Reflections on being a foster carer

We have recently come to the end of our time as foster carers, for now at least, and I’ve found myself reflecting on the beginning of the journey. It’s fun to remember my intrepid visit to meet a little girl at the place she was then staying. I remember my first thoughts were that she looked so different to my boys, she had a different build, she had earrings in (I’ve never had earrings… How was I going to take them in and out?!). She just seemed so OTHER! She wasn’t the girl that I had imagined in my head.

I returned the next day to collect her with the rest of my family. On the way home she blew raspberries at my boys and they giggled and blew raspberries back.

At home, life as we knew it was no more, and we were plunged into a new life situation that was in those early days full of learning and excitement, and at times stressful and tiring.

And my dad likes to remind me of a phone call I made to him about ten days after she had arrived, when I had dropped her off at her nursery for the first time (a nursery that she had attended since she was tiny). How has it happened so fast..? I had asked him. I can’t believe it… I love her already!

Eleven days ago she had seemed so other, different in a way that scared me. And now she had made it all the way into my heart.*

* In case it needs to be said,  the feeling of ‘love’ doesn’t always come this easy, with birth children, foster children, or adopted children. I’m grateful for this occasion that it did!

Jess, CCE Home for Good Champion