This blog has been 15 months in the making.

Last Tuesday, I had written a blog to send to you all about how time is our shared currency (and most of us are running low) with some time management misconceptions that I've discovered and some ways to avoid unproductive booby traps. It was great. You'll see (I'll send it this week). Then, the phone rang and on the other end was the best news that I have ever received: our daughter (up until that point, our "foster daughter") was now a Crown Ward.   From that point on, I couldn't consider doing very much else other than hold my daughter, play with her, cry a lot (tears of joy), and spend every waking moment with her and my husband, family, and closest friends. While I did keep working a little later in the week, it just felt odd to send out the blog post I had planned instead of this story with all of you - my closest followers and friends. It felt so impersonal and not at all authentic to what was actually happening in my life. So, while this blog post may not help you deepen your practice, I feel like I would almost be lying to you if I didn't share this story with you. The whole story - from the moment I met my daughter to the moment she became my daughter. 

You have already read a little bit about this journey in my blog post entitled How my practice has supported me in my first year as a Mom; however, I was purposefully vague when discussing our situation because, up until this past Tuesday, we were still just fostering this baby, our foster daughter. Legally, someone else's child. Long before this though, my husband and I went through a tedious process to become approved to adopt a child through the Ministry of Children and Youth Services (CAS). This included baby proofing every corner of our home, undergoing nearly a dozen interviews lasting two to four hours each, and completing a 12-week course about fostering and adoption. We were approved in March, 2014 and waited for almost three years before we received a call that the baby we had been waiting for was expected to be born late December 2016. On December 19, I got a call that she was born (a week early) and, with five days between finding out about her existence and this call, we brought her home on December 20, 2016. 

If you're not familiar with the current process to foster/adopt, if a child under two is apprehended from their birth parents, they are placed in a home like ours: a "foster-with-a-view" home. Here, the foster parents who are caring for the children will also be the ones to adopt them should their biological parents be unable to regain custody. In the old way, children first went to foster homes - a transient home where people knowingly care for other people's children in the short-term. Then, once the legalities were sorted out, the child was returned back to their birth parents or was moved once again to the forever family. This new system means more stability for children, as they may be in their forever homes from day one or, at the least, limit the number of moves they experience. But, for foster-with-a-view parents like us, the risk of children being returned to their birth families is quite high. CAS works very hard to help birth families get the skills or support they need to keep their family together as this is the best outcome for the child. They even favour kin placements with neighbours, family friends, and biological family members over foster-with-a-view parents. For these, and many, reasons, we knew that this perfect little angel was precariously placed in our arms, to say the least. 

On December 20, 2016, I followed the local CAS worker into the locked hospital ward with my husband beside me. Winding through what seemed like an endless stream of bassinets and incubators, I eagerly looked from one to the next, looking for a familiar face, though I had never seen the baby before. Finally, we turned a corner and the CAS worker stopped, turning to me as if presenting the room ahead. In that room there were two bassinets, with two tiny bundles inside them. I looked from one to the next, then back to the CAS worker, asking which one she was. She gestured to my left and my feet lifted off the floor. I floated across the room and lifted the lightest bundle of baby into my arms and that was it. In that moment, I became her mother. More, I realized that I had been her mother since time began. I had been missing this piece of myself that I had now found. She and I had meant to find each other. I felt it in my bones. It was written in the stars. 

The 15 months that followed were some of the most joyous and the most trying of my entire life. Of course, I went though the same adjustments that all mothers manage. As well, there were supervised visits with her birth parents for two hours a day, three days a week, court dates, home visits, and so so so much documentation and paperwork. Hardest of all, there were moments of intense fear that I would have to say goodbye to the second half of my heart. All of that came to a head at 5:19 p.m. this past Tuesday, when the news we had been waiting for, hoping for, praying for, finally came. 

To be honest, I have been healing some deep seated trauma this past week. Trauma from back in 2005 when I was told that I could not have children, from waiting and waiting for her, from the past 15 months ... all of it. All of it is in the past though. Here she is. My daughter. Isabella Joy. From the moment I saw her, I was her mother. I was her mother before I ever met her. I grew her in my heart. When I met her, everything in the world made sense. Regardless of who's home she was living in, I was going to be her mother for the rest of my life.

Needless to say, my head has since been in a bit of a fog! I'm still not over it. I'll never be over it. But, the constant stream of company - family and friends who felt compelled to hold her (and me) once they heard the news - has dissipated and my feet are closer to the ground. Tomorrow, Isabella will be back to the routine of daycare and I'll be back in the studio. I'll never lose the magic of this week. I know from experience, it's like being faced with a life-threatening illness, disease, injury, or surgery, and coming out the other side with a new perspective on life. You never forget, it lives in your consciousness forever. It affects how you understand the world forever, but you can also, eventually, ground yourself to a new normal. That and, throughout the last 15 months, amongst all the turmoil, we have been grounded daily by the routines that a baby creates: naps, feedings, diapers, playtime, cuddles, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I have been her mother since before I met her. Since time began and it was written in the stars that we would be together. Since December 20, 2016. Forever and always. 

Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.