Will she be my daughter? An update

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 22:30:00 +0000

We got the call on Monday. The judge was finally ready to rule. The hearing was scheduled for Wednesday at 1 o'clock -- almost 15 weeks to the day since the Termination of Parental Rights hearing had ended.

The days before the hearing were filled with emotion. Giddy excitement that we would finally have an answer -- how could the judge possibly rule against us? -- mixed with a terrible dread at the very real possibility that, despite all our prayers, Gina would be taken away. Underneath those conflicting feelings was a sense of urgency. We had to make every day count and planned lots of special events: swimming, a picnic in the woods, a walk through Gina's favorite park. My wife and I enveloped Gina -- and each other -- with a protective, fierce love.

A week before we headed back to court, Gina, out of nowhere, uttered these eerie words: "If I go to heaven, you be really, really sad," she said in the car one day. "You cry and cry." She held up her toy cellphone. "I'm talking to God. He says I go to heaven in ten days."

Will she be my daughter?

Mon, 14 Jul 2003 19:21:00 +0000

We have a daughter. But not really. She lives in our home, calls us Mommy and Daddy sometimes and gives us hard little hugs as she says, "I want to stay here forever!" She just turned 4 and has brown hair, brown eyes, a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. And any day now, she could be taken away forever.

Welcome to the world of fost-adopt.

Fost-adopt is a blending of the concepts of fostering and adoption. It exists in some form in every state. It came about under the Federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 to address the horror stories of children bounced for years from one foster home to another. Under fost-adopt, when the Department of Social Services removes a child due to serious neglect or abuse, it no longer places that child with just any home. Instead, the department identifies a fost-adopt-certified family who would be a good fit to adopt that child. This way if the birth parents lose their parental rights, the child is already in the home of the people who will adopt him or her. And if, instead, the child ends up going back to the birth parents, it's just too bad for the fost-adopt parents.

Salon.com > Jon Lowry

Will she be my daughter? An update

Will she be my daughter?