A FRIEND GONE

Just when as a foster mum you think maybe you know as much as you need to know, along comes something.

Been at it donkey's years now. Ought to know a thing or three.

Then along comes transitioning.

Up to now, like most - if not almost everyone - I thought I knew a bit about it, from the news, from documentaries and dramas and articles In newspapers and magazines.

I can tell you for sure that nothing prepares a foster parent for the perfect storm of ignorance, prejudice and sometimes downright persecution that rains down mainly from people whose defining principle is something they call 'respectability'.

Nothing prepares you for having to listen to a young man quietly sobbing himself to sleep because, in this free country in which we live, where many have fought and died for so many freedoms, there remains an army of people who want to make someone feel bad, really awful, for reaching for the simple freedom of being who they really are.

I've even lost a close friend of many years because she believes I'm wrong to 'allow' it in my house.

She messaged me would I like to meet for coffee and a catch-up. 

When I arrived at the cafe she was sitting, still buttoned up and arms folded, and  only managed a weak hello.

Mind, she's had her health problems so I guessed she was merely under the weather.

We swapped "How are you?'', but didn't get beyond "And how's the family", becaue I mentioned I had a new placement and she said that she knew, she'd heard on the grapevine.

She hadn't. I don't allow anything to do with fostering to go near any grapevines.

What had happened was that her youngest daughter goes to the same school as my new placement and had seen me pick him up one afternoon. Apparently it's in the open at the school that he is transitioning, the school have been very supportive and professional.

My friend proceeded to lecture me on why it was wrong in every way. Wrong in the face of what the universe stood for, wrong for the child, their family, wrong for doctors and clinics who could be sued later for not stopping them.

She informed me that foster parents don't have the knowledge or the understanding to help transitioning young people and they should hand the child back to the system.

This from a friend who has no experience of fostering, or of transitioning, or what she calls 'the system'.

On it went, blimey.

I asked her what she knew about transitioning and she replied she knew all she needed to know, she said she was certain there wasn't anything out there she didn't know that would change her mind.

I had to sit and listen politely to a never ending diatribe of nonsense, ignorance, and something else.

It gradually began to seem to me that she was frightened of something. But the mood she'd worked herself into meant I dare not try to go deeper with her to get to the heart of her feelings. 

She told me once, many years ago, that she had been abused as a churchgoer by a man of the cloth. I know it had haunted her ever since. She believed her health problems were somehow connected to it.

I began to wonder if her prejudices were consciously or unconsciously driven by inner turmoil, but look; I'm a humble foster mum, my friend needed kindness and understanding, not analysis. But she wouldn't let it lie.

In the end I cited a pressing engagement elsewhere and got up to go, but she stayed with me. Walking along the High Street she was still banging away. I got to the car park entrance where my car was and said;

"Can I say...you seem a little obsessed."

She gave it a moment's thought. I would personally feel diminished to have someone wonder if I had any obsessions. They're not good things are they?

"Yes!" she suddenly barked "I am obsessed about this!"

And off she marched.

Her details are still in my Contacts, but she's going to be off my social scene for good, unless she turns around.

My new placement knows nothing of the dent in my friends network, and never will. He's got enough on his plate.

He also has an ally in me that is more on his side - much more on his side-  than I was before my ex-friend treated me to her two-pennorth of rubbish.

I'm quietly making sure he knows that much.