re responsible to get them to and from any activities they partake in (youth club, religious events, cultural events, doctor’s appointment, counselling, school, etc.).

You’re also responsible for creating/maintaining a Life Book, which really is a scrapbook of the child(ren)’s time with you. The Ministry says that they provide this for you, but to date they haven’t for us. What we’ve decided to do is create one using a Drug Store’s online photo centre. It’s been recommended that the child do not receive the original life book, but a photocopy because if they end up back in their parent’s care, it could be seen as a threatening thing to the parents, or the kid could loose it. So, the original goes into their Ministry file, which they can access at 21.

That’s really it for the legalities and defined responsibilities of a foster parent. I’m struggling with being able to write how to get to know a kid and have them live in your house in a way that you’ll be comfortable with because every kid is different. You could have a kid that seems easy - they listen, are respectful, follow the rules, but are a bit messy. This kid likely has trouble expressing their emotions, because they should be at least a little angry that their life is what it is. If they aren’t showing you that in any way, that’s concerning. You could have a kid that’s a bit of a challenge - they are constantly pushing your boundaries, or are biting or hitting. Maybe they refuse to go to school, or they sneak out at night and refuse to talk to you about anything. Here at least the kid is expressing themselves, but you’ll likely have a lot of work ahead of you about constructive and healthy ways to express anger. You could have a kid that drinks or uses drugs, they could lite fires, break things, and steal. You could haver a kid that is nonverbal, or that cries a lot. You could have a kid that you see a lot of yourself in, or that you don’t have anything in common with. Those examples don’t even bring into consideration any learning disability, physical challenges or serious mental health concerns. Every kids is different, every kid’s experiences are different and everyone of them or going to express themselves slightly different. 

It can be hard to get to know kids, and it is especially hard to get to know a kid that you know has been through a lot. The first month of having a child in your home is often called the honeymoon period. You can assume that whatever child you have is coming into your care from some sort of abuse or neglect and that it was serious enough to have the ministry involved. I’m sure everyone reading this can think of at least one child where you knew the circumstances of their life and thought why isn’t anyone doing anything. It’s because things often have to be really, really bad to remove a child. With that in mind, if you’re dealing with older kids, they’ve likely learned survival techniques that make them acutely aware of facial expressions and bodily gestures. They probably know how your feeling before you do. Kids will spend this first month being agreeable and following the rules - what they are doing is studying you and learning who you are. They are trying to figure out if you are really a safe adult, and also what they are allowed to do in your home. 

My partner and I found it helpful to sit down within the first few days with the child for a conversation. We talked about our work schedules and how this would effect the kiddo living here, as well as some basic house rules. We asked things that they were interested in doing with us, and things they liked doing. We had decided earlier that we wanted our home to be the safe place to go, so in this conversation we explained that at any time while out with friends, that if they felt uncomfortable or unsafe that they were all to come to our house. This meant that we have had at minimum 3 teenagers at our house for dinner, and I believe the most we ever had was 6. Lovingly and jokingly, we’ve started to call them our group of hooligans, and have told a few of these youth that if they are ever in any trouble they can always come here and we’ll help them figure it out. Not every foster home is going to do this, but we felt it was important. It does add an extra layer of stress because of all those growing mouths to feed, but it also takes away some stress from not knowing exactly where your hooligan is and what they are up to. It’s also a great way to get to know your foster kiddo, because you meet their friends and can hear their conversations, because lets be honest teenagers aren’t great at whispering and for whatever reason think adults are dumb.

The best advice I can give is to be yourself. Include the child in activities that you like, and participate in activities that they like and actually listen to them. For example, in the first hours of meeting this teenager I was told that they wanted a bike. I said that we’d likely be unable to purchase a bike, to which they quickly said, no I want to go to the dump and get parts and build a bike. So, for about 7 weeks, our backyard was a bike graveyard. Every couple of days (at least at first) we were going to our local dump and sifting through thrown away bikes and salvaging for parts. And now, this kid has built a bike, a bike that was built with their own two hands and is something to be proud of. On top of that, we found a skill in him that likely wouldn’t have been exposed until much later in life - this kid knows how to take things apart and put them back together again, on instinct. For a kid who struggles so much in school and has been told they are likely not going to university (how dare those adults, by the way) there is now a transferable skill that can be honed and taught - best of all it’s an innate that they enjoy. We wouldn’t have found this out if we weren’t being honest and open - so please give it a go.

