Holidays, Part Deux

I suppose having two posts for the holidays makes sense.  It's an important time of year, and a time when family is even more on the mind than usual.

Did you know that one of the biggest problems facing kids in foster care is aging out of the system?  Actually turning eighteen, or in some states twenty-one, without a permanent adoptive family being found for them?

We have this idea that the need for parents stops at eighteen.  Certainly a lot of eighteen year olds would agree with that statement.  And maybe the need for parenting does stop then, or around then, or even before then.  I mean, I remember my teenage years and how I thought I was perfectly able to deal with most of the things happening in my world.  Looking back on it, I was able to deal pretty well, too.  But you know why?  Because I had a loving family to support me in my decisions.  Sure, by fifteen I was pretty independent.  My mother was more of a roommate than a parent in a lot of ways.  But she was still there, and I knew she would always have my back.  Always.

Kids aging out of the foster care system might be capable.  They might be independent.  They might manage pretty well.  But they don't have a family.

They don't have a place to go for holidays, or someone to call for advice when they're feeling lost and alone.  I can't even imagine what that's like.

The closest I've ever been was the Thanksgiving of my junior year of college when I was working retail so I didn't have time off on Black Friday to go home to see my family.  It was the year my mother met the man who has since become my step-father.  I spent that Thanksgiving alone.  It was depressing as hell.  Much as I love cranberry sauce from a can, and as many years as it's been on our Thanksgiving table, neatly cut along the fancy can-lines, it's different when you're facing it alone paired with a turkey sandwich.  I didn't have a phone that month, either.  It was a horrible weekend that even now, some fifteen or so years later, sticks out in my memory as one of the low points of my twenties.  And that was knowing that it was just the once, just bad circumstances.

Sure, I don't get home to see my family as much as I'd like.  Traveling to see them requires a combination of time off from work, extra money to afford the gas/food/fun, and a dog sitter.  Rarely do those things all align perfectly to allow me to travel.  But I still know they're there.  I know they think of me and love me.  And I've made my own family, too.  Friends are, after all, the family we choose.  Even when I don't get home, I know I'm not alone.

Like I said, I can't even imagine what that's truly like.

So on this second to last day of Yule, I'd like to make my wish.  I won't call it a Christmas wish, since I don't celebrate that holiday.  Still, I make it in that spirit, and it isn't entirely for me, so maybe the gods will smile on it.  Mother Holle, who loved children, even those who weren't hers, watch out for the ones with no family to protect them.  And if You're so inclined, maybe send one my way this year?