The Time I Became A Foster Parent: PART ONE

 Maeve, Wild & Free

“Live, Learn, Thrive!”

 

The Time I Became a Foster Parent

PART ONE:

      I chose to become a foster parent legally in the state of Ohio so that I could get my 16-year-old pregnant niece out of the system surrounded by strangers. Her mother completely gave up on her and signed her parental rights away to the state, having her sent hours away from home and family, to a foster home filled with strangers. If you know me personally then you know that I love all of my nieces and nephews to pieces, I could never be ok with any of my loved ones being in foster care with strangers.

    My niece Cora Hill, was a troubled young woman. Cora endured a lot from the time she was born to now. She was born out of love but it quickly became a toxic environment for her. Her mother Lydia, has always been a bit of an airhead but she means well and she adores her children. Lydia was married to Cora’s father and they had another child together, Tori. By the time Tori got here, the marriage had soured and the environment was toxic for children to live in. Lydia eventually moved out with her two daughters and moved on. Rekindling things with an old high school crush, they brought in another baby girl. Things there eventually burned out and she met someone else. This guy was someone who would shape Cora’s future in the worst ways.

    By this relationship, Cora had already witnessed her mother being physically assaulted, emotionally abused, and verbally harassed all by men. This new relationship was disastrous for her and her children to witness. He would beat on Lydia regularly, leaving the very young children scared and scarred from what they would see and/or hear. As she picked herself and her children up one more time, she met someone one night and fell in love. What was supposed to just be a one night stand, turned into the best five years of her and the kid’s lives. This was the start of a great foundation and healing for her and her children. This was the beginning of Lydia and David, my older brother!

    Though they were supposed to be a one night stand, Lydia fell pregnant. She had no plans on keeping it as David was just a stranger, but David and his grandmother begged Lydia to keep it and promised to be there. At the time, it was the best decision she could have made. Over the next five years, her and David began to fall in love hard. David took on the role of stepdad for her previous three, and he crushed the role of fatherhood to his one they had together as well as making one more., completing the family of seven! David took great care of his household and loved all of them Immensely. He treated all of those girls like royalty. Whenever David and I got together, he would always talk about how much he loved his family and he was the luckiest man on earth. Honestly, I’m not just saying this because he’s my brother, but he treated them all really well especially Lydia. I personally never seen him like that with anyone, the entire family was so happy and proud of him. I remember once when David was doing a 30-day bid, Lydia’s third born slept with a framed picture of David for at least 23 of those days. That relationship was one that a lot of people in the city wanted to have. I mean, together they were an absolute power couple.

     Five years of love, two beautiful daughters, and multiple moves together, it all came to a halting end. One day while they were loading up in the car to go on a family outing, Lydia heard a phone vibrating over and over and over again. She searched and searched until she found the source of this vibration and to her surprise, it was another phone she had never seen before. On the screen calling was “Babygirl” and that was the true start of Cora’s behavioral issues. Another man, hurt and disappointed them. A house full of girls and young women that adore him, just crushed and shattered their entire life. Took away five years of stability and love.

       This started a really ugly two-year long battle between Lydia and David. Lydia rightfully put David out and his ego did not like that. He would come over daily kicking the door in and starting loud, crazy, and obnoxious fights and arguments with Lydia right in front of the kids. Lydia is a very well known hair stylist in the area, so she consistently has clients in the house. David never cared. He would come unannounced, kick the door in, and it would go down! He is either getting physical with Lydia right in front of the kids and clients, or throwing/damaging something. Either way, he was traumatizing those kids and Lydia as well. Lydia was taking this breakup so badly that she was unable to be a mother for the first few months of the breakup. Between the heartbreak and the violence/drama, she was broken. Lydia would go out every single night and kick it with friends or guys she just met for a quick hook-up. I ended up choosing to stay there for a few months with them because I was scared to leave the kids honestly. Lydia would wake up with a bottle of Hennessy and be in Gino’s parking lot before it even got the chance to run out. Due to her constantly being drunk and high off of whatever pills she decided on that day, she was leaving the kids to fend for themselves mostly. Cora being the oldest, had the most responsibility when it came to the household. Once David left, everything sort of fell on her. She was the one getting them in the bath at night and getting them to bed. Cora is the one that would get them cereal or noodles for breakfast because her mom was so out of it and hurt that she just wouldn’t do it. Everything set her off, especially when she would have to tend to the kids.

