I remember sitting in the foster parent training before our first placement, imagining the story ahead of us.
I had a version of it in my head — hazy around the details, but clear in shape. A child would come. We would love them fiercely. There would be hard moments, sure, but we’d rise to meet them. And eventually, whether through reunification or adoption, there would be resolution. A chapter that closed with something that felt complete.
That’s not how it went.
I imagine you might be nodding right now. Because if you’ve been in the foster care world for more than five minutes, you know: the story rarely goes how you thought it would.
Maybe you imagined reunification would feel more peaceful. Maybe you imagined the adoption would feel like pure celebration, instead of grief mixed with joy. Maybe you imagined you’d have more time, more clarity, more certainty. Maybe you imagined you wouldn’t still be carrying this weight years later.
This post is for you — for all of us — who are living in the gap between what we imagined and what actually happened.
Grieving What Could Have Been
There’s a specific kind of grief that comes with foster care and adoption. It’s not clean. It doesn’t follow the stages you read about in books.
It’s the grief of what could have been.
You grieve the version of events where the system worked faster, or better, or made different decisions. You grieve the childhood your child didn’t get to have. You grieve your own naivety — the version of yourself who didn’t yet know how hard this would be. You grieve the relationships you imagined building with biological families that never materialized, or fractured, or became something far more complicated than you could have anticipated.
And sometimes, if you’re honest, you grieve the life you might have had if you’d never said yes.
This kind of grief doesn’t mean you regret the path you’re on. It doesn’t mean you love your child any less. It just means you’re human. And you’re holding something heavy.
One of the hardest parts of foster care grief is that it often goes unwitnessed. People around you may not understand it. They might say things like, “But everything worked out,” or “At least they’re safe now,” without realizing how much those words sting.
Because you’re not grieving the outcome. You’re grieving the road it took to get here. You’re grieving the scars your child carries. You’re grieving the parts of yourself that got worn down along the way.
This grief deserves space. It deserves acknowledgment. You don’t have to rush through it or paste gratitude over it. You’re allowed to feel the weight of what could have been, even while you’re grateful for what is.
Accepting What Is
Acceptance sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? It sounds like a destination — somewhere you arrive after doing the hard work of processing, and then you get to rest.
But I’ve learned that acceptance in foster care isn’t a destination. It’s a daily practice. Sometimes an hourly one.
Accepting what is doesn’t mean you’re okay with everything that happened. It doesn’t mean the system is fair, or that your child’s early experiences were acceptable, or that the hard things were “meant to be.”
It just means: this is what’s true right now. This is where we are.
There’s a surrender in that — not to passivity, but to reality. You stop fighting the should-have-beens and start working with what actually is. You stop waiting for the version of your family that exists only in your imagination and start showing up for the one that’s sitting at your kitchen table.
That might sound simple, but it’s not. Because every time you accept what is, you also have to let go of what isn’t. And that letting go is its own grief.
Acceptance doesn’t mean the story is finished. It just means you’re willing to be in the story that’s actually unfolding — even when it’s messier and harder than the one you planned.
Holding Both Hope and Disappointment
If there’s one skill foster and adoptive parents learn to master, it’s this: holding two truths at the same time.
You can be deeply grateful for your child and still feel exhausted by the challenges of parenting them. You can celebrate reunification as the goal of foster care and still feel your heart break when it happens. You can believe in healing and still see the scars.
Hope and disappointment aren’t opposites. They live side by side, tangled together, refusing to separate.
This is confusing for people who haven’t lived it. They want you to pick a lane. Are you happy or sad? Is this working or isn’t it? But you know the answer is yes. Both. Always both.
The temptation is to collapse into one or the other — to become so cynical that you lose sight of hope, or so relentlessly positive that you never let yourself grieve. But the work is to stay in the middle. To hold both.
I’ve found that this is where faith becomes essential. Not the kind of faith that gives easy answers, but the kind that holds you in the tension. The kind that says: I don’t understand this, but I trust that I am not alone in it.
There’s a verse I come back to often — “We walk by faith, not by sight.” For a long time, I thought that meant believing in a future I couldn’t see. But now I think it also means trusting in a present I can’t fully understand. Walking forward even when the path doesn’t make sense yet.
You don’t have to have it figured out. You just have to keep walking.
How to Stay Present When Your Heart Is Pulled in Different Directions
One of the hardest things about foster and adoptive parenting is the constant pull of your attention.
Your heart is with the child in front of you — but also with the child who left. With the biological family you’re navigating. With the trauma your child experienced before they ever met you. With your other kids, your spouse, yourself.
It’s easy to live in the past, replaying what could have gone differently. It’s easy to live in the future, worrying about what comes next. It’s much harder to be here, now.
But your child needs you here. And honestly? So do you.
Staying present doesn’t mean ignoring the pain. It means making small choices to anchor yourself in this moment, even when your nervous system wants to pull you somewhere else.
It might look like pausing before you react. Taking a breath. Feeling your feet on the floor. Noticing the way your child’s hand feels in yours — the smallness of it, the warmth.
It might look like letting go of the to-do list for five minutes and just being with whoever is in front of you. Not fixing. Not planning. Just being.
And it might look like acknowledging, gently, when you’re not present — when you’ve drifted into worry or grief or overwhelm — and guiding yourself back without judgment.
This isn’t something you do once. It’s something you practice. Over and over. For as long as you’re on this journey.
Why This Work Is Lifelong
I used to think there would be a point where I had it figured out.
A point where the grief was processed, the challenges were manageable, and I could finally feel like I was doing this well. Where I’d look back at the hard years and feel only gratitude.
That point hasn’t come. And I’m starting to accept that it may never come — at least, not the way I imagined it.
Because this work is lifelong.
The grief shifts, but it doesn’t disappear. The challenges change shape, but they don’t vanish. The growth is real, but it’s never finished.
And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe the goal was never to arrive. Maybe it was always to keep showing up. To keep loving, even when it’s hard. To keep healing, one small piece at a time. To keep choosing hope, even when disappointment is sitting right beside it.
You’re not behind. You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just in the middle of a story that’s longer and more complicated than you ever expected.
And you’re not alone in it.
If your story didn’t go how you thought it would — welcome. You’re in good company here. We’re all just figuring it out as we go, one day at a time.
And that’s enough.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. What did you imagine your story would look like? Where are you finding hope today?
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