“I Want to Eat What I Ate With My Old Family. I Like to Remember How Strong I Had to Be.”

“This is a MUST read. My cousin is a foster parent with five children. She and her husband recently adopted four out of the five siblings! It has been a joy to watch her in this journey – just like it was a joy watching her grow up. I love how she “keeps it real” when it comes to living the life of fostering and adoption. She shared this on her personal page and I reached out to her to share it here because it is just that good and so very relevant.

{Edited for privacy}:

“Tonight, after 2.5 years of living here, my oldest son sat down at the table with this. He was about to chow down when I stopped him and asked what in the world he was doing.

He said, “I made myself dinner.”

“But it isn’t cooked. I can cook that you know.” (she said)

“Well, I wanted to eat something I used to eat a lot with my old family.”

So we sat down and I asked him to tell me about it. He said that they wouldn’t feed him due to being passed out (you can guess why) and he would have to make dinner for himself and his brothers (2 and 4 months when they came to us). He said that all the money they had would be spent on cigarettes and other fun things (😬) and so he would find change in their van and would buy Ramen packets at the store down the street (at 6!!!!).

He said he didn’t know how to boil water, so he would eat it like this. And, he actually grew to like it. So, he would break it up for his sibling, and would try to make bottles for the baby (at 6!!!!!!).

Guys. I asked him to make me some. And, I sat there beside him and crunched it down with lots of water because it’s not great…and he just started talking about how the first time I made them Ramen, he wouldn’t eat it and I told him I remembered. He said it’s because it reminded him of his Ramen packets and he didn’t trust me (big thoughts for 9!).