Photo cred: Sharon McCutcheon
Dec 23rd, 1997 was the day my life was saved. It isn’t the day I went into foster care, but It’s the day I was placed with the foster family that would later adopt me, and it marks the end of a period of life defined by homelessness, physical/emotional abuse and food insecurity.
That’s how I usually start my life story. It’s a way to take people back into the past and tell them that regardless of the horrible things they’re about to hear, it all works out in the end. I’ve been framing my story like that for years because we all love a happy ending, myself included. Moreover, I’ve been telling my story like that because I need a happy ending. I needed one in December of ‘97, and in many ways I’m still searching for one now.
Truthfully, as with most of the binaries we use to frame our lives, this one is a farce. It represents a happy ending and a very real death. When I was placed in foster care, my life was both saved and irrevocably lost.
You may be wondering what I had to lose, and that’s a fair question.
I had a small social circle which included my best friend Brandon who I served my first detention with. There was a girl named Montana who was cool, but snitched on Brandon and I for fighting which is why we got detention in the first place. I had my first crush on a red-headed girl I rode the bus with, and a few other kids I’d met at the homeless shelter. I also had two high school aged mentors that took me to Notre Dame games, and gave me a glimpse of life very different from my own. It wasn’t a lot, but as far as I can tell these were the first and only friends I’d ever had.
It’s deeper than that though. To understand what I lost, you have to understand that it’s less about what I had or didn’t have and more about what I knew, what I was used to; had adapted to. There is a warped sense of security, or at least predictability, when we’re dealing with what we know however terrible it may be. Change and transition flip that on its head and leave us feeling vulnerable, exposed, and uncertain. I think that’s one of the reasons so many people resist change, even change that benefits them. We crave predictability and the learned security that comes with it.
What had 9 y/o me learned at that point? I learned how to survive; how to read people for the slightest signal that they might be dangerous or leave me. I still carry these lessons with me. I’ll never forget them. They kept me alive. Or perhaps that is yet another story I tell myself, so I don’t have to let those remnants go.
I also had my parents. Despite her flaws, I loved my mom dearly, and I still do. I don’t know if I loved my stepdad, but I felt a warped sense of loyalty to him. He was the only father I remembered. That was my world. The day I went into foster care, that world was gone. It had been taken, no, ripped from me without my consent. What little security my life had went up in flames the moment my parents left that shelter without us. For the first time I could ever remember, I didn’t know what to do. I remember sitting on some cold metal bleachers with a case worker, trying to rap my mind around what had happened, and how I would survive.
I think I died that day, and was resurrected sometime later. Every Christmas since then I’ve focused on the resurrection, but this year I’m honoring the death too.
As I live into this holiday season, I’m reflecting on death and life. I’m remembering the loss. I’m feeling the grief. I’m honoring my death. None of that changes the fact that my life was saved. It absolutely was, but it was lost too.
Two things can be true at once. As you move through this holiday season, do some reflection with me.
What in your past or present deserves celebration?
What deserves remembrance?
What deserves mourning?
Where do you need to let go of the binary, and accept the both/and of life?
Where have you experienced both death and resurrection?