       Cora would change the diapers, take the trash out, clean the house (when told of course) and tend to the kids daily. Cora hardly had time to go off and be a kid herself. Once I seen this happening, I felt forced to stay and help because kids deserve to be kids. No child deserves to go through it because mommy is going through it. Your kids should not know what you’re going through and especially they should not have to pick up your pieces. They are the child, you are the adult. I would cook for the kids, help with bedtime, and school work and whatever else they needed. I never minded doing any of this for Lydia because that’s what best friends do, lift each other up when they are down. I loved Lydia like an actual sister, I would do anything for her. I kicked it and drank with Lydia as well because I was going through my own things at that time as well. I would always make sure I was able to do anything for the kids still because I knew she wouldn’t. I had to keep an eye on my intake because I knew Lydia never expected to tend to the kids. She was just drinking, taking pills, doing hair, and kicking it. She could not be bothered with her kids honestly. Once I seen the Henny, I knew the kids were my responsibility for the rest of the day.

     My niece was watching and resenting all of this unbeknownst to Lydia and I. Cora began acting out daily and it was just getting worse. She started with her attitude, she would get smart with her mom all the time over everything. Then she started to rebel and say no instead, and this resulted in her getting physical with her mother! I will never forget the first time it happened, I was speechless only because of how it turned out. From my experience, you put your hands on your mother then she returns you to God. This was a bit different. One morning I was logging all the kids on to their laptop, this was when schools started going remote for covid. Cora did not want to log on so I let Lydia know thinking that she would get Cora to wake up and come down to log on. Instead, when Lydia went to grab Cora and sit her down at the table, Cora turned around and began to wail on her mother. I didn’t react because that is not my child and I assumed Lydia could handle her own child, I was wrong. Lydia is screaming  “Get her off of me, get this bi*** off me!” and I froze in disbelief… never in my life have I ever seen anything like that! I mean, you hear about it happening and see it on TV all the time but to see it in person was different. I eventually snapped out of it and grabbed my niece off of her mother but I still was just so shocked. I get Cora and take her to the kitchen to separate them and Lydia calls the police. The police told Lydia that she needs to whoop Cora’s a** and not call them to parent for her so Lydia got upset and told them they can leave. Once the police left, Cora ran away! That was the start of that trend in which she kept up with for the next few years of her life.

     Lydia was overwhelmed and had her hands full. The other kids in the house expressed their fear and discomfort of living with Cora and Lydia was exhausted at this point from all of the fighting, arguing, and running away so she sent Cora off to live with her father a few states away. This was supposed to get Cora back on track and help with her attitude but ultimately made things worse. Tremendously worse . (*I am not at liberty to discuss Cora’s personal experiences and traumas that happened there*) A few months later unannounced, she showed up at the door of her mother’s new home with all of her bags, dropped off and ready to stay. Lydia tried to be happy that her daughter was back home but she wasn’t. She didn’t want Cora to be back, not yet at least if ever. I moved out shortly after Lydia sent Cora away, it was becoming too much for me to deal with 24/7. A few months after I moved out, Lydia had moved into a cozy apartment and started a new relationship with someone else, and was finally starting to feel happy and at peace again. Within just a week of Cora being back home with her mother, she began to runaway and there was drama in the home yet again.

