Celebrating Pride with Marriage Equality - History Made June 26th 2015

Fostering Rainbows: When Your World is in CYA Mode

It is inevitable that you will find yourself surrounded by professionals in CYA mode as a foster parent. You will want to have a plan for dealing with this situation and that is what we’ll discuss here.

As a foster parent you operate in a world of multiple agencies, institutions and professionals for each of your kids. If you have multiple placements you could be dealing with 10 or more providers. The elephant in the room is that they all have agendas and it may not be the best interest of the child.

 Foster parents, especially LGBT foster parents, need to know the landscape of the professional world you are operating in. You may think you have an LGBT friendly, supportive environment, but is it really? While working with a generally LGBT supportive agency several years ago, my partner and I received a new placement. The child came with a new case worker, we hadn’t met before. We got off to a rocky start when at an early home visit she asked which of us was the mom. This and other similar incidents led to a challenging relationship for the entire multi-year placement.

You need to understand the environment you as an LGBT foster parent are in so you can prepare for any situation, including when everyone around you is in CYA mode.

The Plan

1. Always come from the child’s best interest. It is all about creating a family where the child can thrive not just survive. Most youth in foster care operate in survival mode, either because of the trauma that brought them into care or the trauma inflicted by the system. Unless your safety is threatened it is not about you, it’s about what is best for the kiddo.

2. Be prepared to be unpopular. Most, if not all, pre-service training for foster parents includes that you are an advocate for the children in your care. The agendas mentioned earlier get in the way of this in reality. You will find individual professionals or agencies that prefer you just keep quiet and do as you’re told. If you are looking for awards or appreciation you may be disappointed.

3. Find an alley or allies, you’ll need them. You will be more effective as a foster parent with professional allies. This is especially true as an LGBT foster parent since you also have the challenge of navigating the gay issues in addition to the child issues. Your child’s guardian ad litum, youth attorney, therapist or a social worker can be excellent allies. Who makes a good ally often depends on the issue you are addressing. Your allies will change given the situation.

4. Call them out, respectfully. You will need to point out the elephant in the room. In order to get everyone back on to what is in the best interest of your child you have to call out that they, and possible you, are in CYA mode. Remind everyone that what’s important is the child’s best interest and ask everyone to agree to let go of any other agenda they have.

5. Think outside the box, that’s where solutions are. One of my favorite lines is bureaucrats and judges shouldn’t raise kids. The biggest reason is they operate from standard operating procedures (SOP). There is no such thing as a standard kid, each child is unique so SOP often doesn’t work. You will often have to guide the professionals to a discussion of more creative solutions to a situation than the ones they have always used. This is another thing that effects #2 above. If the SOP hasn’t worked, why keep doing it? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Unfortunately, the foster care system has a lot of insanity.

6. Advocate. Once you have a solution you will need to be a fierce advocate for your child’s best interest and the solution that supports it. Youth in foster care are sometimes not directly involved in discussions that effect their lives so your advocacy is imperative to their thriving futures.

When your world goes into CYA mode, and it will, you now have a plan. If you see something you are not comfortable doing, you have identified a continuing education opportunity.

My New Theme Song?

Getting In The Spirit

Our Tragic History with Pies

Thanksgiving conjures up memories of holidays past and our tragic history with pies. My family has had our moments with holiday pies, I'll share the two most memorable here.

For years, when we lived in the Tampa Bay area, mom and I would share Thanksgiving with my best friend, Randy, and his family. One year, I, who had never made a pie before, took on the challenge of making the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner. No pressure. It all seemed simple enough and the pie looked perfect when it came out of the oven. I was pleased, thought I had done well, at least until dinner. The pie was horrible, it had enough cloves to choke a Clydesdale from Busch Gardens. What had I done wrong? It seems I had made only one mistake, but it was a biggy. I had confused my tibbles and my tisps, tablespoons and teaspoons. The recipe, as I recall, called for 1 or 2 teaspoons (tsp) of cloves, I apparently put in tablespoons (tbls). It was an annual holiday reminder for years to come, about the time I mixed up the tibbles and tisps.

The flaming Thanksgiving was my Grandfather's doing, thank god, at least I can't be harassed for it. My mother had left the holiday pies on top of the stove in aluminum tins. Grandpa went to boil water for his morning prunes, at least I think that was what it was for, and lit the wrong burner. He walked away to do something. Several minutes later the smoke detector went off. We rushed to the kitchen to find a flaming pumpkin pie and a room filled with smoke. My quick thinking, actually the only one of us thinking, sister grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the pie out. Everything turned out well and we all, except Grandpa, laughed about it for years after. However, we never mentioned it to Grandpa's face though.

