Holidays are Hard: A brutally honest foster-adopt dad's perspective

Holidays are hard around here. All of them. Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, and especially Birthdays. Sure, we've redefined them to fit our family but they're still hard.

For some foster-adopt families they're just hard. Sometimes awkward.

I am only able to share from my experience, I do not project this on any other foster-adopt family...we each travel our own journey.

Holidays are hard. Around here, birthdays are especially hard. They are mixed with joy, laughter, happy memories, sadness, longing and misery. Yes, I said it. My son's birthday contains all of those feelings in a single day. Hell, a single hour within that single day sometimes. I am not going to tell his story here because it's not mine to tell, but I will share some of mine.

I wonder if his parents even remember him on his birthday. I wonder if I'll ever be able to be enough of a dad and a mom to comfort him when he wonders the same thing. I wonder if they know how much I appreciate their giving birth to such a beautiful baby who is turning into a young man of whom I am so proud. I wonder if they give a shit. I wonder if they know how much anger I have towards them for hurting this beautiful soul and creating a lifetime of haunted memories. I wonder a lot. I try not to project this onto my son, but I know I do. I hurt on his birthdays for him and with him, but I know it pales in comparison to the hurt he must surely have felt on some of his birthdays and may continue to feel each and every single one.

I wonder if I try hard enough to balance not stepping in and being his father, but ensuring I am his dad. I wonder if I love enough within safe confines of rules. I wonder if I will ever get to be just dad and not trauma-informed clinical dad. I wonder if this is the experience everyone has, and maybe they just don't share it. I wonder if it's just me and not any of the aforementioned shit at all.

Birthdays are supposed to be about being celebrated and being happy and being the center of attention. And to some extent they are, but in our home...they are equally hard. I wonder if people know that?

This weekend, we'll try to keep our smiles broad, our eyes dry and our tempers cool. We will have a few people over as my son turns a milestone year. We will try our hardest to celebrate with joy and laughter, and with any luck some of it'll be purely genuine and the rest...well, it's just fucking hard.