    As she was just settling into her new home and relationship, Lydia was not wanting to deal with this again so she kept calling the cops on Cora until one day they took her with them to juvenile. Cora was enraged by this and felt unloved and abandoned so she began to attack her mother once again. At this time, I lived across the hall from them, so Lydia would bang on my door frequently asking me for help with Cora. Cora and I had a great relationship, she felt comfortable to talk to me about anything and confide in me. I never had a problem being the safe place for the kids to come to when things got crazy at home. Cora respected me and feared me so she would never disrespect me, she would come to my apartment to cool off or to avoid hitting her mom again. I tried to help Lydia as much as I could but she didn’t like to listen. I mean for a mother to get beat up by her daughter is crazy,I could never understand that. They both knew how I felt about that situation, Cora knew better than to pull any of that with me. Not sure why, but overtime Lydia developed an issue with Cora running to me every time there was a problem at home so she stopped letting her come to me. This led to Cora running away again and for longer times.

    Eventually Lydia wiped her hands of the situation and sent her to group home after group home, city after city, state after state. After a year of that, Lydia finally sent for her to come back home and agreed to start fresh with their relationship. When Cora got home, she was so excited to be with her family again and share stories about her time away with her mom and I. Cora got into song writing while she was away, and had a notebook of songs she wanted us to hear so that’s what we did for the first few days she was home. After a few days, her mom was already tired of her and began to regret bringing her back home. It wasn’t long after that until the fights started back up again, by this time they moved into a house so we were no longer neighbors. I couldn’t be that safe place anymore, Cora knew Lydia wouldn’t keep bringing her to my place whenever things were getting heated at home. She was right, it eventually stopped.

     Cora was still adjusting to being home with her sisters and not held up in a group home anymore like a prisoner. (*The things she experienced there are not my story to tell, but we will just say that it was not any better than her just staying at home with her mother.) Lydia had a hard time with being a mom as of lately, though she loved them, her mothering was often clouded by drugs and alcohol. Some of the kids were old enough to see for themselves exactly what was going on with their mother. Though she has a loving boyfriend now that will do anything for her, they often got into physical altercations in front of the kids. I have had to step in a few times because he was on Lydia’s a**, in front of the kids. Then laughing and blaming her black eye on the liquor. None of this was ok and the kids were getting old enough to realize this now. Seeing this cycle repeat itself, Cora began to act out and run away once more. Lydia would make post on social media, since she has a rather large following, asking for help locating Cora and to report any sightings of her to the local police. Sometime when Cora would runaway, she would reach out to me just to let me know she was safe and alive. I would never get details at this time about where she was but as long as I knew she was ok I could sleep better at night and try to keep her mother’s spirit lifted.

      At this time, Cora stayed gone for quite a while. When she finally got caught, Lydia told the local police to take her and do not bring her back. The following day Lydia went and signed her parental rights away and Cora was sent off to a foster home where she would stay until she ran away from there as well. When Lydia signed her parental rights over to the state, that was when she found out that she was pregnant. You would think that this would change something, but it did nothing. Lydia said over and over again that she hated Cora and wanted nothing to do with her or her baby. I never agreed with how Cora acted and how she treated her mother but I understood. When Lydia would come to me for help, I tried. I would give my advice on what she should do and how to handle her but like I told Lydia, it might be too late for that now. By this point Cora had already stolen close to $2.5k from her moms account while on the run once, stole Lydia’s boyfriend’s gaming system, stole weed from Lydia’s room, stole some pills from Lydia’s room, ran away more than 15 times, and so much more. Once your own child physically beats you’re a**, especially more than once, you’ve already lost the battle. That child will never take you seriously again. Anything you say to them will be tested if they don’t like it because in their mind, you have no authority over them. Parenting will never be the same after that because now they know that you fear them and you can’t do anything about them.

     Maybe due to the fact that I am not a direct blood relative of hers, I think that Lydia started to resent me a little bit because her children respected me more than her. I would try to get her to understand that being mean and always yelling is not how you get anyone to listen to you or respect you. Instead of just listening to the advice that she was asking me for, she started to slowly stop them from running to me. It went from her calling me anytime they were giving her a hard time, to her giving Cora away to some random white lady hours away from home. Cora has 4C hair and she was sent to a random white lady who was buying her thongs. As a pregnant 16-year old, let that sink in. All because Lydia would rather have her drugs and alcohol instead of giving it up so that she could be better for her kids. That’s just MY perspective, what do I know right?