The last section that I had planned to write about is letting go of a kid. In all honesty, this is going to be an extremely hard one for me to write. I know that emotionally I’m not in the best of spots and it’s is by and large because I don’t know exactly how to grieve and move forward. Writing will be therapeutic, but it will take a while to get the words written in a way that I’m comfortable sharing with all of you.

Fostering 201

Living with a foster kiddo

I’m breaking this section into two posts, because it is incredibly long.

Part 1

I imagine that kids in general turn households into tiny (or large) storms. They are so entertaining, self-involved, impressionable, malleable, and naive that I can’t see how a household isn’t completely transformed by their presence. Kids take work, lots of focused, thoughtful work and scheduling, endless scheduling. 

I want to put foster kids and non-foster kids on the same page for a second: all kids need love and attention. They all need activities, hobbies, friends, and an environment where learning and sharing is encouraged. Kids take work; all kids take a lot of work. Foster kids have the added complication of not living with their biological families and having probable trauma histories, that they may or may not want to share with you. Kids take work; foster kids take extra work, and the ministry makes you fill out paperwork about all that work, constantly.

So, how does a child live in your home when none of you have ever met before. We went from one day having no children to the next having a teenager living in our house. It was an adjustment for everyone. One day at work I got a phone call from our Resource Worker asking if we could take a child. Sometimes this phone call will come in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day. The child could be removed from their parent’s home for the first time ever and come into your home, they could have been removed previously and this is their second or third time going into foster care, or they could be moving from one foster home to another.

When a child comes into your care you are supposed to be given Ref Docs (reference documents) that tell you the basics about them - age, number of siblings, type of protection order they’ve been removed under, their interests, school, medical or psychological diagnoses, family members they are able to have contact with and how. I personally wouldn’t expect these documents at all, nor would I expect them to be up to date.

There are two types of care orders: one is a temporary care order (TCO), where the child is in foster care for a period of time until the parent’s are deemed able to care for the child; a continuing care order (CCO) means that the child will never be returning to their parent’s care and is likely on the adoption track. In our experience TCOs are issued by the courts for 6 months, and are renewed as needed. The child’s social worker and the parents attend these court dates, and depending on the age of the child they receive a copy of all paperwork associated with these court dates, served to them by their social worker.

This whole ordeal, as you might imagine, quite trying for the child. Often when they are first removed, they are told that the order is in place for a given amount of time, and then it is extended a number of times. So, in their heads, they very well could believe that they are gone from their parents for only 2 weeks, and it is a constant period of loss, grieving, and confusion when they do not go back into their parent’s home. All kids love their parent’s. They could grow up to be adults and choose to remove them from their lives, or limit contact, but as tiny little humans generally no matter what they’ve experienced, they love their parents and being in foster care doesn’t necessarily make a tonne of sense. In that vain, it’s important that any opinions or judgements that you may have or develop about the parent’s remain in your head, or in very private conversations with your partner. The child(ren) have enough going on, and do not need to hear you trash talk or make tiny slights against their family - ever.

If the child(ren) are coming into your house from a previous foster home, there can be a transition plan put into place where you meet the child a number of times prior to them coming to live with you. This includes going to where they are and saying hello - it could be 5 mins or 1 hour, depending on the child. It also means them coming to your home to see their room, and meeting your family and pets. Here it is up to you to make the child feel welcome and to have honest conversations with the previous foster family about what rules the child had been following and struggling with. The goal is to have a continuity of care in a period of change. Some foster families are open to this and others are not, but it’s an important aspect to push for. At the same time, it’s helpful to remember that everybody’s emotions are running high: the previous foster family has likely built some sort of bond with the child and would like to be able to provide more for them, but for whatever reason are unable to (read feeling of love, guilt, shame and inadequacy here); the new foster family could be eager to get all the information they need, but know that they’ll never get all they needs (read feelings of uncertainty, excitement, anxiety, and concern here); the child often does not have much warning that they will be moving and may not fully understand why they must move again (read feelings of fear, angst, that they’ve done something wrong, and lack of place or home here). The child’s social worker should be involved in this process, but in our experience they are not.

