When things get tough....

I am not sure if EVERYONE has noticed me hiding, or if it's just been my close family and friends, but I have indeed been hiding.

Life has been a little bit more crazier than before....and when I say crazy....I mean me!

In November of last year we started to take care of my second cousin, James. It was both fun and hard at the same time. But this month I decided that I could no longer care for James. It wasn't fair to him or me, so two weeks ago he left to go into another Foster Care home. Because of this,  I went into hiding.

I am not sure if I have ever said this, but I have severe depression. It's something that I have struggled with since high school and I have to take medication regularly to just be able to function and be more "me". This can be hard at time since my body becomes immune to the medication I take and so it seems like we are switching up my medication every 6 months or so. I don't want to go into depth about depression and what's it like, but I just wanted to mention it so you kinda knew what was going on.

The decision to have James go to another home was a hard one for me and I felt like a complete failure. I tried my best to help little James and all that happened was me failing in him. Then realizing after James had left how neglected my children were from me spending so much time and energy with James and then from me not being able to take care of my 3 boys' needs. So combined with the feelings of failure and a bad mom, I went into hiding. I felt bad that I couldn't take care of a little boy who needed help and just wanted a place to belong, but in the end I have finally realized that my first priority is to my children and they didn't have their mom, they only had a shell of their mom and they didn't know what to do. We are now dealing with the after effects and are trying to get behavior and anxiety levels of the boys down so that we can return back to "normal" or as close to normal as we ever were.

I have finally come to accept that I did the best I could for Jame and that is all I could do. It helps to have close family members stand beside me and support me in my decision as well as to hear that James is very happy in his new home! His Foster parents can tell the hard work that we did with James and to know that we did a good job with him while he was in our home. With this I have finally come to peace with my actions and can see that I did do the right thing.

I think having James in our home was one of the hardest things I have ever done. If I could go back and change it, I don't think I would because I think out of this I realized that I was a little stronger and I think James needed to be with us for that period of time as well. We will still be able to see James and have some play dates with him, but it makes me so happy to know that he is happy and "doesn't want to leave" his new home.

Thank you to all my family members and friends who have supported me through this time and I hear every positive note you tell me and it helps me to climb out of my whole one step at a time!

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