Confidentiality

I hate having secrets.

I mean, I don't mind keeping other people's confidences, but I hate having things about myself that I can't share with the world. Not things I am ashamed of, but things I can't say because I am prohibited by laws governing confidentiality.

There are so many things I wish I could say about my experience as a foster parent. About the frustrations of dealing with an overtaxed system that can only give partial justice to anyone. The truth is that everyone gets hurt in some way when a child gets taken into foster care. But the worst part of it for me is the various gag orders that seem to prevent me from working for reform. Honestly, I wouldn't know where to begin.

I can't discuss the particulars of the case I am involved in, or talk about the experiences of other children in foster care that I know. I can't address the endless court delays that stand in the way between children in limbo and some kind of permanence.

It is a very helpless feeling to watch the machinations of the lawyers, the judges, and the various interested parties struggle over their disparate needs with regard to a child who is too small to voice her own opinion in a legally meaningful way.

As for my own needs, they have no place in this process. That I continue to be permanently altered by this experience seems moot. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could spray paint on a giant wall for all to see how many fears this stirs in me. How much pain I quietly swallow so that I can show a calm face to a little girl who just needs to focus on preschool and her continued resistance to eating vegetables.

Some days it is easier than others. But there are days when I want to scream. I want to scream at all the people involved with this. This isn't my fault. I didn't create this situation. I just agreed to help, to shelter a child who needed a home while her life gets sort of sorted out for her. That I have fallen in love with her and she with me isn't anyone's fault either. That I would do anything in this world to protect her would be natural in any other circumstance. But my maternal instincts do not dictate public policy and they never will.

I wish I could tell you all of it. But it is probably a good thing that I can't. This post is depressing enough. I want to lighten it. I want to give you a Hollywood happy ending so badly, but I can't. And this is just ONE child out of the hundreds in foster care in my county alone. I want to make it okay for you to be involved in my story, because then maybe I can make it okay for the amazing and beautiful little girl this affects. I want it to be okay for me, too.