I wanted to take a minute to explain more of who my parents are, but I realized that if you have never met any of us, you probably have a very different picture painted of them than you should based on what I’ve written so far. If I had to describe my parents in one word, it would be selfless. They are the kindest, my loving and caring people you will ever meet. They loved and continue to love all of my siblings and I to a fault. They have a hard time saying no because they don’t want to…
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*Go to the Story page on the blog to read parts 1-3. When William was two years old, my parents adopted him. I honestly don’t remember much about it. My parents probably talked to me about it beforehand, but I imagine any conversations they had with me were more of my mom and dad talking about it and me being in the room hearing them talk. But I actually kind of liked William at this point. He and I had formed a bond of sorts. He would come in my room a lot, and we would hang out on my…
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Last time, I told you about how my parents became foster parents and how mad I was about them. Per usual, they didn’t really have conversations with me about it, so I was left to just pretend like everything was okay on the outside while internalizing all of my real emotions. I left off with William, our family’s first foster child, being brought to our home for the first time. He was a newborn at the time. Life continued on. I kept being secretly mad at my parents. I kept drowning myself in school work and good grades and extracurricular…
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Last time I told you about most of my childhood. It was largely very normal, and one that many of you may find a lot of similarities with. Typical “nuclear” family, upper-middle class, two kids. My parents and I had a lot of communication issues (or really, just did not communicate much at all), and to this day I don’t really know why. Most of my deeper conversations took place with my sister, Margaret, and she was kind of the go-between for my parents and I. My parents didn’t mean anything by it, and I don’t think they even realized…
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Disclaimer: Some names, dates, and other minor details have been changed and/or omitted for the purposes of anonymity for myself as well as others involved. I can assure you that everything else – the good, the bad, and the imperfect – are true. My first memory is of pooping in my pants. I was about 2 and 1/2 or 3 years old, and I needed to poop, but for reasons only toddlers can explain, pooping in the toilet isn’t all that appealing. So I was standing right outside our powder room door, doing the potty dance, screaming to my mom,…
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It was June 14th, 2022 at 8:30pm give or take a few life-altering minutes. A few days earlier, I was at my parent’s house. They live about 30 minutes away, and my mom had been watching my oldest son, TJ, that day while I was at work, so I was there to pick him up. My sister, Margaret, was also there, as well as my brother, William. Michael, our other brother, showed up around the same time I got there. It was the first time in a long time that all four of us siblings were under the same roof,…