Foster Further

Those were the first words the judge said when she began her statements. That this was the most shocking and sickening case she had seen in her 12 years on the bench. Then she terminated both parents' rights to all of their children, even those not living with them. Eight kids in four homes just lost a parent. And good riddance. Theo summarized it all, after I came home and cried in his arms longer than I ever remember doing in our entire married life, that those people were not parents. We believed in reunification when we began foster care because we believed there was a family structure that'd been broken but could be put back together. We never dreamed we'd be a part of the lives of people so broken they'd never even been parents to begin with. In one morning everything I believed has been turned upside down. I went from making photo albums, sharing emails, and planning all-family birthday parties to wanting to completely wipe out an entire family from these...