My first article I addressed all the things from my 13 years in the foster care system. At that time I felt that moving forward was my best objective. Someone once asked me why the windshield is so much bigger than the rear view mirror in a car. It is because we should be paying attention to what is front of us. If we only looked in the rear view mirror we would crash. Well life is like that. If we spend all our time looking behind us, we never fully see what is in front of us.
I have been reading a lot of articles in the last couple of years on foster care. I love to read Foster Focus because it is written by people who have lived it. I read a story about how as Foster Kids we grieve the relationships we lost. I was in foster care for 13 years and was sent to my birth mother every holiday. So I would have to deal with the separation from my birth family several times a year. I always believed that had I stayed at my foster home during holidays I would have been more a part of their family. I know that was not true now. I was a foster child and that was my role. If I see the older children of my foster family 35 years later I am still a foster brother. There are two members that just call me their brother.
After my foster father passed away I was at a crossroads with the family. I learned quickly that I was not a blue blood, and was not a full member of the family. I tried to fight to be a part, but it took a toll. After 10 years of trying to fit, I started to pull back. Then I was told that my problem was I did not make enough effort. So I moved forward and stopped fighting to be a full part. I was moving forward.
I am now to the point I need to move on. It was like another lifetime ago. My foster family has been great to me. They treated me like a special foster brother. That ended when I was 18, 35 years later I do not want to stay at that place. I need to move on and place my energy into the relationships that are in my life.
I know that I have been labeled damage by some. I would not say damaged, because every time I got knocked down I got up. My wife has been a gift of God in my life. She has been there during the tough times. I need to be thankful to those who accept me for who I am. Not perfect, but has a lot of love to offer.
I like watching the show the Fosters. It brings up things that I have had to deal with. Just like life not all parents are good, such is it with foster homes. My brother was in a home that had six other foster children in it. It was like a business for the people. We would send gifts over to my brother and he would never get them. I remember not liking them for the way the treated my brother.
I think back of the years in the foster care system and the one thing I think would have helped was having someone from the system to be able to talk about feelings and how I was really doing. If you had a roof over your head, and being feed that was all that mattered. The things you could not say to your foster parents you buried. The fear of being moved was always present.
One of the hardest things for me when I was eight, was not getting to see my younger sister again. I would see her a couple times a year and then one day I could not see her again. The system said it was too hard on her to see me. She had a new foster family brother that she needed to bond with. By the time I was eight I lost contact with my two older sisters, and my younger brother and sister. That is besides all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
I holidays I would see some of them at my birth mother’s house. It was like I was a stranger. Some of my cousins would ask me how I could hurt my mother like this. They had been in foster care, but got out to be back with their birth mother. I never got to meet one brother and sister. She was only 2 years older and lived up the street from my birth mother. I never knew about them until I was an adult.
A couple of years ago I tracked her down to find out she a passed away in an accident. That made me for determined to find the remaining siblings. When you are apart from your siblings and placed in a home with other children it is hard. You are an outsider to the foster family children, and you become an outsider to your own family. It is like you are stuck in no man land. You are not really a whole part of anywhere. It makes you pick where you are going to try to fit in.
Everyone you meet in your foster family’s community you are the foster child. You feel that you a second class family member. You get this is my foster son. The word foster became a bad word for me. It was a was not a whole of any family. I was a ward of the county and they made all the big decisions.
The stages of life as a foster child are many. I felt after many years I could just move forward, but now I know I must move on. I recently talked to my older biological sister. She moved to another state when I was five. She went to live with her biological father. At the time it was to be for six months, but she never came back. She was the one who looked out for me. I bonded with her more than with my birth mother because she cared for me. She is six years older and that was a lot for her to handle as an eleven-year-old.
When she left I was four and had a new brother. Now it was my turn to watch out for my brother. I have times wished that I was sent with my sister. The problem was her birth father was not mine. We had seven children in the family with five birth fathers. Two of the fathers never knew their children. My oldest sister and my birth father never were part of our lives.
After getting in contact with my older sister I was able to finally make contact with my little sister. She is 5 years younger than me and never was adopted. I spent the last 45 plus years thinking that she was adopted and wanted nothing to do with us. She never was adopted and had many of the same issues that I had from foster care. The system failed us and the worst part is they broke apart our family.
On the first weekend in July we had a little family reunion. My older sister and younger sister where going to meet me for a couple of days to talk. It was one of the greatest moments in my life getting to see my sisters. It was like a piece was found. We spent days getting to know each other.
We went to visit our hometown where we grew up. The house that we lived in and other locations. We went to our cousin’s house and got to talk to them. We went to where our sister that passed away had lived and talked to relatives about her life. She has several children that live in the area. It was a sad moment knowing that we will never get to know her.
We know that we have to focus on the future and building relationships as adults. There was so much information about our mother that was told us the proved to me not true. My youngest sister was told she did not want her. That was not true because I was there and could see how much it hurt her not having her children. The system failed her most of all. There is so much they could have done to help her bring her family back together. The did the worst thing possible by tearing us apart.
I understand why by foster family always did the blueblood thing. They did not have the same bond with foster siblings as they had with each other. What made it hard was I had no chance for that as a child. What I have is God giving me a chance now to be part of my birth family. We were all lost from each other, but know we have found that love does not have an expiration date. It is time to focus on the future with our families. I would hope that any chance that the foster system can keep siblings together they do. And if that is not possible then at least keep them in constant touch. No family should have to wait forty years to find each other.
There will never be a chance to bring the seven Jennis children together. We have lost one member of the family. There are some who would rather not get together. I do have contact now with my living sisters. It is hard knowing that we could have been in each other’s lives over the last 40 years. We can only look forward and take the time to know each other for the people we are today.
We all have been knocked down and keep getting up. What the future holds nobody knows. The thing we do know is we have a chance to be there for each other. I have to believe that our birth mother would be happy that she made a difference in this world. There are three generations that would not be here if she would not have given a chance for life.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski