Risky Love - A Blog Series
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Once I was chatting with a guy who drives the van at our local auto shop. He gave me a ride to my office after I dropped off my car for the day. During the drive, I mentioned that my husband and I had recently become foster parents. The man told me that he and his wife had two kids and had seriously considered fostering. But, he said, he just didn’t think he could deal with the heartbreak involved if he fell in love with a child and then the child had to leave his home. He looked back at me in the rear-view mirror and shook his head slightly. “I just don’t think I could handle that.”
Over the years, I’ve heard the same sentiment from dozens of people. I worried about the same issue before our foster daughter was placed with us. On many levels and in many ways, becoming a foster parent felt incredibly risky. It was risky emotionally. What if a child’s behavior was so disruptive that it threatened the peace in our house and in our family? Risky financially. What if a child falsely accused my husband of abuse and it threatened his reputation as a self-employed psychologist? Risky to our daughter’s physical safely. What if a child who was placed in our home hurt her in some way? Risky to our marriage. What if David and I couldn’t handle the stress and uncertainty involved with fostering? We knew people who had faced all those challenges and more as foster parents. Over the years, we had heard a lot of horror stories.
Yet the biggest risk felt like the one the guy in the van identified. What if we fell in love with a child and then were devastated when she left?
Was it worth the risk?
When David and I went through the mandatory training class for new foster parents at our local social service agency, they gave us a lot of important information, and we learned some practical skills. But they didn’t talk much about how to handle the risk of loving and what is involved with letting go. They didn’t talk about how we could protect our hearts in the process – of if it was even possible.
A friend of ours who was a foster parent for many years once posted online, “When you become a foster parent, you’re signing up to have your heart broken.” My own experience confirmed this to be true. I loved our foster daughter deeply, and when she left, my heart was broken.
Was it worth it? In our case, the answer is yes. It was incredibly hard, but I’m glad we did it. My husband and our daughter feel the same way.
In many ways, the risks involved with loving as foster parents reflects a universal human experience. We all make ourselves vulnerable to pain every day when we love fiercely, knowing that all of our relationships will inevitably involve some kind of separation and loss – even if it’s not until the moment of death.
Blog series
This year, my new memoir about our experience as foster parents, Their Faces Shone, will be released by Light Messages Publishing. As part of the launch, I am delighted and honored to collaborating with a group of women writers on a blog series on the topic of risky love. Guest contributors explore some of the risks involved with opening ourselves up to love and the realities of what it takes to let go. The series also explores some of the ways that risky love is and isn’t “worth it,” and how we grow and change as a result of loving and losing.
Posts in the series include:
All of the Red Balloons - Elizabeth Futrell writes about her experience as a young woman caring for people living with AIDS.
Rare and Risky Love - Kathy Izard writes about falling in love with her husband and the risk of loving when you know loss is inevitable.
Remembering to Look Up - Shuly Xóchitl Cawood reflects on the experience of dating after divorce.
Please share your thoughts and feedback with us about how you experience “risky love” in your life.