Once you get into the world of foster care and adoption, it becomes difficult to have friends who are not living the same type of life. The type of things that we deal with are so foreign to “normal” parents that you can tend to shy away from friends you used to find great comfort in.

The other night I had dinner with some of my best friends from high school. We have known each other for more than twenty years and have seen each other through the hardest moments of our lives. These friends have seen me through my abuse investigation, my struggles with Sammy, my depression over losing my kids, and my joy over adding Hannah to our home.
We have been through infertility treatments and decisions together, miscarriages, family troubles, and all the things that normally occur in life. My life wouldn’t be the same without them, even if we don’t see each other very often because of hectic lives with our kids.

As hard as it may seem, keeping friends who have nothing to do with adoption or foster care can be crucial to your own sanity. While having dinner with my friends, I actually discussed very little about my life, my family and my kids. My friends know how much we have been through, and we e-mail often, so they’re aware of what’s going on, but the chance to talk about things that had nothing to do with my kids, and to hear what was going on in my friends’ lives was wonderful. For a brief time, I was just me.

This is one of the hard parts of this type of parenting; remembering who you are apart from your kids. Foster parenting and special needs parenting really changes your life and the focus is most certainly on the kids. So much of your schedule and your conversations revolve around child care and the issues with your children, it’s hard to remember that you are a person.

Take the time to nurture those “normal” relationships even if it seems like you have nothing in common anymore. You may discover that you enjoy this time not talking about your kids.

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