One of Our Toughest Weeks as Foster Parents — and the Lessons We Learned

How heartbreak, faith, and a system in flux changed us forever.

In March of 2023, we lived a lifetime in a week that nearly broke us.

It started with hope. We were coming up on a permanency review hearing, and things were finally feeling stable. Daisy was starting to read. Alexa’s tantrums—once long and exhausting—had become shorter and less frequent. The girls were settling into a routine. Healing was happening. So, like any proud parent, we sent an email update to the team. We wanted them to see what we were seeing: kids who were finally safe enough to grow.

Our case manager, FUN Kristin, responded with such joy. She’d seen the girls’ journey firsthand, and her excitement felt validating.

Then came the other response—from CYS Kristen. And everything changed.

“I’ve been out to mom’s home. There are no safety concerns. We’ll likely be recommending COPS* or a straight release**.”

That was it. No warmth. No acknowledgment of the girls' progress. Just a gut-punch of a sentence that signaled a complete reversal from everything we’d been told.

We had always known that reunification is the goal of foster care. But from the moment the girls were placed with us, we were told that their biological mother was not a resource, nor did she consider herself one. She hadn’t raised the girls. They didn’t really know her, especially not as “Mom.” She was living in a single-wide trailer with a partner and (what she told CYS was) four other children. She had stated clearly that she had no relationship with the girls. That was the story we were given.

Suddenly, that story vanished. And we were the only ones holding the pieces.

Lesson 1: Progress Can Vanish Overnight, and It’s Not Their Fault

When we told the girls, I watched months of hard-fought healing unravel in seconds. Daisy collapsed into sobs, and the fear in her eyes was something I won’t forget. Alexa, usually so feisty, looked lost.

“She doesn’t even know us or care about us. I didn't meet her until I was 6. Why do we have to go there?”

What do you say to that?

Their GAL came to explain things, but it didn’t soften the blow. In the days that followed, Daisy’s anxiety spiked. She cried for hours for something as simple as choosing a snack. Alexa got quiet, then destructive, then started telling wild, unbelievable stories—anything to feel heard.

They weren’t misbehaving. They were unraveling. And so was I.

Lesson 2: The System Can Flip Without Warning—Guard Your Expectations

I got the email while I was at work. I had to duck into a corner just to keep from breaking down. It wasn’t just the content—it was the whiplash. We’d been operating under one version of reality, and suddenly, everything we’d been told was gone. Our confusion was met with such an indifference from CYS Kristen, as if she'd been telling us all along that this would be the outcome and she had no idea we'd react this way.

That kind of betrayal feels like grief. I walked around feeling like someone had died.

And maybe something had.

I’d become a mom. I hadn’t planned on it, but here I was—packing lunches, cleaning scraped knees, showing up to parent-teacher conferences. It had become who I was. And now, in one cold email, the message was: None of that matters.

Lesson 3: Everyone Grieves Differently—And That’s OK (Even If It Hurts)

I’m a crier. I cry when I’m mad, sad, scared, happy—so basically, I cried a lot that week. In corners. In the shower. In my car. My wife, on the other hand, is an internal processor. She found me often, held me when I needed it, let me feel all of it.

But it was different for her. She’d raised a quiet, well-mannered, gifted daughter decades earlier. Parenting traumatized kids, in a broken system, at this stage in her life? It was overwhelming. Sometimes I think she even felt a little relieved by our news—and I’ll be honest, I resented that. I was drowning. And I wanted her in the deep end with me. I mean - she was, but in a different way, and I couldn't see it at the time.

Lesson 4: You Have No Control—But You Always Have a Choice

I started slipping—at work, at home, in my mind. People wanted to help, but only to a point. My boss even started taking responsibilities off my plate, and keeping important information from me. I guess she thought she was doing me a favor. But work was the only thing I felt I could control, and now even that was gone.

I had to find a lifeline. I reached back to something I’d learned years earlier, through someone in recovery: AL-ANON***. In AL-ANON, we say: “They may have a drinking problem, but I have a thinking problem.”

My thinking problem definitely had the best of me. I dug into the Serenity Prayer. I stopped trying to fix what I couldn’t control. I started handing over the fear, piece by piece, to something bigger than me.

Lesson 5: The Kids Deserve Our Love, Even If It Breaks Us

By the time we got to court, I was able to breathe again—barely. The hearing officer asked about sleeping arrangements at Mom’s home. We were told there were three girls and one boy already living there (not quite - but that's for a different entry). The three (reported) girls, plus Daisy and Alexa, would be split between two bedrooms and each would have their own bed. The boy would sleep on the couch while Mom and her partner stayed in their room. These details are very important, just not quite yet.

Our GAL argued that the girls had been moved around so much during the schoolyear, and they had just started making such progress academically. She requested the court keep them in our home until the schoolyear ended. It was enough for the court to say, “Not yet.” The girls would stay with us through the end of the school year, with sleepover visits at Mom's on weekends. It was a partial reprieve, and it gave us time to adjust

.

But the bigger lesson? No matter what the system does, the kids need consistency. They need love, even when it’s messy. Even when it ends in heartbreak.

And they need adults who can manage their own grief so they don’t absorb it all.

What I’d Tell Myself If I Could Go Back

You’re about to be retaught the hardest truth of foster care: you have no control. The system is unpredictable, under-resourced, and full of people trying to do their jobs with limited tools and information. It’s flawed. It’s human.

And through it all, the kids come first.

Final Thoughts

Foster care is volatile. One day everything is clear, the next it’s chaos. The best advice I can offer is this: go in expecting nothing, even when something is promised. Trust the process—even when you don’t like it. And most importantly, love like your heart won’t break, even though it probably will. Because the kids? They’re worth it.

This is only the beginning of a much longer story. It's 2025, he girls are still with us and so is one of their brothers. We've built an amazing extended family with biological grandparents and foster parents of siblings. It has been, and continues to be, quite a journey full of wild ups and downs. Follow along at www.fosteredandflustered.com

*COPS stands for Court Ordered Protective Supervision. It refers to a court order that allows CYS to monitor the safety and well-being of a child while they remain in the custody of their family.

**Straight Release means the child goes home with the family immediately following court

***AL-ANON is an international mutual aid organization for people who have been impacted by another person's alcoholism or addiction