My foster mother.

I finally got the balls to search for my foster parents, and it was easy because my foster Dad is still a licensed psychologist and he is in practice. I e-mailed and this is the response I got from my foster mother. (I changed names and such)

E-mail #1 in response to my hello letter.

Oh My Dearest Tempy!!!!!

I am feeling amazingly blessed that you were able to locate M and I. Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of you and wondered how your life has turned out. We still have pictures of you in our living room. We have often talked about trying to locate you but I have to admit that I was afraid of what we would find. We contacted Maryland Social Services about 6 months after you left and they could only tell us that you were no longer in the state and I feared the worst. I've often considered what I would say to you if our paths ever were to cross again and now that the moment is finally here words cannot describe how it feels to know you are alive and ok. I feel as though I have so much to tell you about our experience of loosing you in hopes that it may help to heal your heart knowing that you've been loved and cared about for so long. I am not sure it would be helpful though and this is about you and I want to know about your life and how you are. I'd love to hear about your life now and even how things turned out for you once you returned to your birth family. If that is too much please don't feel pressured.

I do want you to know how much of an amazing little girl that you were and how I know in my heart you are an amazing woman now. You were so incredibly intelligent and beautiful and despite everything you endured you had an amazing ability to love and be loved. I am sure you remember those first months of resistance and you had every reason to fight us, but I couldn't have asked for a more amazing child to spend the rest of my life caring for.

I hope you will continue to write and if you'd like to call my number is below.

All my heart,
J

E-mail #2

Tempy,

Thank you so much for sharing all that you did. I knew in my heart that what you were going back to would be unimaginable and I have so many questions but I don't want to overwhelm you. I am so proud of everything that you have accomplished despite everything you have endured. I hope that you know you are strong and that you can make it through anything. It astonishes me that you were able to leave your home and move away to start your life over, evidence of your strength and your endurance.

M and I did not continue to foster children until about three years ago and we finally decided to adopt. We are now the proud parents to a beautiful little girl. Her name is A and she is now 17 months old. We adopted her at birth and she is quite a rambunctious little one but we are very happy. I admit our decision was quite delayed because it was a long and tough road after we lost you.

I am very glad to hear that you have such an amazing therapist and that you are getting the help for what you've been through. Many of the social workers told us that you would not be able to be rehabilitated and that your life as an adolescent and adult would not even come close to normal. We knew differently and I am blessed to know you proved them wrong. We looked into several programs for you as a child and had plans to get you into one. How much of that time do you remember? You said that there are huge gaps of time you don't remember and that doesn't shock me at all. You often would tell us about certain things in your life and then when we brought them up again you'd say you didn't remember and act like we were making things up. Mike thought you were dissociative and now I know he was right. The treatment program in Baltimore you spoke of sounds amazing and I am so thankful you were able to go there. Are you able to trust your therapist to help you? I know that you were only a child when we were together but I always feared that you wouldn't be able to trust another woman after being taken. We worked so hard on that and to have it crushed so quickly was heartbreaking.

I know that I cannot fix anything for you or even help the pain you've experienced but I do hope that you know you are loved and you always have been. M said he would be happy to write as well and would like to if you wanted to. But he doesn't want to pressure you either. I imagine that this is difficult for you and going back to that time in your life must bring up a lot of feelings for you. If you have any questions we'd be happy to answer them for you, we still have all the records on you.

All my heart,
J