My Impact Will Remain, But the Memory of Me Will Fade

Today I showed a recent photo of our girl to my mom. She was a full grown little person, and my mom had no idea who she was looking at.

It reminded me that every day apart is a day further from me being her mom. That I would barely recognize her, and she would barely remember me.

This reality is devastating for me.
But good for her.

One of the fears behind saying goodbye to our (foster) children is that our impact we won’t be remembered. That we will be forgotten.

But my hope as a foster parent isn’t that I will be missed & yearned for & remembered. My hope is that my impact will remain, but the memory of me will fade. That the love of a mother through her earliest years will be forever imprinted on her brain & body & heart, but that the loss of me as that mother won’t be felt.

It’s a sad yearning unique to foster parenting—to love your child so much that you want to be remembered and hope to be forgotten.