I’m glad you found me today! I changed my location from writing on the porch to a cooler spot. This morning after I exercised, I found a comfy chair at the gym and have been writing to you from here (watching everyone else huff and puff).
Let’s talk about home. Read my article in the “Coming Home” section, and you will better understand what I’m saying. From birth to death, there is a divine connection with our birth family. In one sense, it doesn’t matter how we were treated by our birth family….the link is still there. Denying the connection can leave an “elephant in the room” feeling in our lives and the lives of our current families.
I learned a “forever home” lesson about birth families when our family took in our first foster child about forty years ago. We received a 3 ½ yr old boy. The first thing he said to me when we met was, “are you going to be my Mommy?”. Against the foster program advice, I said yes. He had been beaten many times and starved. We got him directly out of the hospital, bruised and broken front teeth.
He would eat a meal, run in the bathroom, throw up and come back begging for more food. He also wet his pants continuously. I would ask him if he needed to go to the bathroom, no, I don’t, he would say, look right at me and wet his pants. Also, he would climb up in my lap, lean forward, throw his head back and butt my head as hard as possible, leaving me bloody and bruised many times. Took a while of testing to realize we weren’t going to starve him, beat him, or send him back. After one year, the foster program reported his birth mother had rehabilitated, and they were sending him back to her.
Why am I telling you this? This is the lesson I learned through observation, experience, and heartbreak. After one year of good loving care, he still wanted his mother more than anything. Knowing what she was like, at 4 ½ yrs old, he wanted to go home. He needed that birth family connection that I believe is put in us by God. A broken or wounded birth connection, no matter what happened, can cause us heartache over the years.
All of us need to make peace, if at all possible, with our birth families. No matter what happened, how simple, or how terrible our reasons for leaving, if we don’t at least take a look at them, we may never recover from the loss. Next time we visit, we are going to look into the mirror of time. Can we take a look? Bravery and determination are the keys. Listen, in this blog, there is no blame or shame on any of us. Hope lives here. Wishing I could look you in the eye when I’m saying this so that you would know it’s true.
Love, Nana Ann