A few years ago, when Justice was living with me, he brought home some Valentine’s Day artwork from school with an inscription that read, “I love you to pieces.”  I use the term “artwork” liberally, as he was just 21-months old. To paint a more accurate picture (pun intended) it was a piece of white construction paper with words written in his teacher’s handwriting in purple marker, a large heart (also drawn by his teacher with a marker), some small red and pink pieces of construction paper glued randomly across the page, and lots of crayon scribbles. Fridge worthy? Perhaps for the sake of the holiday. 

At that point, Justice had been with me for almost three months. While life was starting to feel a little less chaotic, I was still doing good enough to remember to empty his backpack at the end of the week so I could wash his pillowcase and blanket before Monday morning. The thought that any parent would keep up with the accumulation of daily art activities was beyond my capacity, so they mostly ended up folded in a pile along with the mail I also hadn’t opened in months. 

I remember the words “I love you to pieces,” catching my eye though. If you know me well, you know that I love a good philosophical inquiry. As an exhausted toddler mom, I feel certain that area of my cognition lay partially dormant, yet in me somewhere flared a curiosity about my capacity for love. One of the reasons I chose to be a foster parent was because I had a lot of love to give. But was the amount of love I had ever equal to that of a biological mom? I knew I loved Justice in a way that I’d never loved anyone before, but did I love him as if he were my own son? That has to feel different, right? Birthing and loving a child you created? Knowing that he would not be with me forever, could I really love him that much? I’ve brought up questions like this many times in my writing. 

When Justice first came to me, I was told he’d only be with me for a few weeks while they worked to secure a family member for him to stay with. However, when that plan fell through it appeared as though he’d be with me a while. The first couple months of parenting a toddler were honestly really hard for me, and I often wondered how much longer I could handle it.  In those early days I didn’t even have time or energy to question my love for him, I was just trying to survive. And then, about three months in, I finally started to feel good about things. I felt connected to him. I had found a way to somehow balance a full-time job and single parenting without feeling totally insane. It took a while to get there, but I was all in. 

A few weeks after my first Valentine’s Day as a mom, I got a call from our caseworker. The legal team had decided to move Justice into kinship care. (He was going to live with a friend of his grandmother’s, who the court had deemed as “fictive kin.”) Given that I’d finally felt settled into this life with Justice and was told that it would probably be like this for a while, the phone call wasn’t just a surprise; It was heartbreaking. I packed up his stuff, loaded it into the caseworker’s car, kissed him goodbye and thought I’d probably never see him again. I was devastated. 

In the days that followed as I cleaned up the remnants of toddler life (food under the highchair, toys under the couch, sippy cups everywhere), I found that piece of construction paper that said, “I love you to pieces.” I stared at it and felt like a mirror was reminding me of how many pieces my heart was in. 

[I’ve written and talked a lot about loss. Some of which I’ve shared publicly, a lot of which has stayed inside the pages of my journal and within the bounds of my close friends. There is so much grief wrapped up in this journey, and in fact grief has played a large part in the story of my entire life. But this isn’t a story about loss. It’s a story about love. So stick with me. Because what I’m learning (in many facets of my life) is that if you know how deeply I love, then you already know the rest. What I want you to know is that letting myself love these kids may seem too hard, but it is not.]

Only a couple weeks later I got another surprising call. “Can Justice come back to live with you?” his attorney was asking me. The kinship placement was not working well, and he needed to be moved. Again. The loss of him in my life had hit me even harder than I had expected, and I hadn’t planned on opening up for another placement for several months. As part of what I thought was my healing process, I committed to some large projects at work, scheduled several trips, and had plans of prioritizing dating again. [Because God forbid, after three months of single parenting, did I want to end up doing this alone forever. At one point in my early 30s I remember saying that if I had to pick between being a mom or getting married, I would choose being a mom. I was wrong. This shit is hard. I need a partner. In fact, a few days into Justice being with me I declared to my own mother that I didn’t want kids at all anymore. Or at least, never a toddler again.]

But back to the phone call. As you can see, I lot went through my mind at once. Could I take him back when I had done so much to convince myself that life without him was probably better for me anyway? Logistically it felt like there was a lot of rearranging I would need to do. And at the same time, how could I possibly say no? I needed to think about it, and the attorney said I could take a few hours. 

