Someone told me once, that the world of foster care was a tree, with branches that shoot off in a million directions. Each of those branches were meant to represent the many, many areas of foster care that I could cover with the magazine. I’ve chopped. I’ve observed. I’ve counted branches. I haven’t even made a dent.
I’m (we, you and I) nearing nine years in circulation. I’ll spare you the whole “I can’t believe it” spiel, even though it’s true, you’ve read it before in this magazine.
I mention the time in circulation to stress just how little of foster care I’ve actually covered. Maybe 5%. My stuff has been integrated into college curriculum, but I haven’t covered nearly everything.
There is so much I have yet to bring to you all.
I maybe should have prefaced all this by mentioning that I have held back or tossed out dozens of articles, almost all penned by me. Either way they went nowhere in the end, or I thought someone had done a better job on the subject.
Here’s an example; Remember Davion Only? He was that young man in Florida who walked into a church and asked for a family. He got one! I went to Florida to meet them all. We got along famously, had a nice interview and visit, I even wrote it up. Wasn’t as good as everyone else’s articles on them.
The Hart Family who tragically went over the road’s edge on California’s famed Pacific Coast Highway? The kids who passed were adopted from care. I wrote that one as well. It was such a complicated case, I want sure I did the complexity of it all in my piece. Didn’t release it.
Family First Act? Been writing it for somewhere near 4 months will it see daylight? Maybe.
The problem isn’t a lack of belief in my abilities, its just, I’m strong enough to know when someone else has put out better work. Not lack of effort, someone else was just better.
But then I got to thinking, maybe not all of you have seen those better reports or maybe count on my style of relaying information, and with that in mind, maybe I should release them, regardless of my thoughts on if someone else did it better?
So that’s what I’ll do. Not all at once, mind you. I’ll roll them out slow. The downside to this; timeliness. I pride myself on getting you the stories when they happen, but time passed does nothing to relevancy of the issues within the stories.
There are always going to be kids who need homes and there will always be tragedies as unfortunate as that is, its fact.
This is how I will cut down some of these branches, clearing space to explore as much more of this tree as I can before my ax breaks.
As it stands, my ax is sharp, underutilized perhaps, but still sharp, nonetheless. Truth is, I’ve been slacking off. I haven’t been as enthused with my work. Life gets in the way. In addition to the nearly half million of the nation’s kids, I have 3 of my own. They all have lives of their own, needing me only to transport them. Also, a husband, homeowner, landlord, prospective comedian and a woodworking dude. Life got busy in the last 8 years. And I got old.
Things got slow on my end, work-wise. Didn’t mean for it to happen. Eight years doing anything will come with a few lulls, no? Not sure I was cool with that idea before. I was a machine. I never slept. On top of all that, I love my job. How can there be a lull? There are! Now that I understand that, the lulls don’t rip me apart anymore.
It was a real struggle to work through. I stopped writing by hand.
I’m writing by hand again. It helps with the smoothness of information relaying. Moreover, it reminds me of the early days. Days when I didn’t think about how hard I was swinging my ax, or who’s swing was stronger than mine.
I’ve got my ax. I’m going to start swinging it again.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski