Awareness.

Minnesota is a weird place, temperatures the past few days have ranged from 30-70 degrees. When it's nice I get out walking with Breck as much as I can and we have a pretty standard 3 mile route that we take around our South Minneapolis neighborhood. Today on our walk, instead of wrapping around Minnehaha Falls, I took a side path I hadn't been on. To my right, was this old bridge with grassed over train tracks, built over a creek that leads to the falls. It stopped me in my tracks. This old bridge was so beautiful, overgrown, with spring budding all around it, spray paint all over it and clean water running under it. In the 15 years I've lived in Minneapolis, I have never seen this site. I stood there looking around, wondering what else I have missed. I realized that awareness is sometimes standing right where we are and simply looking in a different direction. I stand in the same places everyday, looking at the exact same things, through the exact same lens.

We all have blinders on, we are built that way. We're not blind to everything and some of us can see certain pieces of life better than others. Those things in our peripheral, we can see them clearly and we often take for granted. It’s when we turn around that life sneaks up on us, the life we know so well becomes unknown, exciting, blurry and scary.

When humans come into my home I know they are blinded. Not only from the kind of life they have been given but blinded from being taken from their parent(s), their siblings, the life they knew and their only goal is to get back to that life. It's not my job, as the foster parent, to rip the blinders from their heads and force them to see things my way. Besides, these kids, they are tired. Exhausted may be a more fitting word. For example, when my middle human came to me, at 13, she had been on the run for over a year and maybe even longer. Imagine being 11-13 years old running from place to place and scraping by. For her, awareness was making it to another day; awareness was finding food, shelter and clothing.

I created this path I am on due to awarenesses I've been given throughout my life. I know that there are people in need and I know I have the strength to help. I knowingly choose to take in the chaos and create calm out of it. Create a place where these kids can reflect about what they have seen and been through, to be able to start peeling those blinders back on their own. It's really hard to do; not yell out in vain all the things I think they have been wronged by and how much better life should be. Alas, me saying it, doesn't make their past lives untrue. It doesn't make her pain go away, it doesn’t change the fact that she was homeless, hungry and lost. What I give in my home is hard to explain but it stems from stern love and solid structure. I can't change what they've seen, felt, heard or lived but I can give them a place to let all of that trauma out of their brains. In return, they get to experience different ways of communicating, grieving, and living. I ask a lot of questions, I openly admit that I have very few answers and I keep my disdain and sadness for those who have wronged them to myself.

When kids come into calm, their chaos follows, unknowingly into every piece of their lives. They literally don't know how to behave any differently, they use chaos to create and then shatter boundaries. Chaos has been their awareness thus far, which is a hard habit to rid of without feeling like they are giving a past life away. It's hard to let go of what we know, even if what we know is tearing us into a million little pieces. We have all been in a place in our lives where the universe is trying to point us elsewhere and we miss these queues. Think about it; how often do you really see something when someone else is showing it to you. Never. We see when we're ready. We see when we know our truths and understand who it is we are supposed to be. We can thank the people who gave us hints and nudges along the way but ultimately we get there on our own. I'm often told "those kids are so lucky to have you, their lives wouldn't be the same without you." and while that may be true to an extent, the same goes for these humans, I'm simply their nudge, hint, their 160 degree turn from where they are currently standing. I have the right questions and directions but they have to put in the work.

May is foster care awareness month. Awareness isn't saying that we are right and they are wrong. Awareness isn't pointing fingers at others or ourselves. Awareness is recognizing that we don't understand everything we thought we did. It may be taking in that ah-ha moment and holding onto it to fill in a piece that we knew was missing in us. Awareness isn't all of a sudden having all the answers but knowing we need to ask more questions. So in the month of May, what can you do to build awareness within yourself and in your community about the children in need? Use your strength, whatever it may be: emails, communication, financial donations, physical donations, time donations, home donations, or conversations. Use what you know to expand the hard, tucked away questions of child abuse in your circle. Chance are, a child you know is being abused. So stop ignoring the issue, use your courage and skills to send out the nudges and hints. We can make a difference. Every child deserves a home. Every child deserves love.