This Christmas I long for a perfect world.

A world where kids don’t need foster care. Where kids are raised by healthy parents, who can care for them and nurture them and protect them. For a world where generational trauma doesn’t exist and when a kid acts up its just because they are a kid not because of what they have seen or what has been done to them. I long for a world where kids can attach to people and not have diagnoses because so many horrible things have happened to them that they don’t know how to cope with their world. Even when they don’t remember their little bodies do. I long for a world where foster parents aren’t needed and teams don’t have to decide what’s best for children (where do they live, who do they live with) as they dissect their behaviors to try to understand and help them.

Today I’m struggling with the idea that I get a say so into anyone else's life, especially a kid's life. Of course I try, we try, to do right by them, to treat them kindly, show we love them unconditionally, get them what they need and some of what they want. But sometimes decisions are made without us and sometimes decisions are made by us. We don’t know what the future holds, we don’t know who they will become, but we try to make the right decision for them and for our family. Some of those decisions are really hard. They are decisions that are against our human nature, they are unnatural and unfair and in a perfect world they wouldn’t have to be made at all. In our family we always say we’re just trying to make the next right decision. We don’t always get it right but gosh do we try and even when it feels like the next right decision, it can still break your heart.

Our world isn’t a fair one and that shouldn’t be true to a child. They shouldn't feel like they have to hide their feelings to protect themselves or be hurt to the point of being jaded. They should feel the magic of being a kid. They should be able to experience awe and wonder and delight and imagination.

Foster care is messy. It’s unnatural. It’s unfair. It causes all the feelings all the time all at once. Today I long for a perfect world. A world of love, hope, kindness, a place where everyone has what they need and some of what they want.

Dakota.