So many families wonder what foster care is, how to approach it, and whether it is for them. So many doubts arise: from “it’s not for me,” to “whether I will then become attached,” or even “will I be able to welcome and let go,” “will I be able to cope with the trials the child will put me through.” We tried to answer these questions not by polling experts, but by asking the families who foster so many children and young people. Those families who the first time they approached this great act of love had the same doubts and perplexities, who define foster care as a whirlwind of emotions, fears, concerns.
From them come 4 valuable pieces of advice, advice that all have a great truth at its core: Foster Care is a very high experience of unconditional Love!
ENTRUSTED TO AN ASSOCIATION. The first advice is not to take the path alone, but to be accompanied by an association, such as MetaCometa. Let yourself be accompanied and supported; in order to develop attention and competence that are necessary in the relationship with the children and youth that you are going to accompany for a “piece of the road” of their lives. When you foster through an association you become part of a real community that will never make you feel alone and that you have both material and psychological support from competent and professional people but also from all the other foster families. So follow the information paths on foster family care, it will bring you closer to this world and you will understand if it is really the way for you.
” BE THERE TO BE,” substance for others. Despite doubts and fear of not being up to the situation, put yourself out there anyway, because it is always worth giving what “you are and what you have ” to those who need it most. Foster care is our chance to make a difference. In some remote corner there is a little one who needs to be welcomed, guided, loved and let go. Letting go does not have to be scary. A reintegration into a biological family or a placement in an adoptive family can be a time of immense joy and growth for us adults as well. One must be ready to give all one has to help: to share the same refrigerator, the same problems, worries, joys the sorrows to be able to extend to others the richness of our existence, to be able to make one’s family an instrument of love.
NOT MAKING PLANS. The fostering process offers opportunities that always enrich our hearts and invite us to continue to welcome “not by making plans but by living day by day in helping a child, accompanying him or her with affection on the journey of life, which is not always easy. To welcome a child into one’s family is a choice of love but that one should not create expectations about how this love can be returned. One must prepare oneself to be content that one has made a great gesture without necessarily expecting direct feedback, to be content that all that has been given may simply remain within the person who has been welcomed and who, perhaps, only tomorrow will be able to acknowledge it, to themselves and to the people who have changed their lives to welcome them.
IT CHANGES YOUR LIFE. Approaching foster care changes the way you see life, you see it through the eyes of love and giving, but in the end what emerges from the experience of foster families is that in the end you always receive more than you give to those less fortunate children and youth. There is a phrase by Pablo Neruda that encapsulates the essence of foster care: “To be born is not enough. It is to be born again that we are born. Every day.” Offer a chance at life and at the same time you will also receive another chance to be born.