On the note of social workers, the Ministry has a mandate to provide continuity of care for all children in the system. For whatever reason, at least in this region in BC, this is not the case. In the short time we’ve had a foster kid in our care, there have been three separate social worker for the child and four separate social workers for us. On any given day, we are talking to a minimum of two different social workers who likely don’t have the best communication. It’s quite frustrating, but luckily, the past month we’ve been lucky enough to be working with three very good social workers. My partner and I keep joking that it was good that we went in with the bar being set so very low, because now when someone does their job we’re amazed, and when someone does it well we’re forever grateful - not a very funny joke, but it keeps us going.

Part 2 of living with a foster kiddo to come soon.

Fostering 101

Fostering 101

It is my intention here to write about the fostering experience from a new foster parent’s perspective, from someone who does not have biological kids. My hope is to provide what I see as the three stages of the process from my limited experience: becoming a foster parent and being ready to accept a child (or children) into your home; having a child in your home; and letting that child go either to a different foster home, or be returned to the biological parent(s). I hope to be able to write this out in three separate blog posts, but it will take some time to get them all written and posted.

Please, know that for confidentiality issues any reference to a child here I have altered information and events. The sentiment behind the words is really what is important, anyhow.

Installment 1: Becoming a foster parent

Nation wide there is a shortage of foster parents, so they (yes, the ubiquitous “they”...that’ll come up often through these posts) are pretty desperate for new foster parents to come on board. You don’t have to be married or be in a heterosexual couple, you really just have to be over the age of 18 and clear a criminal records check. If you happen to be interested in becoming a foster parent, the best thing to do is go to an MCFD office and let them know that you’re looking for information about fostering. You’ll likely get an information package with a preliminary application (this is just the beginning of the paperwork required to foster). If (and when) you bring that back, they’ll get you in touch with the Resource Worker, who is the social worker for foster parents, and then you’ll get a longer application along with two criminal record checks (aka crim checks). Every adult living in the home needs to have a cleared criminal records check.

When the crim checks come back clear you (and your partner) are interviewed (your children too, if you have them). This is called a Home Study, which can take up to or longer that 40 hours to complete. They ask you all kinds of questions about your childhood, alcohol and drug use history, school and work history, sex life, relationships and connections in your community, hobbies, habits, interests, mental health and medical history, and other intimate questions. It’s invasive, it can be uncomfortable, but if you go in knowing that its intent is to ensure the safety of children, it’s much easier to swallow having a government agent sit on your couch, sipping tea you’ve given them, while jotting down words you’ve said about your sex life. Try to have fun with it, but also remember that your words are being documented. The ease of this process really depends on your resource worker and if you click with them or not. 

During the home study, your house is also inspected. You need a fire extinguisher (recently inspected) first aid kit, working and recently tested fire alarms, a locked medicine box that stores prescription and over the counter medication, and a place to lock up dangerous chemicals and cleaners. You also need proof of house insurance (whether renting or owning), your auto insurance needs to have a minimum of $3 million liability insurance (with a recommendation of $10M), and a fire plan for your home. Get used to this part of the home study as the resource worker comes into your home every 90 days to make sure things are up to snuff.

You also need a doctor to sign off on you being medical fit enough to care for a child. In BC they have a terrible form that the doctors hate to fill out – you actually have to have your head circumference measured, which has to be a legacy of some terribly racist policy or research, I’m sure. Moving forward though, there is also a Pre Service Orientation course that you attend. It is an 18 hour course that each foster parent must attend, preferably prior to having a child in your home. It is actually a very good course. I’m sure the instructor has something to do with it, but it’s packed with great information about trauma, childhood development, relevant legislation, responsibilities of the ministry, relationships with biological families, and other care-giving related information. We took this course after a child had been placed in our home, and it was extremely helpful after being able to come up with a list of questions to ask and areas where we could call bullshit on for what fostering is presented as and what we had experienced.

On the long foster parent application you tell them what kind of commitment your signing up for: respite or relief, short-term (less than one year); long-term (more than one year); and/or emergency. I can’t stress enough that you really think about this question long and hard, and have some thoughtful discussions with whoever also lives in your house. As I mentioned before, they are short foster homes and you will be pushed to have your home open for longer that you may have originally intended. It is important that you understand what your limitations are and be firm with those boundaries from the beginning. It is one of the most difficult things I can describe to have to say no to child in need, and it is that much worse when you’ve grown to love them. If you set firm boundaries with the Ministry, you’ll less likely be pushed into a place you didn’t want to be, and being pushed into that place will show in your ability to care for the child(ren), it will show up in your relationship with your partner, at work, or some combination of the three. Trust me, you don’t want to be pushed into that corner. Put some though into those little check boxes on your application and then stick to that decision.

