As you know, Sunday is Easter. Sammy will not be home for Easter. With his new placement he has a restriction of at least 30 days before he is allowed to leave the grounds of where he is at. We may not even pick him up and go to lunch.

Instead we are traveling to visit him tomorrow after Hannah does an Easter egg hunt. His placement is over 90 minutes away, so it is not a quick or easy trip for a visit.

Sammy has spent a couple of holidays away from home, but they have not really been “major” holidays. There were a couple of Thanksgivings where he was in juvenile detention, and a Christmas that he spent in his first residential treatment center. We did go visit him for those holidays, but other than that we have at least been able to take him to lunch or he has come home.

If this is your first holiday with a child in out of home placement, or while you are anticipating a placement, it can be very hard to handle. Feelings of loneliness, emptiness, anger and failure can all replace the joy of the holidays. If you’re not spending time with family, the feelings can be even worse.

How do you handle the emotions?

Do what YOU want to do – If visiting your child is stressful, don’t visit on the holiday. We are doing a visit the day before so that we can enjoy Easter with Hannah. We are going to lunch at our favorite restaurant and planning a relaxing day.

Do something for yourself – The holidays before Hannah joined us and Sammy was not with us were very hard to handle. Many times we would go to a movie, or find something else to do that we were not normally able to do.

Get together with other parents or potential parents – Chances are you met someone during your pre-adoption classes that you connected with, or would like to get to know better. Invite them to your home for a meal, a cocktail, or whatever might help you.

Allow yourself your feelings – Don’t ignore your feelings, you have every right to them. These days are hard and trying to pretend you don’t feel what you’re feeling isn’t going to help anyone. Set a time limit and allow yourself to grieve or be angry. When the time is up, move on and try to find a way to have some joy in the day.

Turn to your faith and church family – Because my family is not a part of our lives anymore and my in-laws live in Texas, we don’t have anywhere else to be. Easter day used to be big in our house. We hosted my mother’s side of the family, which meant 35+ people in our home, cooking, cleaning, planning games for the kids, etc. Knowing that we didn’t have any place to go our church invited us to join Easter Sunday brunch with the mixed choir. Church members cooked all the food and our family served it to the choir members. This provided us with the best of both worlds. I got to mingle with my church family and play hostess as I did with my biological family, but I didn’t have all the work involved. The gratitude from the choir filled our hearts and made it worth it.

Whatever you do, have a safe and blessed Easter.

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