Found: Hopeless Optimism

Attempting to survive the adventure of foster parenting and adoption! Married to @ourfosterlove. :)

[prettystuff]

[abusedsapphics-archive]

i am frustrated with the way a lot of people view recovery. it is not a moment in the semi-distant future in which everything will magically heal, and you will no longer carry your pains and your hurts. recovery doesn’t mean ‘having a normal life’, recovery doesn’t mean being happy all the time, it doesn’t mean being ‘productive’ or whatever else.

recovery is the process through which you learn to live with your symptoms/problems/triggers/issues/etc, to deal with them with as little self-destruction or other-destruction as possible. and it may never be over! because human life is full of stressors and hardships, especially in today’s society, and for a lot of people there will always be triggers to manage and episodes to cope with and harmful urges to redirect.

it does get so much easier with practice - when we find a good coping mechanism and stick with it, it may even become second nature - but we will never stop needing the effort.

[writing-fics-instead-of-homewor]

Reblog if a fictional female character has positively influenced your life

Trying to prove something to my sexist grandfather

[mendedhope]

In our state every home approved for fostering is also approved as pre-adoptive so the state doesn’t have to do more work later if adoption comes up. However it’s encouraged for each home to know and communicate to the foster parent worker what your end preference is, as that can affect the type of placements you get called for.

When we started our journey almost 5 years ago, we were foster only. After our first two placements reunified we realized having kids in our home long term to permanently would be good. So we became pre-adoptive and received two cases more likely to go that way. We also had some other kids come and go as is the way of the system. Now that we adopted once and are tentatively set to adopt again this summer, we have realized our hearts are shifting back to foster only.

Last week we received this book in the mail and for me it perfectly sums up foster care from a foster only perspective. If you haven’t read it I would highly encourage it. Throughout we see the magic a safe guardian can have in a child’s life.

“‘I am not your mother,’ said the polar bear, ‘but I can cuddle you and keep you safe.’”

This to me is foster care when adoption is off the table for the foster family. I am not your mother, but I can do her job until she can do it herself or we can find someone who will. It’s a blessing and a curse and a sacred place to be called to in a fractured situation.

[mendedhope]

Wow

When we picked up Rue the grandparents invited me into their home. Being in the place where Juni spent a good chunk of her formative years was fucking weird.

[kuzkuza]

[moniquill]

No guys, I need to stop and talk about something in this movie and how fucking revolutionary it was; something that I haven’t seen in a movie before or since.

This is a movie about a kid who leaves her birth family.

Not a kid who find that they have a secret lineage or something that allows them to find their ‘true family’ - this is a movie about a kid whose true birth family is made up of bad people. So she gets out. And that is played as the right thing to do. She isn’t punished for it or made to feel bad about ‘abandoning her family’. There isn’t an underlying ‘but they’re your family and you have to love them’ or ‘they’re your family and they love you even if they don’t show it well or do hurtful things’ message of the kind that I see OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER in media. Matilda gets out and lives happily ever after because of it.

We need a million more movies like this to counter the metric shit ton of movies that directly counter this message.

[glamaphonic]

 #sometimes the family you start with isn’t a good one #but you can find your own #family is not absolute #blood is not absolute

[marzipanandminutiae]

not to mention, Miss Honey is an abuse survivor herself (and in the book, she’s only 23 years old)

they both got out. they both became each other’s happy ending.

[it-doesnt-make-sense]

Something I’ve found interesting about Roald Dahl’s books is that the villains are NEVER EVER redeemed. The happy endings aren’t ever achieved by fixing bad people, they’re achieved through realising that you’re being treated badly, standing up for yourself and getting the hell out of there.

Roald Dahl understood that some people are just bad people and in the end, you must be kind to yourself.

[mendedhope]

This. THIS.

[mendedhope]

Mental Health Worker PSA

Not all mental health workers are created equal or trained the same.

There are bad therapists, psychiatrists, etc. There are mental health workers who are good enough but who are too new to handle severe cases, whose own stuff may be too close to yours, or whose style just doesn’t mesh with yours.

As a mental health worker who trains others on the regular, there is no shame in firing your therapist/etc. There is no shame in asking to see a different worker in the same practice. There is no shame in trying a new practice.

If something just doesn’t feel right, go.

[mendedhope]

I accidentally was appointed as leader of a support group for special needs parents (mainly autism families) today.

[caricaketures]

new meme

google image search ‘[your name] cake’

i’ll start:

[oysters-aint-for-me]

I tried….but apparently there’s a news anchor in Florida literally named Shannon Cake lmao

[foster-queer-deactivated2019030]

(The Barney is actually representative of existential dread)

[on-the-precipice]

[mendedhope]

Kudos if you get my name from this.

