I have not blogged in a while. It has been a crazy year that was filled with
curve balls thrown at me and I was not always ready to bat. However, I am still in the game!
We are working with an organisation called Kin Culture and
recently in collaboration with other foster/adoption organisations they
launched the first ever WORLD FOSTER DAY.
The effort and the work done to promote it was amazing and I was blown
away after years of working on Child Protection Week and other children’s campaign
initiatives, how far this small little team were able to come and what they
achieved.
However, for me this day, this launch and this story was
very difficult for me. I was not sure at
first what was going on in me. I
realised however at some point that I was in trouble, when by the famous May
31, 2018 in the early hours of the morning I found myself in a ball of tears at
my dining room table after watching a clip that had been aired on National
television about the day.
Then it blurted out of me, I never wanted to be the picture
family for foster care, I wanted to be the picture for Adoption. I wanted forever, I wanted to ADOPT! The 18 months since I took these little ones
into my life the challenge to that dream has been great, but I had not laid it
down yet. This was a serious and very
difficult realisation for me and what made it worse was I could not shake off
my real disappointment about it. I was
not ready to face the day and at that moment was disrupted by a surprise visit from
two beautiful women who had been working very hard on the project and whom I am
very proud s
of, showering me with gifts and thanks for what I do for foster care.
How could I express to the world that I do not want to be
associated with this day, after my face and family are all over it in the launch
year…I was shocked by my feelings and felt a little afraid of my
attitude.
I had no idea that my resolve would be found in the death of
my “step” sister. Many of my closer
friends who do not know my story have had a hard time placing Vivienne in my story
and understandably, because on Facebook you will often see me tagged in sister
posts with Kim and Joy. Vivienne was not
a big fan of social media.
Kim, Joy and I were split when Peter and I stayed with my
mom and they went with dad when my parents divorced. We (my mom, Peter and I) came into the Simmons
family when I was 5, and my mom and my step dad married when I was 9. My step dad had two daughters, sadly both who
have lost their lives to battles with cancer.
They were older than me. When I
was 11, I was ADOPTED into the Simmons family. By the time I was adopted my "step" sisters were adults. I went from being Kay Ellen Dutton to being Kay Ellen Simmons.
I realised in the last few weeks that the way an adoption is done is a very big
deal. I have had to admit in a big way
in the last two years that it had had a huge impact on my life.
This past weekend Holger and I were in Durban celebrating Vivienne’s
life with my nieces. It was a beautiful
weekend. However, it dawned on me again
how confusing my childhood was, especially having to explain Vivienne to people
and how deeply I love her and why I see her as my “real” sister! I realised that I had years where I have very
few memories and that I had really battled at points in a fresh way as stories of
the past emerged at the memorial...
When I eventually got adopted it was a relief, a flight away
from my “old” self that was made to feel unwanted, dirty and ashamed… that is serious
and very sad. I realised now looking back
that there was a lot more that could have been done to help me stay in my whole
story, but everyone was doing the best with what we knew back then. Getting to a place of retelling my whole story
and honouring the Dutton side of it has been a big task. I was born a Dutton and I am not sorry I
became a Simmons, but it was not healthy in the way it happened. I was only able to identify this in a big way
this past weekend, after confronting it for the first time 2 years ago.
How this impacts my little foster children is this… I do not
need to own them, I can FOSTER forever… telling their whole story and honouring
their beginnings and their families of origin, they belong to two families.
This is a huge and a significant shift in me and I had no idea that
maybe my big block to fostering is to try and protect my children from their
hard story, from their feelings of rejection and abandonment… but I realised in
a big way that adoption does not fix that. It had not done that for me.
Fostering care and looking at a child’s whole story and helping them come
to a place of peace about it all is the best way to help them be at peace with
themselves and their families, as complex at this picture may be. I must
foster the best care that includes their origin in it if that is what they
want and as they lead and are ready, but I must sure not block it. I
never realised until today that I risked doing to them what was done to me.
The story then, the whole one becomes one of redemption and
hope and healing of the hard stuff all around.
The beginning gets the honour it deserves too!
Obviously, I am not closed to adoption now, but I am a lot
more open to fostering care for life… forever. Embracing and holding the whole story in all of it's complexity.
This is a long blog, but I really wanted to share this. I will be a lot more fun on WORD FOSTER DAY 2019!
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