should be otherwise known as “rip your guts out through your nostril with a crochet hook week”. I seriously have never been involved in anything as painful, sad, sobering, and anger inducing as the trial to terminate SB’s mom’s rights was. 

Over the last five months, while we have been preparing for trial and hiding from the internets, numerous attempts were made to work out some kind of deal and avoid trial. BioMom resisted strongly. The state had such a strong case that everyone knew what the outcome would be, except her. And maybe even she knew. She at least knew when the judge excused the jury on three separate occasions during trial, and begged her to not go through with a trial. 

In our state, if your rights are terminated with what the call D and E grounds, it gives the state cause to remove any subsequent children at birth. Meaning now, any babies BioMom has can be taken from her at birth by the state, only for the reason that she has previously lost children by trial. Also, foster/adoptive parents are not allowed to have any unsupervised contact with the terminated parents. So, BioMom is now at risk for losing future children, and she also cannot ever see her son alone until he is 18 years old. This is why the judge kept giving her chances to relinquish, but she again refused.

So, now she has had her rights terminated, and because of the depth of the scariness that came out in trial, the DA is requiring a “no contact” order for BioMom. We are allowed to communicate through letters and pictures, but that’s it. 

As awful and expensive as trial was, I am grateful for the opportunity. Hubs and I got to show who we really are at heart. That we really did try each day to do the right thing, we didn’t set out to steal a baby. And we got the chance to have a very clear picture of what we were dealing with in regards to BioMom, allowing us to make the decisions we need to make to keep Sugar Biscuit safe. 

BioMom will get one more two hour goodbye visit. I will say that after a year and a half, I am happy these wekly visits have ended. We go on a much needed vacation this Sunday.

I hope that BioMom continues to get well. She celebrated one year sober last weekend, and I am proud. I hope that she continues on her path to being a whole person, and that someday she can be a mother, if she so chooses.

We are just going to keep doing what we do, which is loving our family. I’m pretty sure we will be closing this chapter of our lives as a foster family, but we aren’t making any major decisions until after the holidays. We do know we are worn out, and need a rest. 

I thought I would feel a sense of victory, of celebration, when we won this trial. I don’t. I feel immense relief, and a sense of having done the right thing. I’m sad that it could not have been worked out differently, but I see that it happened the way it had to, for the highest good of everyone involved. Hubs and I were also DEEPLY humbled by the large number of people who came and sat with us, and supported us. There are no words to thank people that come and sit with you through something like this. 

I’m just deeply grateful that now we get to move onto the next phase of our lives, one that contains perhaps the cutest toddler I’ve ever seen 🙂