Last week I received a notification on my phone with a message from someone I had never met. The woman who sent the message explained that she was looking for her daughter's former foster mom from when her daughter was a baby and she wondered if it could possibly be me. When I read the name of the baby my eyes almost popped out of my head and my heart started pounding . . . It was Molly!
If you're new to this blog, "Molly" is the name of our second foster child who was placed with us from the time she was 4 months old till she was almost a year old. Consequently, she had lots of firsts with us: first words, first solid foods, first steps, etc. I replied almost immediately in the affirmative "Yes! We fostered her." Of course, that was 18 years ago so I was astounded when Molly's mom replied back with pictures of a gorgeous young woman rather than the sweet baby we once loved. Her face and smile were the same- but she was all grown up!
Molly's mom explained that she was trying to help Molly fill in some of the gaps of her history, including the time she was placed with us, as Molly had heard differing accounts. Molly's mom also also asked, "Do you have any baby pictures of her?" I sent her a few pictures from my private blog, which, thankfully, also included a few updates about developmental milestones. I admit that I had to come back to the "About Me" section of this blog to make sure I had the dates of her placement with us and different hearings correct.
I had a lot of questions about Molly's life as well, including her relationship with her birth parents and their status. Molly's mom was more than happy to bring me up to speed about what had happened to Molly from the time she left our home, including being in the care of a relative, being adopted (her birth parents eventually relinquished their parental rights), being separated from her little brother who was adopted into a non-familial family, and eventually moving into the same neighborhood as this woman who hasn't officially adopted her (yet), but who has been raising her as one of her own children along with her other children for over a decade now. Molly's history also included some tragedy and I was saddened to hear that.
Over the next couple of days Molly's mother and I exchanged more information through messaging and in addition to some of Molly's hardships I learned of some of her accomplishments: She had graduated from high school, had her drivers license, and is currently working as a CNA and was deciding what route she'd like to go for college.
Molly's mom initially prefaced her initial message with something like "If you aren't interested in providing information or having contact that's fine, but if you are interested in at least answering some questions, that would be wonderful." When I told my husband about the initial message he was shocked but also as ecstatic as I was, so it really wasn't a question of "Do we want contact?" but "How is this going to work out?" In addition, you know how some people are just really easy to get along with and you just seem to "click"? That's how I felt when I was interacting with Molly's mom so I was more than happy to answer questions and things felt natural with her rather than forced or awkward.
YESTERDAY My husband and I were reunited with Molly thanks to her mom, who, much to her credit, kept it all a secret from Molly for over a week. There were a lot of tears on my part and Molly was so delighted to see the pictures we gave her of when she was a baby, as well as to read about and hear about what she was like when she was with us. We were able to answer some questions for her and provide a clarification of events from when she was placed with us, then went back to her birth parents (just her birth mom, technically) and then when she came back into care up to when she was placed with a relative.
Molly's mom referred to finding me as a tender mercy and I couldn't agree more.
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