Fostering positive connections
I started this page because I have just traced J and L my foster carers and positive attachment figures, who I "ran away" from age 16 ...
(walked actually, very slowly....didn't actually want to leave them ever, I just felt responsible for my young siblings and wanted to do what I perceived as protecting them at the time, by staying with my family)
These guys talked me out of a planned suicide over a 2 year period and offered to foster me forever, when I was coming up 16, which I felt like I had to turn down because to accept I would have had to report the abuser and I didn't know what would happen to my siblings as a result of that.
Anyway I love these guys so much and left promising I would come find them when I left home and it turns out spent a long time looking in the wrong places and then by the time I finally traced them 3 months ago they have emigrated.....to NZ!
* Currently there are no charities or organisations in the UK which help with such a reunion, even though reconnecting with positive attachment figures as an adult has measurable benefits for the previously fostered person and probably helps with their own parenting so will be of lasting benefit over generations.
* If you could say to every young person currently in care that there was a group of people who are able to reunite you with your positive attachment figures, even if they move to the other side of the world entirely - if that's their foster carers then you would empower that young person to feel safer to give and receive love within their fostering relationship which would make them more likely to be able to accept that positive bond and thereby start aspiring to more positive things in life.
* Sometimes the care system fails people and children are removed from loving families when that is not the best thing for everyone. We all know who our positive attachment figures are because it's a feeling we have inside ourselves. It's the people who make us feel good about ourselves. The people who will watch your back and who you know inside yourself will always be there for you.
* I am doing this for myself and every single other person in the UK who is being or has been fostered. I believe we need this resource to reconnect us with our positive attachment figures if we can't manage to scrape together the resources to get there ourselves. Everybody deserves that hug they have been waiting a long time to get. And I believe this is a really powerful way to change the world because together with our people we are strong, we function well in our families and society and we make positive contributions to the world./
* We are one. And we are powerful when we are united together.
I just think it's time I came out of my shell and started shining a bit more and I really hope that this dream can inspire everyone else that reads it to know to always go for your dreams and that in community we can support each other and that there is ALWAYS hope, we just need to be the change and act.
I want everyone who has been in this kind of a situation to know that I am doing this for all of us. If you have feedback about how I can do it better please fire away. I want to make the kind of resource we can all feel comfortable with and trust and works well for all of us.
Please share this page with your like minded friends :)
