I don’t want to drive to frickin’ Modesto. I don’t want to spend 2 1/2 frickin’ hours in the car driving and I don’t want to do this. But, I committed so I’m going because I don’t like to give up. A friend called to check in with me as I was driving and I think I dropped the F-bomb about 40 times in the first two minutes of our conversation. It was going to be a long night. My two goals for the night 1) don’t piss anyone off by dropping the F-bomb out of anger and 2) stay the entire class. Seriously, those were my two goals.
The session is a panel of two moms who adopted with their husbands. One adopted 4 siblings and the other 1. They spoke for about two hours and talked about their experiences, the paperwork, the books they had to read and the classes they had to take. One of my goals was not to swear so I kept saying to myself (fortunately just to myself) “This is bullsht%^$! Why do I have to fill out the same paperwork that I’ve filled out for about 6 other agencies? Why do I have to get 5 more references when I’ve already had friends give me about 20 references for other agencies? Why do I have to reread the same books I’ve already read? And why the f@#$@#ck am I here? I shouldn’t be here.”
(One of the ridiculous things about working with multiple agencies…private or foster…is that none of the agencies will or want to talk to each other. So, you end up doing the same thing over and over again. Agency 2 can’t/won’t take a reference from Agency 1 because it’s not on their letter head. Agency 1 can’t/won’t send (with your permission) all the financial paperwork to Agency 2. Training at Agency 1 doesn’t count for training at Agency 2 – although it very well could be the same. I have a homestudy approved in CA for the next year but the foster agency won’t accept it so have I to do it again which means more money and more time.)
Needless to say, I didn’t get as much out of the session that I should have. But, one of the moms was focusing so much on the negative parts of foster to adopt that it fed into my pessimism for the night.
I cried most of the 1 1/2 hour drive home (much shorter of a commute at 9pm when few are on the road). I knew that I wasn’t ready to move forward with foster to adopt and knew that I had to get back to me before I could move forward. So here I am. Trying to get back to me and not sure what the next step will be.
(This blog post was written in April right after my third failed adoption. I was home less than 24 hours when I went to the above meeting and wasn’t in the right mindset to jump into the next thing. It’s about two months later and things are much better 🙂 )
Journey 2 Childhood 
Leave a Reply