The long application also asks you what age range you’re interested in. Children can come into foster care at birth, and they age out at 19. It’s your pick how old or young you want to welcome into your home. You also pick gender – I’ve met some foster parents that only have boys in their home, some only have girls, others have no preference. You also are asked what physical, mental, and developmental challenges you’re willing to bring into your home. This includes FASD, ADHD, aggression, depression, mobility challenges, bed wetting, etc. Additionally, you choose how many kids you're able to have in your home, I believe the maximum is 7, but you have to have extra training to be that type of foster home.

It was about eight months from the time that we put in the long application to the time we had a kid in our home, and we did not do the steps above in the preferred order. Because of the shortage of foster parents, there are some paperwork loopholes that the Ministry uses to place kids in homes for folks who haven’t completed all the above steps. Those loopholes were used for us.

I introduced this portion of the post as saying I’d explain about being ready to expect a child into your home. There are all of the above items, as well as the material items like a bed, dresser, side table, linens, towels, etc. that I would certainly recommend you have, but I don’t think any number of words can appropriately prepare any person for the experience for caring for another person’s child. If you’ve gone through everything I’ve listed and have a slight fear of what comes next, then I think you should give it a try. Though I do encourage anyone going through this to always try to remember that being a foster parent is about giving the biological parents the time and the space they need to get their lives sorted out so that they can adequately care and love their child(ren). It’s a hard thing to love a child and know that they will eventually leave you and that you could very well never hear nor see them again. But, that’s a selfish need that we have as humans. Being a foster parent, like I imagine any bio-parent know, isn’t about you; it’s about the child and nothing else really matters.

The next instalment will talk about what it’s like to have a child in your house.

Systems and Difficult Feelings

Today, I am angry and sad.

I had a terribly difficult shift the other night, and I just can't shake the sense of helplessness.

As many of you know, I work part-time at a Transition House (a shelter for women and their children fleeing abuse) and also work part-time on a provincial intitiative looking to identify and fill-in gaps in the mental health system for children and youth aged 0-24. I often feel good about this work because I can see the good that is done. Even though I am exposed to trauma in it's multiple forms in other people's lives every week, I see help being provided and I get to be part of it.

Despite all the good and having a sense of purpose, what consistently gets me down and makes me angry is that it never seems to be enough - I constantly see the failings of society and its systems and I have folks before me that are suffering because of those failings. They aren't just a faceless number in some horribly mean news article arguing that social assistance is a waste of money, or that a victim of abuse wasn't trustworthy...they're real people sitting right in front of me.

I've spent a good deal of my life advocating for system change, and I spent most of my educational career learning about the system hoping to pin point tangible spaces where change was possible.  I dedicated energy and time to activist circles attacking these spaces and working towards a better world.

And then the G20 came to Toronto in 2010 and I was disallusioned with ideas of change and I was probably the most angry with the system that I had ever been. The community I was living in at the time banded together and did some really beautiful things in the lead-up to the G20 meetings. I didn't expect that taking to the streets during that time would end in any significant change, but I felt empowered and a part of something bigger than myself that would have a lasting impact, even if in some marginal way. But, on the last day of those meetings, people I love (including myself) were intimidated, harassed, beaten and arrested by the the powers that be. Following which, was a lengthy process of going to court and fighting feelings of isolation, powerlessness, fear and anger. It was a time of healing, but with the wounds reopened during each court appearance.

Then, I moved to Guatemala in 2011 and felt useful again working for an NGO building a school out of recycled materials. Don't get me wrong, there was trauma for me there too: coming to terms with being part of a new form of colonialism, being asked by locals to adopt their children in the hopes that I could provide a better life for them, witnessing devastating poverty and not being able to do much about it except accept that was the reality, and being a white volunteer coordinator responsible for educating international volunteers about a culture that wasn't my own and that I really had no right telling folks to accept my words as truth. Despite all that, I could see the benefits of the project that I was part of and I didn't feel like I was ramming my body against a giant wall that never saw any damage like I had in Canada. I was part of something that was real change and the results were tangible.

