Holding Complexity

I’m usually not the person who has a word or new goals for the new year. And if I do, then I like to make sure I have everything decided and an action plan ready to implement at least a week before New Years (so I can tell myself I not only met the deadline, but worked ahead of the deadline). It’s also already almost two weeks into the new year, but as part of my foster parent support group yesterday, I was sharing some of my insecurities and fears that I face as an ESH mom.

I talked about how it can be hard to have babies (and their families) leaving my life on the regular, but how important it is to still love my babies and their families as hard as I can while I can. In response, I was given this phrase of “holding complexity.”

A large part of my motherhood journey involves holding the complexity of all the stories I carry from my babies. It involves the complexity of loving babies, birth parents, relatives, and new foster or adoptive parents, while committing to not turn on one for the sake of another. It involves the complexity of loving all of these new people who may only be in my life for a short time or for the rest of my life, and not knowing which it will be beforehand.

This idea of holding complexity is both freeing and a responsibility. It is freeing because it means I do not have to hold a part of heart back from new families in fear that I will get too attached to too many people – my heart can be secure in the knowledge that the life I live is complex and perhaps my old ideas of relationships need not apply. It is freeing because it gives me language to express the enormous sense of confusion that always seem to be a part of foster care without giving the impression that I would wish for something else.

This newfound freedom also helps me shoulder the responsibility I have as a foster parent. The responsibility to love my babies’ birth parents is easier because does not need to be attached to whether they will get their child back or not. The responsibility I feel to educate the people in my life about foster care can now be tempered with the knowledge that I do not have be able to explain everything to everyone – because foster care is complex and there will be parts that people will be unable to understand or I cannot talk about.

So I look forward to another year of fostering as an ESH mom, whatever it may look like and whoever may come into my life. I look forward to holding the complexity of foster care because while it can be confusing, it also involves so much good that I can’t imagine not loving this life of complex motherhood.