A couple of weeks ago I filled out the form on the Children’s Aid Society website indicating an interest to become a foster home. They sent back a message checking in with me, asking whether I was aware of the different religious and cultural based foster agencies in the city, and confirmed whether we wanted to proceed with them (we do).

So now we wait. Our next step is arranging a mutually amicable phone conversation - which I’m already nervous about, but also ready to do anytime. I’m not sure what the questions will be, but we’ll see! I am excited. I am nervous. I am curious.

Even before I had our son I knew that one day I wanted to foster or adopt. I feel like our little family is perfect just the way it is, but I think that feeling would apply no matter what. But I would like to be part of helping kids have a safe supportive home while their parents or families are working through some stuff. So hopefully we get approved to proceed, or realize early on (before being placed with a child) that it’s really not for us - either through talking with more foster parents, or as we go through the training.

I feel like I’m in that strange middle space where I’m filled with what ifs and too much information and simultaneously not enough information. I’m reading people’s experiences, and reading people’s opinions, and blogs and all of that, but I still don’t know what it will be like. Before becoming a parent, I read a bunch of people’s experiences, I played with the idea in my head, I consumed all the information I could handle, and while that helped prepare me, everything changed the moment we actually met our son. That said, I realize previous experience should remind me to remain flexible and curious.

The thing I’m finding surprisingly difficult is finding secular support communities for fostering, even locally. Perhaps we’ll find it while we’re actually doing things, but perhaps we will have to build our own. (though I am already getting ahead of myself.)

I’m hoping to post something regularly about the process and what we’re learning.