[ka3l]

just go enjoy your life, 

[confessionsofaclinicalcouns-blog]

Thought Stopping at it’s finest

[mendedhope]

This speaks to me on a personal level.

[docholligay]

Doc, what are the top five items food banks LOVE to receive? I'm doing a collection soon and want to ask for specifics.

MONEY. WE WANT MONEY. MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY. WE CAN DO SO MUCH WITH IT. WE HAVE ACCESS TO DEALS YOU COULD NEVER. MONEY

That aside.

 I’m only going to talk about food items but if your food bank takes personal items, a lot of times diapers, feminine hygiene products, etc, are very very welcome. 

1) Canned chicken and beef 

looooooove this stuff. It’s expensive, it lasts forever, it tastes good and it can be used a variety of ways. This stuff is fucking catnip to food banks, it’s so hard for us to provide proteins. 

2) Fancy nut butters

Peanut butter is a standby for food banks as a shelf-stable inexpensive protein, but if we have a family with a kid with a peanut allergy that’s not going to work. Non-peanut butters are expensive and it’s something we hardly ever see donated. (we also like peanut butter, but that’s easier for us to buy ourselves than non-peanut butters)

3) Canned or packaged tuna

You may notice a trend here in shelf-stable proteins. And yeah. That’s basically it, so I’m not going to keep harping on it. But this stuff is a godsend. 

4) Easy breakfast things for kids (Granola bars, instant oatmeal, and the like) 

Whatever Donald Trump tells you, most people who get food from food banks are actually working their asses off and so they have to leave Obama to raise their baby or whatever, and they don’t have a lot of time in the morning. Things like this that kids can make for themselves are expensive. (Another trend you may be noticing–donate shit that costs a lot of money. That helps us more than all the shitty green bean cans in the world) But they are so helpful for busy working families where the parents may not have a set schedule and sometimes little Amanda is making her own breakfast before she runs off to school. Don’t let kids go to school hungry. 

5) Shelf-stable juice

This is one people never think of! But if you show up with a bunch of (preferably reduced sugar stuff) bottles of juice at my door, oh man, you are gonna get so many check mark and okay hand emoticons. This stuff is great for kids, and it doesn’t require refrigeration until it’s opened, so it works great for food drives. 

[kesonafyren]

But seriously, give money

And it’s way better food, too, anything you get prepackaged has A TON of sugar and/or salt in it…collecting cans may be more exciting than writing a check, but if the point is to help people, the check is going to get a lot more done

[pennie-dreadful]

Yoooooo heads up for those of you with kids, I know this time of year schools start holding canned food drives so keep this in mind if you’re able to give.

[kyraneko]

collecting cans may be more exciting than writing a check, but if the point is to help people, the check is going to get a lot more done .

hint: the point should be to help people.

[1953swan]

fun twilight activity: find the name of your very own demon baby by mashing together your grandmothers’ names

rb with yours, mine is carginia

[meowlizziemixer]

Normine or Nadorma… Hmm

[atlemont]

Phylyn

Evellis

[northland-parenting-deactivated]

My actual name is my grandmothers’ names mashed together so …

[peaceloveandfostercare]

Marelda (should of named Margot this lol)

Felgaret (terrible)

[mendedhope]

Brendarbara 😂 or Barbarenda

[mendedhope]

2 Weeks Tomorrow

Sassafrass and Baby MoMo’s Mom is still MIA in the way of updating her Facebook with random memes, but not contacting the caseworker about her kids. This part kills me.

The girls were also horrendously behind on their vaccines so we’re working to get that caught up. These precious littles are so resilient.

MoMo smiles sooo much and Sassafrass came to me for comfort today when she got upset.

They don’t look like the same kids we picked up.

[mendedhope]

My wife played me a podcast about Diptheria at the same time I’m fighting off a cold. Now my anxiety is awake and telling me I’m dying because I’ve never had a TDAP booster and why aren’t adult immunization schedules a widely used thing??!

[lost-carcosa]

[astrologicallynamedpets]

800+ days in care

No end in sight.

(Why yes I have been trying to pretend foster care isn’t as much of a presence in my life and it has recently pulled a “bitch u thought”, why do you ask?)

(Edit: the boys no longer in my care are at 1488 so… yeah.)

[fosterem]

1,049 days + counting.

[predictablyunpredictablelife]

793. Zero sense of urgency. 

[vtergrrrl]

This is what terrifies me.

[mendedhope]

Our oldest two were adopted on day 1,078.

Holtzy is at 652 and things just hit the brakes.