I called several people to talk through it, and I kept getting the same answer: “Don’t feel like you have to say yes, Julie.” I appreciated the permission to say no; but as I look back on it now, it was very obvious that I was looking for someone to give me permission to say yes. I kept reaching out until I found the answer I wanted. And the person it came from surprised me. My mom (who at this point in the journey still seemed skeptical of my decision to become a single foster parent, understandably) gave me the gift of these words: “I can’t imagine you saying no.” She wasn’t even telling me what she would do. She was just reminding me of what I would do. 

I immediately began moving around pieces of life that I had set into place for the months ahead and asked Justice’s attorney if it was possible to have a couple days to get things (mostly myself) ready. A few days later I opened my front door to a familiar little face who screamed “yay!” and ran right into my arms. My friends stopped by with balloons and a cake that said “Welcome Home Justice!” and we all rejoiced in the reunion. 

Later that night Justice and I were sitting on the living room floor, just the two of us, eating pizza “picnic style.” From the first moment I became a parent, I had been constantly full of so many emotions. It was one of the things I just don’t think I was quite prepared for – holding the depths of so many opposing feelings all at the same time (happiness, sorrow, fulfillment, guilt… the list goes on) I remember that moment of sitting on the floor with Justice right next to me so well because it was the first time in months that I only had one feeling in my body. Happiness. I was so deeply happy that he was there. And for just a moment, the noise of any other clashing realities went silent. We both quickly jumped back into the routines that we had set in place. Justice was excited to continue his plight to become best friends with the cat, and even though we had no idea how long he’d stay, it seemed like our little family would just pick up exactly where we’d left off. 

Justice also had a “routine” of tearing up paper, and one of the very first things he did after returning home was to somehow find that cherished piece of Valentine’s artwork and literally rip it into pieces. Feeling even more connected to the brokenness, I collected the torn-up scraps and put them in a box. I had hope that we could put the pieces back together. 

Justice was with me for another 8 months, and my love for him deepened beyond my own belief. This love continues to deepen every time I see him and loving his entire family has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. His mother and I have one of the most unique and beautiful relationships I could image. 

About a year after Justice was reunited with his parents, I felt like the pieces of my heart had come back together. I opened my home again, and a new little guy came into my world. Baby Zac was with me for 7 months (Zac isn’t his real name, but if you met him it probably makes sense why I’m calling him that). I haven’t shared much about Baby Z and will save more about our story together for a different post. I will tell you this though. I had to make the hard decision about whether or not I would adopt him. Since the beginning of my foster journey, I’ve said that I’m open to adoption but that it wasn’t my goal. The deeper I got into fostering, the more I hoped I’d never have to make that decision. I want so much for my kids to be reunited with their families that I can’t also be planning what life might look like if they were with me forever. For me, it is hard to be fully supportive of both options. And, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not sure I’m built for single parenting forever. That might sound selfish but it’s also part of what makes me a good foster parent. I know my role is temporary and there isn’t a complicated mix of goals. 

So, as I was faced with this decision about adoption, I came back to the question of “can I really love these children as if they were my own?” I began to beat myself up for being willing to “give him up.” To unwind from this spiral of self judgement, I came to an important realization. I had been asking myself the wrong question. It’s not a matter of loving them as if they were my own. The question is, “Do I love them fully?” And the answer to that question is easy. I love them each uniquely. And I love them each with all of my heart. 

During every goodbye, my heart breaks. But it doesn’t stay broken. Each time the pieces fit back together in a new way. I write this from the perspective of a foster parent, but it’s relevant to so many other ways of loving in my life (and perhaps yours too). I lost a sibling when I was young and I’m just now as an almost-40-year-old adult coming to terms with my healing around it. I’ve had romantic relationships that left me nearly immobile when they ended. I’ve hurt and been hurt by friends. By family members. We’ve all been there, and the narrative we’ve learned about love is that it cannot be absent of pain. While perhaps that’s true, today, on February 14, 2021, a day we devote to love, I’m here to write a different story. I’m finally realizing that loving again doesn’t depend on how strong the glue is. Love is the glue. Love may hurt us but more importantly it heals us. I don’t know how the story ends but here is how it begins: My love is more powerful than my pain. And as I continue to write this story, I make this promise to you – whoever you may be. The heart I give you has been in many pieces, but it is not broken. It is whole. And I will love you with all of it.