Finances got the better of me, and I was forced to return to Canada in 2012 and make a wage that could pay off my student loans. I spent over a year applying for do-gooder type jobs in Ontario and was loosing my sense of self as no one seemed to want to hire me - I was living with my parents in my late 20s and more often than not I was working temp jobs with little sense of security. That period of my life is well documented in this blog if you're interested in reading through my thoughts...I'm not going to rehash them here.

Now, just over a year of reentering a profession that I feel good about receiving money for, I am finding that I am yearning for system change in my core; it's always there, but I've been focusing on working within the system for awhile. But, being a part of micro expressions of assistance, while I know has a profound affect on individuals and families, is far from adequate. I'm constantly witnessing that the systems in place aren't working the way they're advertised, that those systems and the people who work within them are constantly congratulating themselves for all the good work that they do, but the people receiving such "benefits" are scrapping by and often barely surviving.

Sometimes, I just want to shake people and see if that does any good, but I know it won't. System change is huge and scary for most folks.

So, I'm at an impasse again. I've been here before, and I've always spiralled into disillusionment. I haven't quite figured out how to stay mentally healthy and I'm hoping this time I can work it out so that don't burn out: that compassion fatigue and helplessness are kept at bay.

I know that I should celebrate the victories and good that is achieved so that I don't get lost in the bad.  But, I also know that I am allowed to have difficult feelings and for right now, I'm sad and angry and those are totally normal and healthy things to feel.

Election Fatigue

This election cycle I have become increasingly frustrated with posts encouraging people to vote. They seem to start from a point that people are too lazy, too busy, or too apathetic to care about who governs them. I especially dislike the shame posts that say that there are people dying for their right to vote and that we owe it to them to vote. There's a huge part of this conversation about voter turnout and voting rights that is consistently left out, and the shame isn't helping.
 
I want to preface what I write next with the following:

• My family has had passionate political conversations for as long as I can remember.
• I have been surrounded by supporters of each political party, and people that reject the electoral process as being fair, just or truly democratic for most of my life.
• I became actively interested in electoral politics when I was 11.
• I have put a ballot in a box in every federal election since I turned 18.
• I have never voted for a candidate that truly represented my values. 
• I have scratched my ballot on more than one occasion.

Elections are often painted in pictures of liberal vs. conservative, social good vs. social harm, one candidate's stance on a wedge issue vs. their opponent's stance. True, there are real ideological differences between parties and their candidates. There are certainly policies that will be put into effect by one party or another that will do harm or good, and in some cases drastically so. But, what goes unchallenged on all sides during every election cycle is what would really make a difference: the macro economics. It is pervasive, unquestioned, and is never an election issue. Call it neoliberalism, unfettered capitalism, economic imperialism or free market ideology, it's all the same.

People not voting isn't an expression of disinterest in the world around them, or a lack of respect for people who fought for the right to vote. Sure, sometimes it is. More often, it's a statement that even if you pick the best of the worst, you still end up voting for someone who believes that this economic system is the only way, that it's good. There are reasons that voter turnout has declined while social movements such as Idle No More and Occupy have increased. People who don't vote, in my experience, believe there is a better way and are, on a day-to-day basis, fighting for that better world. For them, voting changes nothing; not voting is an expression of non-consent for a system of governance they don't believe in. We need to respect this decision, talk about it, and stop coercing and shaming people to participate in something that feels wrong to them.

A few thoughts to leave you with:

• A ruling power that asks for consent and yet cannot give voice to the aspirations of those in whose name it rules will not survive indefinitely.
• A society based in flawed universal values has achievements that only survive one generation and often leaves succeeding generations to cope with unintended consequences of its implementation. 
• We may still fight wars on the premise of settling ideological conflicts, but at the apex of the emerging global class structure is a transnational managerial class, having its own ideology, strategy and institutions of action. It is both a class in itself and for itself. It doesn't include most of us.
• The myth of nationhood, masked by ideology, perpetuates nationalism, where specific identifiers are used to create exclusive and homogeneous conceptions of national traditions. Constructions of the nation are potent sites of control and domination within modern society. 
• We need to go beyond determining that power exits and where, and encourage thought that extends beyond short-term and immediate realities to tackle long-term dreams and goals to ensure that society develops in a way that is advantageous for all following generations.