“I Hope it Goes Your Way”

Along with “Are you going to adopt?” this was one of the most frequent comments I got when people learned I was a foster parent.

“Are you going to adopt?” would come earlier in the conversation, and “I hope it goes your way!” would be a cheery sign off as they left.

It was another comment that made me feel like they hadn’t really listened to anything I had said. “I hope it goes your way!” was code for “I hope you adopt.”

Another way to say that is “I hope your kid’s biological parents continue to struggle to such an extent that they can’t parent their child.”

My dears, that is not, in any way, shape or form, “my way,” nor a way that I “hope” for, nor a way that I wanted anyone else to hope for.

As someone who has not been able to get pregnant and have my own kids, the last thing I would want for someone who could get pregnant is to lose custody of their child.

It seems like an incredibly cruel thing to wish for, such a deep and lasting loss. Across cultures, we widely recognize that losing a child because they died is the worse thing a person can go through. And yet losing a child to foster care or adoption is a loss that is not seen at all.

To lose a child not because they died, but because the part of you that could care for them died is a terrible reality: a reality in which you have to live with the fact that this terrible separation is due to your own failure. A reality in which your child is still out in the world and you don’t get to be there anymore - for their own safety and wellbeing. That is awful. Why isn’t there any space or sympathy for that experience?

And yet people repeatedly chirped this cruel wish out, sunnily, completely disconnected from the real meaning of their words.

If I was ever in a position of struggle as a parent, I would want people to rally around me, believe in me, and want to see me succeed. I would want people to think I was valuable, and that my relationship to my kid was valuable.

Wouldn’t you?