So, this is why, along with the fact that he is better at baking, I let Richard make all our pies.

 

Called to Have an Impact – Fostering Rainbows

As I stumble into the 2014 holiday season and year-end review process season, I am feeling the least fulfilled I have in a long time. The phrase, “is this all there is?” comes to mind.  

 

I’ve learned a great deal in the last few years.  The big lesson for 2014 appears to be I am called to have an impact.  I have a good job with a good company that pays reasonably well and provides fabulous health coverage, but I struggle.  I struggle with feeling inadequate, with feeling I am letting people down, with the desire to be happy and leave my mark.  Is it that I turned 54 and the end of tunnel is closer than the beginning, is it childhood trauma coming back to haunt me or is it something else?  Whatever it is, it is time to move past it.

How to move past it?  Therapy? I have done that, it is past focused, historical and those lessons have been learned.  At least I think they have. Library therapy, aka another self-help book, been there done that too.  Let’s be real, I know what I need to do.  I need to stop hiding, being afraid of failure, being afraid of success and just do it.  I need to get back to doing those things I can to have an impact and help make the world a better place.  I’ve done it before.  Time to stop letting one failure and other people’s opinions paralyze me from being my best self.

I had an idea a year ago that I haven’t really pursued, Fostering Rainbows, coaching LGBT parents and foster parents, creating trainings for foster care agencies on LGBT issues and kids and expanding the LGBT movement beyond marriage equality to other issues like foster care, food insecurity and us aging queens.  Today, for reasons unknown to me now, this became a much bigger priority, driver in my life.

One thing that gives me joy is PFLAG Thief River Falls.  It is the one thing I’ve done this year that feels impactful.  I created something from nothing and now a small group of fabulously talented and committed people are changing things. This will be my inspiration as I use my year-end process to let go of 2014 and create a spectacular 2015.

No more drama driven life.

Focal Points

http://www.renaissancesouls.com/

I'm currently reading, or more accurately, working the book Renaissance Soul. A key trait of a Renaissance Soul (RS) is that we have an abundance of interests, ideas and passions. We struggle to manage them all while attempting to fit into the world's definition of success.  Traditional success usually involves a career in one or two fields over the course of a lifetime and the significant monetary rewards yields.  Successful people have fancy titles, nice cars, big houses and other material trappings, right? Well, no, a Renaissance Soul defines success differently and often follows a passion for a relatively short period of time but achieves significant satisfaction. An RS often has many "careers" and defines success as satisfaction with life or impact on the world vs title and material trappings.

One of the tools Margaret Lobenstine provides is the "Focal Point Sampler" which is like an ice cream sampler or the more adult example, a wine flight.  You select several passions to focus on for a period of time.  The period of time is undetermined, you just focus on the "samples" until it feels like time to change flavors.  I have created my first "Focal Point Sampler" or "Focal Point Flight".  The "flavors" are: LGBT Issues, Learning New Things, Creating Something, Spirituality and Living With Diabetes.

Now that I have the "flavors" to sample, let's see what kind of sundae I can imagine.

Martha Wash's It's My Time..... Inspiration I Need!

It's My Time Lyrics

I can see it clear

I'm getting close

I'm almost there

It's indescribable

It's my time to shine

It's my time

We all have dreams

We all have goals

With laughter and tears,

That's what we're living for

It's my time to shine

It's my time

Keep on walking your own path

Never let anyone hold you back

When you feel like giving in,

You get right up and try again and again

Be who you are

And you will go far

There's a place for everyone to be a star

It's my time to shine

It's my time

Keep on walking your own path

Never let anyone hold you back

When you feel like giving in,

You get right up and try again and again

It's my time (ohhh!)

It's my time (yes it is)

It's my time (ohhh!)

It's my time (yeah!)

I can see it clear

I'm getting close

I'm almost there

It's indescribable

It's my time to shine

It's my time

Keep on walking your own path

Never let anyone hold you back

When you feel like giving in,

You get right up and try again and again

It's my time

My time

It's my time

My time

Lyrics by Helena Johansson

Thief River Falls PFLAG Chapter Forming

Let's Go To Houston!

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