Because I have no hope of my body ever moving in the way that hers does, I've been teaching Upside Down Girl to two step. SJ and Sweetheart join in and we link hands and twirl giggling around the kitchen. Tonight I held her close and sang with Randy Travis,
I'm gonna love you forever
Forever and ever amen
As long as old men sit and talk about the weather
As long as old women sit and talk about old men
If you wonder how long I'll be faithful
Just listen to how this song ends
I'm gonna love you forever and ever
Forever and ever, amen.
And I will. She will always be my girl, the one who made me a mother. Though she did not come from my body, an umbilical cord connects us and she draws nourishment from me. Through it, I sense her moods and battle the fears she dares not speak. For the first time in her life, she knows she is safe, that no one will hurt her here. When she first came to me, she tried so desperately to keep me from loving her and to keep from loving me. Some days, when the past overwhelms the present, she still tries. But most days we dance in the kitchen and she looks into my eyes and we both sing, "I'm gonna love you forever." And we both mean it with all our hearts.
She doesn't know that her worker wants to move her; wants to put her and her brother in a new, strange home so they can be together. She loves her brother, but they are toxic for each other when together for more than a day. Both bring out the other's trauma in full force and someone always gets hurt. Her worker assured me that it will still be several months before this happens and she'll make sure services (therapy, mental health case management, ect.) are in place before the move.
But services don't bring healing. They help. God knows I have no idea what I would do without our therapist. Healing comes through relationship. It comes when we find that we are loved, even when we are utterly broken, cowering in our shame and terror. For Upside Down Girl, it comes as I rock her and sing my love to her, even as bruises she has inflicted form on my body. It comes as I wrap her in blankets and tell her she is safe over and over again, hundreds of times.
For healing to occur we must allow ourselves to be utterly vulnerable, to love wholly without holding back. For those of us who foster, the ones we love aren't truly our own though and we never know how long they will be with us, or how hard we will have to fight to keep them. And believe me, I will fight.
As sure as I live, this love that I give
Is gonna be yours until the day that I die.
