Darkness

When things are at their worst I tend to get quiet and hide because it is just so overwhelming to be living this life some days and in between the tears of sadness and sheer exhaustion I do not have the physical stamina to sit down with my computer and write.

Last week one of my kids made a disclosure about something that happened while they were in foster care and it literally shattered me. There was a part of me that knew it, that sensed it, that understood it was probably the case but hearing the words come out of their mouth was so very hard. I moved through those moments with my kid in a daze, shocked and scared for them and wishing with every fibre of being that this did not have to be their reality.

I was brave and strong and then I as soon as I was alone I lost it. How much worse can this get? How many more things can they share? When are we going to stop falling in the darkness and hit the bottom so that we can begin to find out way into the light again...

As we move in the darkness and I try to support my kids my own trauma keeps getting in the way and making it even harder for me to manage to get through the day. There are days and times when it feel as though I am never going to see light again and that this version of reality is destined to be my new normal.

That is not what I want.

I desperately want to find the light. I want to be able to heal and support my kids in healing. I want the foster care system to learn from this and to change so that kids are not broken by a system that is supposed to protect them.  I want hurt kids to get the help they need before they recreate the cycle on another child. I want the workers who neglected to see the the signs in my kids to learn and grow so that they do not miss this again.

I want us to heal and learn to be family in a way that keeps us all safe and allows us to grow into something we never knew we need to be.

I want to be brave.