By: Julie Smith
The thing I love most about my role at Leadership Austin is helping people connect with their “why.” Why are you here? What is most important to you? How do you follow your passion, create purpose and foster things you want to see in the world?
It was in following my own passion and purpose that brought me to this work, and helping others to do the same brings me great joy. For almost seven years now I’ve had the incredible privilege of getting to know so many amazing “why” stories and the incredible people behind those stories. Whether you’ve gone through our programs during my time here or before I joined the staff, your story has in some way had an impact on me. That’s the power of community work. We all impact each other in ways we may never know.
I began a personal journey a couple of years ago that was very much fueled by a deep passion inside of me. When I started the process to become a foster parent so many of you were there to provide your encouragement and support. When the day arrived that I officially became a mom, everything I knew about how profoundly people can make an impact on one another intensified beyond my expectations. A feisty and courageous little human being came into my home and my whole world changed.
I have never felt more connected to my “why” than when I took my first placement. It was around 1:00 am on a Friday in September of 2017 when she arrived. She was 4 years old and sleeping on the caseworker’s shoulder when they brought her to me. Several hours later she woke up in a place she’d never been before, and so did I. We were both terrified but there was an immediate love between us that I will never forget. As I’m sure is the case with any new parent, there have been so many terrifying “I’ve never been here before” moments for me along the way. Many of them stick in my mind because I either handled them beautifully or horribly, and I’m sure there are even more that I’ve already forgotten. Hearing her sweet little voice call out when she woke up – “Hello?” – is certainly a moment I can’t imagine ever forgetting. “Amazing A” was only with me for a couple weeks (17 days to be exact), but that little girl made me a mom and she will be in my heart forever.
A couple months later I answered the call for my second placement. Again, I was abruptly awoken to a new reality. It was 3:00 am and they needed a home for an 18-month-old little boy. With emergency placements that’s often about all of the information you get – age and gender. The rest of the call remains a little fuzzy as I was still half asleep, but I do remember them telling me he had very young parents. Within about an hour he was in my home, neither of us having any idea what to think of each other or any idea of how important we would become in each other’s lives.
So many people tell me “I could never do that. I would get too attached.” My response to this is always, “That’s exactly what these children need.” I made a promise that I would love every child that comes into my home as if they were my own for as long as they need me. I want them to have someone who is heartbroken to think of life without them. The ability do this, to love and to lose, was something I knew I had the capacity to do.
To be very honest, one of the fears I had going into foster parenting was almost the exact opposite. What if a child was with me longer than I could handle it? There is almost no way of knowing how long these kids will be with you when you say yes to the call. I’m really glad I didn’t know ahead of time how uncertain things would be with “Little J” because I don’t know if I would have said yes. And if fear had gotten in the way, I would not have had the chance to learn that we as humans are capable of much more than we realize and that my capacity for love was deeper than I ever imagined.
A couple days into the placement I was told that “J” would be with me for a few weeks while they worked on approving a family member for him to live with. Those weeks turned into months and eventually a full year went by. A few days before Christmas, 386 days after he’d first come to my home, Little J (now a 2 ½-year-old) was reunited with his biological parents.
Reunification has been incredibly hard and incredibly beautiful. You hear a lot about the celebration of foster kids being adopted, but we don’t often hear the stories of reunification. Someone recently shared this post with me and it brought me to tears because it is so true to what I’m going through. There are tears on my keyboard as I share this with you now. It’s been almost two months since J left and the pain is still very strong. But it is a purposeful pain.
I had no idea that those “young parents” I was told about when I got the call for J would become such a big part of my life. As we packed up their car on reunification day with all of J’s stuff we all hugged, said I love you, and celebrated the joining of our families. Did I feel confident that they were ready and that J was going to have the best life possible with them? Was I happy and proud of them? Was I deeply sad about not having J in my life every day but grateful that I would stay connected with him? Those are all very complicated questions with even more complicated answers that I’m still working through, and probably will be for a while. Maybe even forever.
The year that J was with me was the most rewarding year of my life. It was also the hardest year of my life. And it was by far the most transformative year of my life. My “why” has been deepened beyond what I thought was even possible, and my world will never be the same. I’m taking some time to heal before I open up for my next placement and in the interim have had the opportunity to do a lot of reflecting.
The deep personal growth that I experienced while J was with me, and the growth I continue to experience now that he’s not, is very clearly guiding me to my next big thing. While I will continue to follow this passion through fostering more children, I also want to combine my experience as a foster parent with everything that I’ve learned over the last seven years at Leadership Austin.
In all of our programs we talk about using your passion to create the world you want to live in and leveraging your power to lead systems level change. It has become clear for me that the foster care system is where I will use my passion and my power. I look forward to sharing more with you over the next few months about what that means. I’m eternally grateful for my time on staff at Leadership Austin and look forward to staying connected as an alumna. You have all been part of fostering my “why,” and I know you will continue to guide and support me as I set out on this new endeavor. It is with immense gratitude that I get to share this journey with you.