I Just want to Say Hello Again!

 As I sit here I reflect on the last two months. Two months! That’s how long it’s been since I saw your faces, the last time I hugged and we were forced to say goodbye. I can’t believe it’s been that long. As the days past things get easier, life takes on a new normal, but one thing doesn’t get easier and that’s how much I miss you. How much I just want a hug and to hear you say hello again, and to never have to say goodbye. I look around my house and it still feels empty without you in it. I still hear your voice echo through the house again. I don’t know if that will ever change. I miss you so much my sweet, sweet girls!

The last two months have been the worse. I’d give anything to go back to quarantine when we had to be together for months with no break, at the time I didn’t know how I would get through without a break and now that you aren’t here anymore I just want those times back. I want to wake up and know you are still here. I want to hear your voice, and see your face around our table again. I miss those times we had together. I miss movie nights, and tiktok dances. I miss family meals and everything in between. I even miss our arguments. Life has become so simple and I used to like our simple life, but that same life now seems empty without you in it. I hate this simple life! I want the complicated life back, and I know I can’t have it, not with you at least, at least not right now and that breaks my heart in a way I didn’t even know was possible. I honestly can say I didn’t know how much I wanted you here until you weren’t anymore. If given another chance I won’t take it for granted. I will live everyday like it’s my last with you. I will hug you like every hug is the last one I’ll get, because if I had known that hug was going to be our last for this long I would have held on tighter. I would have told you I love you one more time. My heart is never going to be the same, there will always be scar where it broke when I lost you my sweet girls.

But as I think about the last two months, it makes me think of the 16months before that. The day I met you and how scared you must have been. It makes me think of all the good days we had. There were so many. I miss those days the most. The day in Drumheller when we went hiking in the hoodoos, and stopped and picked flowers in the ditch. When you wrote your name in the sand, with our name attached. That was my favorite day! But there were so many more that come close to being a favorite. The day you decided you were ready to call me Mom! The day you told a court room full of people that I was “your mom!” As hard as that day was, it will always be a memory that I cherish in my heart! It still hurts me so much that they made you leave people who you loved so much, and who you loved so much! It makes me so angry that the system is so broken and that you had to be a part of it.  There are so many more days that I miss. Like your anniversary party. The day you came home from your family visit and saw your new room, I’m so sad you only got to enjoy it for 2 weeks. The way you came running down to your new room, crying, and said I never knew how much you loved me! My heart broke a little that day because you deserved so much love and you deserved to know how much we all loved you. Your birthdays were special. Christmas, I’m sad because I only got to have one, but it was a great one! The day that you and dad made up and that hug! I'm so glad I made the snap decision to take a picture of that hug. That way we will never forget that day. That was a good day too. But most of all I miss the everyday, I miss seeing you in the morning, I miss hearing about your day. I miss hearing you talk about your life. I missing hugging you goodnight. I miss knowing everything! My love for you hasn’t changed and it never will, which makes not knowing anything even harder for me. I really hope that this isn’t the end of our relationship. I really hope we still have a future together so way, but no matter what I will cherish the days we had together, even if they were numbered!

I miss you and love you my sweet girls!

Sometimes it's all about ME!

I crashed last night! Not physically but emotionally. I've been in a downward spiral ever since I broke my ankle this summer. Although when you see me I may say things are fine, but that's this default that I have put myself in because it's too painful or too hard to actually explain what's going to people who aren't apart of this world. So why did I crash last night, was it a hard day, not any more then any other day. Were the children more difficult then usual no! But it's months and months of never quite getting to the point of being whole. It really started in May when we had to say goodbye to our sweet baby! But I dove into our next placement and just pushed my feeling deep inside. Then it was summer and those were hard two months. We had older kids in our home, which added a completely foreign dynamic to our home. Our oldest placement disclosed somethings that led to some very hard days ahead, and our second oldest placement was drug into it as well. Our youngest placement has bladder issues and we've been trying to help her through them, but this means one of us stays up late to take her to the bathroom and the other gets up early. None of these things were the straw that broke the camel's back. That was when I stepped wrong getting out of the truck in value village in Red Deer one beautiful August day and broke my ankle. Although the pain wasn't bad, I was laid up for 6 weeks, and even after that I still endure pain on a every day basis, to this day. I've tried to get back to being more active but every time I do, I end up in even more pain, which has just led to this downward spiral of being lazy. Then we were placed with a sweet but active boy, who's behaviors brought me to the brink of my sanity. Then the unexpected happened and we were faced with my worst nightmare. One of my kids had said somethings, although taken out of context, brought our home under investigation. I was devastated! Hurt beyond my wildest dreams. It forced me to talk about a time in our journey where things were really hard, and I wasn't my best. A time in our lives that we wish never had happened and that we've been trying to forget ever since. I was forced to sit and talk to a stranger about the worst months of my life. But when it was done I had to go home and take care of my kids and my home like nothing happened. And so, life went on and I had to move on like nothing happened, and then wait, while they decide whether or not our actions required consequences for us. They said it would be wrapped up in about 3 weeks, well it's been twice that amount of time and we still have no solid answers. Now those of you who know me fairly well will know that when life get's stressful I don't sleep. And our little dude didn't always sleep well either. So being tired only escalated the situation. Christmas hasn't helped this process either. Now Christmas itself can be hard for families like us, because for some of the kids we care for they have experiences that aren't happy and the holidays just remind them that they can't be with their bio parents like most kids. They often take this out on their current caregivers and this has been no different for our family this week. Add on 6 days of family visiting, shopping, Christmas dinners and a soccer tournament, meant that yesterday when I asked a child to do a simple task and she snapped at me, I broke down. I locked myself in my bedroom and my family went out and enjoyed one last family gathering. It meant that I went for a walk and wanted to join in the festivities but instead I instead I ended up walking home alone crying the whole way. It meant that this morning I didn't get out of bed. 

But the end of this story has still to be written, you see I can be brave and strong for a long time, but eventually I break, and then it takes me sometime to pick myself up, but the one thing I realized last night was that I have pulled myself away from everyone who loves me. When I'm hurting I have no one I want to turn too, except my husband, and he is living it too, so not always helpful. I realized that through no fault of theirs I've pushed away all my friends and my family, because, I'm scared of what they'll think, because I don't want to let them see how much I'm hurting. I also realized that in the last few months I have lost myself, I am a mom or a wife first and always, which means when things are tough Kate gets pushed aside, and when I say things have been tough for months, with this realization I decided that I need to come first, because I am not a good mom or wife when I can't barely recognize who I have become. So this morning I went for a walk, by myself. Keith is home and more then capable of taking care of the kids and dealing with anything that my come along. IT's TIME to TAKE CARE of ME!

So although I don't make new years resolutions as such for 2020, I need to try and be more vulnerable with my friends and family. I need to take time for me, no matter what life throws my way.