AN AMAZING CONTRIBUTOR WRITES

This comment was posted this week on one of my Secret Foster Carer blogposts that date back a while.

The post in question was "Nine For Breakfast", and in it I mentioned that I had been fleetingly unsure whether to extend my full attachment/empathy to a child who was due to be with me only for a few hours.

I thought I'd publish the comment as a separate post to ensure it gets the prominence it deserves.

This young person shows such maturity, warmth and insight that I'm confident they will be a credit to the fostering profession if they decide to join us.

I have a sense of pride that we are attracting readers such as this person (oh, and such as you too dear reader)...

I'd like to thank the contributor, and say to them that their thoughts and feelings will always be welcome here;


        "I'm a teenager in... two unstable homes, and I found this post fascinating. 
First, I'm really young, 16, and my situation has never been close to as bad as what foster children are coming from. My parents divorced when I was nine, I'm the oldest of four, and it was (is) a bitter divorce. It's been one thing after another since then; parents remarrying, almost redivorcing twice, people dying, etc. However I feel safe and loved by my siblings and parents and I'm doing well right now. 
Second, I'm reading this blog because I want to foster someday. :)
Anyways, I've been through trauma and I can definitely say that if I had been taken from my home at any point by strangers, I'd DEFINITELY want a temporary foster parent to try to bond with me. Not in a pushy way, because I'd retreat. In a gentle, warm way. 
Likely I'd be unable to function. If I feel I can trust an adult, even a strange adult (sometimes especially an adult I don't know as well), I tend to let my guard down. I tend to allow my hurt and brokenness and fear to come to the surface. I'm desperate to know somebody cares, that life isn't just full of suffering and despair. The other day actually I started sobbing after my mom said something that normally would make me slightly disappointed, if that... I cried for hours. I needed her to be there for me. I needed to know she wasn't going to give up on me the moment I showed signs of weakness. 
I'd need that even from a temporary foster parent. I might find it really healing to have a temporary foster parent who, in the midst of something traumatic, listened to me and gave me a hug. Let me cry and be broken with only love in response. Even if I never saw them again, it might make the difference for me between feeling traumatized later on and feeling like, "bad things will happen but I'm not alone even in the most awful pain; I remember when Foster Parent A was there, even though I barely spent any time with them..."
Or maybe I'd really appreciate the simple things like a smile, a kind word, etc. Especially with sibling sets, taking care of a younger sibling for the older sibling will mean more to the older sibling sometimes than if you fixed all older sibling's problems. Siblings going through tough times tend to have either incredibly strong bonds or entirely shattered bonds, I think. 
Anyways that's all I wanted to say! :) 
Thank you for being there for kids who are hurting and broken and loving them through all that. You will never know how much that love impacts them."