So you're now a foster parent...

I'm not going to lie, the idea of being a foster mom was a little overwhelming, but I thought it would be manageable.  The reality of actually becoming a foster mom was much more intense.  I had gone from a single woman that ate cereal for dinner four nights a week to a single parent taking care of two children, one of which was a very intelligent teenage girl incredibly unhappy about being in my house.

I was very fortunate in a lot of ways.  The girls were in another foster home prior to coming to me, so I had time to get to meet them a few times before they came to stay with me.  I had a month to prepare for them to live with me, not just a few hours.  I did not have to deal with immediate aftermath of them being removed from their home and being told they were being placed in foster care.  But it was still so, so hard.

I was really prepared for the girls to be depressed or angry or whatever other down emotions you might imagine.  I was not prepared for how anxious I would be during the initial transition.  For the first two weeks, I wasn't sure if I was going to be capable of following through on my agreement to take them.  It was literally a minute-by-minute survival situation.  I was throwing up regularly from the anxiety, and would spend my time in the shower bawling.  And then a couple weeks into it, things started to feel a little more normal.

The first five or six days they were with me was before school started.  I took some time off work to spend with them, and we mostly sat around watching tv in awkward silence.  We eventually started doing some things like going to a local playground to get outside and have some space apart from each other.  That was helpful.  I had great friends that were a lifeline for me - reaching out to offer prayer, comfort, visits, and meals sometimes.  It helped to not feel so isolated.

Then school started, and we got into a little bit of a routine.  And we had some things to talk about aside from how they were removed from their family and wanted to go back home.  And things started feeling like maybe they'd be manageable after all.

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