Confession

The feedback I have received has been enormous, comforting, enlightening, and also surprising! Thanks for the emails, messages, phone calls, and posts. I truly wish I had started this blog months ago. I want to share why I didn't.

I haven't been very open about our home life with family and friends lately and I regret that. In the beginning I didn't share because I wanted to protect K's privacy and was worried she would be judged, we would be judged, and that people wouldn't support our efforts to continue to stick with her. She was sneaking out of the house at night, skipping classes, using drugs and alcohol, stealing, lying, struggling with the pain of her birth mom withholding visits from her little brother, and she had lots of anxiety and depression surrounding all those things. Then as time went by I simply felt we were failing miserably. I was scared the social workers were going to think us unfit and fire us. I was embarrassed. I was sad. I tend to withdraw when I'm sad and so I didn't talk to anyone except my husband about how hard things were or about how I felt.

He's an amazing husband and dad by the way. I truly feel that this experience has drawn us closer together. We are a unified front (most of the time ;) and are each other's parenting cheerleaders. He has been able to relate to K on so many different levels and has been able to show me a different perspective when I was feeling so frustrated, or hurt, or angry. I could never in a million years do this without him. He is my rock in all this.

I know to some it looked like we were hiding things and  I guess to an extent we were. All that did was alienate us from our friends and make us feel even more alone. I think what moved me to allow such a distance to grow was that I feared that question "How much will you be able to take before you give up on her?" I feared hearing it and above all I feared having to answer it. We are now facing some bottom lines and that is a scary place but also empowering and along with a sense of relief has come strength. I do think we can make this work, I do feel like we can be a family (maybe not the one we thought about starting out but a loving family still) and I know that we can't do it without the love and support of our friends and family. Thanks to all of you who have reached out with words as well as deeds. It means more to us that you know.