"NeverDads" - Loss, Grief, and Separation

The many moods of the little man.... They can be so frustrating and so annoying, but sometimes you just have to step back and laugh. As the holidays approach, I'm beginning to worry. In our adoption classes they said that the holidays stir up lots of feelings of loss, separation, and grief. These kids are just torn from their families and thrown into the foster care system. Their whole world is thrown into disarray. Even though they come from abusive or neglectful families, they are their families and it is what they know and have learned to deal with. The foster system is a huge unknown. I can't imagine being seven years old and being taken from my family and placed with some random family. How do kids deal with that?

For William it was worse. He was removed from his home and taken to a residential center as an emergency temporary placement. His first night there he was given the wrong medicine. They had to take him to the ER. I can't imagine being seven years old and going to the hospital without your parents, surrounded by strangers. It is no wonder the little man has anxiety attacks when we go to the doctor.

Luckily when William was released from the hospital he was placed with a foster mom named Scarlet. I thank God for that women every day. She had William in her house for a little over a year while the state drug its feet on placing him with us. He didn't get passed around, he wasn't in a crappy foster home, he was with a women who loved him and cared for him and also gave him structure and discipline. And now he is with us and the holidays bring feelings of excitement and joy and family togetherness, but also feelings of sadness and loss and anxiety. This results in the many moods of William.

Lately he has started referring to us as his "NeverDads" as in "You're never gonna be my dad." He says it as a joke, to get our goat...but then when we just laughed and didn't react to it, it became a sort of term of endearment. It seems to be sort of a transition word. He isn't ready to call us Dad or Pop or whatever, but he's searching for something to call us other than Ryan and Lawrence. And so we are his NeverDads. And we laugh...and we mourn for our losses...and we celebrate the good. We are human and we are a family and holidays will never be the same. They will always be mixed with lots of different feelings. And that is OK. That is life... Our family is different, we always will be. And that too is something William will celebrate and be frustrated by and be angry about and hopefully someday he'll embrace. Right now though, we'll focus on making it through the holidays...