Mike Berry - Confessions of an Adoptive Parent: Hope and Help from the Trenches of Foster Care and Adoption

Mike Berry is an author, blogger, speaker, adoptive father, and former foster parent. He and his wife, Kristin, are cocreators of the award-winning blog confessionsofanadoptiveparent.com , which has more than 100,000 followers monthly and was named number 3 in the Top 100 Foster Blogs on the Planet in 2017 by Feedspot. It was also named one of the Top Adoptive Mom Blogs in 2016. Mike travels extensively throughout the United States every year with a passion to reach overwhelmed foster and adoptive parents with a message of hope and camaraderie. He is the author of several books, including The Adoptive Parent Toolbox and The Weary Parents Guide to Escaping Exhaustion . Mike is also a featured writer on Disneys babble.com and on The Good Men Project . His work has also appeared on Yahoo Parent , Your Tango , Huffington Post , MichaelHyatt.com and Goinswriter.com . Mike and Kristin have been married 18 years and have eight children, all of whom are adopted. They reside in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana.

H ope.

What a wordone of the most powerful words in the English language. Just seeing it on this page fills you with emotion, doesnt it? Perhaps a series of thoughts has raced through your mind in a matter of milliseconds since reading it.

Maybe youre just considering this journey of foster care or adoption, and youre hopeful as you dream of what could be. Youve picked up this book just to get a better grasp on what youre getting yourself into. Youve read articles, watched news reports, and read adoption blogs, trying to find that one word or phrase to finally convince you to take the plunge. Good for youI wish I would have read a book like this 15 years ago.

Or perhaps youre well into this journey, and reading this word fills you with life. Your journey hasnt always been free and easygoing, but you feel alive. Youve experienced deep peace and satisfaction in your life with your kiddos. Life isnt perfect, but you have an unshakable faith that God is in control and is holding your family together. The journey has been fairly easy for your family, and you see every day as another opportunity to live life to the fullest. Hope has not eluded youits wrapped itself around you like a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer.

On the other hand, you might still be searching. As you read the word hope, you began squirming in your chair or shaking your head. Youve run out of hope. The well is dry. Youre in the longest, harshest desert youve ever walked through. You may even be regretting your decision to foster or adopt. You picked up this book as a last-ditch effort. Reading the word hope put a knot in your stomach because, unfortunately, hope has eluded you.

Hopewhat a word! We all need it and everyone wants it, but its often as elusive as a hummingbird. We lose it frequently or cant seem to find it when the journey becomes dark and challenging.

The Definition of the Journey

Most of us enter the adoptive or foster parenting journey with hope. And were filled with passion and energy. For good reason tooweve been called to do this. We dont see it as a forced task but rather an invitation and a calling to go on an amazing adventure and change the lives of children who have come from difficult places. Im willing to bet you entered this journey with a lot of excitement. You were ready to care for any child who was placed in your home or whose birth mother you were matched with. You didnt care what special need the child hadyou were ready to love them regardless of the circumstances or story line. Surely, you thought, I can love them through whatever disorder, struggle, or issue they have! Surely thats enough to heal their wounds and lead them out of the darkness of their past.

So you jumped in with both feet. When the agency gave you a week to fill out the paperwork, you took a day. When your case manager sent you the schedule for training classes, you wrote them in bold print on the calendar and showed up 30 minutes early. You scoured Pinterest to find the perfect creative sign to tell your social media friends the big news that you were adopting.

Or if you adopted from the foster care system, you approached it with an overflowing heart to change the circumstances and future of vulnerable children. You eagerly awaited the arrival of your first placement. You prayed, and hoped, and dreamed. You stayed awake at night, staring at the ceiling because you couldnt get the picture of the children you saw on the Heart Gallery website out of your mind. The first time you laid eyes on the little girl or boy the case manager brought to your home, you gushed with love. You may have even cried. We did!

But it didnt take very long before you found yourself exhausted and out of gas. Six months or a year or two into your journey, you came to the realization that this was really, really tough. Navigating difficult relationships with your kids birth parents. Managing relationships between your biological children and your foster or adopted children. Helping your kids understand what the word adopted means. Dealing with schoolyard bullies who target your adopted child.

Or worsethe sleepless nights because of the child who has night terrors, the fight for survival with a little girl with an unimaginably traumatic past, the food hoarding from a teenager who suffered periods of starvation early in his life, the urine-soaked underwear and rotting pull-ups stuffed in the back of a closet because a three-year-old girl was beaten by her birth dad for wetting. You were ill-prepared for the ways trauma manifests itself in everyday life. You had no idea just how deep these wounds go or even how to begin to help your kids through them. The constant battle has left you worn out.

Maybe the foster care system yanked you around like a yo-yo. You spent months being told one thing but having another happen. Perhaps you experienced a revolving door of case managers, and you couldnt get straight answers to your questions.

The special need was too much. The outbursts, fits of rage, acting out, violence, or extreme aggression threw your entire household into turmoil. Your extended family was no help either. They were even judgmental or harsh. We told you this would happen, your dad barked at you while your child flipped out at his fifth birthday party because the candles on his cake were in the wrong place. Your mom chimed in with, Adoption is a mistake!

You never envisioned your parents saying such awful things to you. You believed the journey would be different. Maybe you even had a bit of a fantasy built up in your mind. But the three-year-old little girl you brought home from another country ten years ago is now a distant teenager, involved in toxic relationships with people who dont care about her.

Every day is filled with chaos, and its all you can take. The constant pushing and pushing and pushing leaves you in shambles. What started off as hopeful has slowly become hopeless. Little by little the full tank of your heart leaked until it ran bone dry.

I understand. I see you. As I said earlier, I am you. I know how hopeless you feel because Ive felt that way more times than I can remember in the past 15 years. So may I share something with youfrom my heart to yours?

There is hope.

Let me say it again: There. Is. Hope.

But Mike, you say, you just described my journey perfectly. Every single heartbreaking moment. This isnt what I thought it would behow in the world could there be any hope in the middle of these circumstances?