What reunification taught me about love, loss, and the complicated beauty of foster care.
For more than a year, I had stood beside their mom as she worked toward bringing her children home. I watched her work, heal, grow, stumble, get back up, and keep fighting. I wanted her to succeed. I cheered for her. I believed that if she could do the work and create a safe home for her children, she deserved the opportunity to parent them again.
And then the day finally came.
They were going home.
I had spent so much time preparing for that moment, but nothing could have prepared my heart for what it actually felt like.
Suddenly, it felt as though our roles had completely reversed.
In the beginning, she had been the mom watching her children leave with me. Now I was standing there preparing to leave them with her.
For the first time, I understood a tiny piece of what she must have felt.
I was heartbroken.
I was proud.
I was happy for her.
I was terrified.
And somehow, all of those feelings existed at exactly the same time.
When Our Roles Reversed
I remember standing in her apartment as we both cried.
She was terrified.
โWhat if I can’t do this?โ she asked. โWhat ifโฆ?โ
I had plenty of my own what ifs running through my mind. What if something went wrong? What if the kids struggled? What if she struggled? What if this goodbye really was goodbye?
But those weren’t the fears she needed me to hand her that day.
So I tried to tuck my own fears away and remind her of what I had watched her accomplish over the previous year.
You can do this.
And I told her something else that I meant with my whole heart:
I am still here.
That moment changed something in me.
For so long, I had thought about how hard it would be for me when reunification happened. I knew I loved these children. I knew losing their everyday presence in my home would hurt beyond anything I could adequately prepare for.
But standing there with their mom, I suddenly thought about the beginning of our story.
There had been a day when she was the one who didn’t know what would happen next.
She was the one who had to watch someone else care for her children.
She was the one wondering whether they were okay, whether they missed her, whether they would remember her, and whether she would ever get to bring them home again.
Now our places had changed.
I was the one walking away.
And she was the one taking them home.
There was something almost impossible about the grief and joy existing side by side. I could be devastated for myself and still celebrate for her. I could miss them before they had even left and still believe they belonged with their mom if she could safely parent them.
That is one of the hardest lessons foster care has taught me:
Sometimes a broken heart doesn’t mean something went wrong.
Sometimes your heart breaks because something went exactly the way you spent more than a year hoping it would.
Loving Them Was Never the Mistake
People sometimes wonder how foster parents can love children so deeply when they know they may have to say goodbye.
For me, the answer is that they deserved to be loved that deeply.
Our job was never to protect our hearts by loving them less.
Our job was to give them safety, consistency, connection, and a family who would love them fiercely for however long they needed usโand, whenever possible, to support the parents working to bring them safely home.
Reunification didn’t erase the love I had for those children. It didn’t erase the relationship I had built with their mom. And it certainly didn’t erase the grief.
It simply meant that, for that moment in our story, she had done what she had been asked to do, and it was time for me to honor that.
Our Story Wasn’t Over
At the time, I truly believed that was the ending of our foster care story together.
It wasn’t.
After being home for a time, circumstances changed and the children eventually returned to foster care.
When they came back, there were so many emotions all over again. I loved them. Of course I was grateful to hold them again. But I wasn’t celebrating the circumstances that brought them back.
Because by then, their mom wasn’t just โthe biological momโ in a case.
I knew her.
I had cried with her.
I had watched her fight.
I had celebrated her successes.
And I knew how much she loved her children.
Eventually, the path for these children changed, and our family was given the opportunity to adopt them.
Adoption brought tremendous joy to our family, but that joy didn’t require me to rewrite the chapter that came before it.
Their reunification still mattered.
Their mom’s hard work still mattered.
The day I told her, โYou can do this,โ still mattered.
And the heartbreak I felt when I walked away from those children was still real.
I think foster care has taught me that we have to be careful about judging the middle of a story by how it eventually ends.
When children reunify, we don’t know what will happen five months, five years, or twenty years later.
We only know what is being asked of us right now.
And in that moment, my job was to support reunification.
Later, my job became something different.
Both required love.
Reunification and Adoption Can Both Hold Grief
Adoption is often talked about as the happy ending.
And make no mistakeโI am incredibly grateful that I get to be their mom.
But adoption exists because something else was lost.
My children’s story didn’t begin with me, and becoming their mom didn’t erase the people, relationships, experiences, and love that came before me.
That has shaped the way I think about adoption and reunification.
They don’t have to compete with one another.
I don’t have to diminish their first mom for my role as their adoptive mom to matter. And I don’t have to minimize my own love for them in order to honor hers.
There is room for both.
There is room for gratitude and grief.
There is room for joy and loss.
There is room to love children fiercely while still hoping their parents succeed.
And there is room to celebrate adoption while acknowledging everything that had to happen before adoption became part of the story.
Why We Do What We Do
If you’re in the middle of foster care right now and you’re terrified of reunification because you have fallen completely in love with the child in your home, I understand.
Saying goodbye may hurt.
You may cry after they leave.
You may walk past an empty bedroom or find a tiny sock under the couch and feel like your heart has been ripped open all over again.
But please don’t let the possibility of goodbye convince you to love them less today.
These children need adults willing to love them without knowing the ending.
They need people willing to cheer for their parents when there is something worth cheering for.
They need foster parents who understand that supporting reunification doesn’t mean we won’t grieve when it happens.
And if the story changes someday, we will meet that chapter when it comes.
That is what happened to us.
I became the one saying goodbye.
And later, unexpectedly, I became the one welcoming them home again.
Today, I can look back and know that I would not change the way I supported their mom during reunification simply because I know how our story eventually ended.
She deserved someone cheering for her.
My children deserved adults who wanted their family to succeed.
And all of us deserved the opportunity to love one another without knowing exactly where the story would lead.
Maybe that is one of the greatest lessons foster care has given me:
Our job isn’t to know the ending. Our job is to love well in the chapter we’re in.
