Hey guys, thanks for joining us today on Behind the Curtain. I'm your host, Rebecca Harvin, and this is where we have honest conversations about foster care and adoption. I am so excited about our conversation today, not only because I've had the pleasure of hearing our guests speak at this year's field conference, but because this segment of the population that she represents is so under talked about that I cannot wait to have this conversation on the podcast. My guest today is Talia Ray Farrow. She is a bio, foster, and adoptive sister to over 65 kids. She is currently the eldest of 10 kids. And over the years, her family has welcomed children from newborn to age 18. Talia Ray is on our show today to talk about her experiences as a biological child in a foster and adoptive family with the hope that she can help other bio kids feel seen and understood, which is so, so, so important. She also endeavors to help parents know how to support their bio kids as they are on a mission together as a family. In addition to being an all-around superb human being, Talia Ray has also recently started taking classes to become a foster and adoptive mom herself and is eagerly awaiting the day that she starts fostering too. I will post all of her social tags below in the show notes and on our social media page that you can find her and follow her and use her as a support for your kids. Here is our conversation with Talia Ray. Talia Ray, thank you so much for being here. I am ecstatic about this conversation.
SPEAKER_03Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.
SPEAKER_01I, when I took your class at Field, um, I did it because I was going to another conference where I was going to teach how to support biokids in your home, right? And so I came to hear a biokid talk and to go like, do I have the correct information in my topic? Am I missing something? And I was missing a couple things. Um, and I just want you to know before we even start that I quote your work when I do this workshop now and I talk about you and you don't even like really know me from Adam. But I I find it so valuable to listen to people who have walked the same path that the children in our home are walking. So, with that as the intro, can you kind of paint us a picture of your family growing up?
Yeah. So we started fostering just before I turned six. We'd been um kind of prepped for what that would look like. I had two biological siblings. So we were almost six, four, and two when we started. And there was that kind of conversation of there are children in families and they're not being kept safe by their families. And so they need other families to step alongside them and take care of them and help them out until their parents can learn how to be safe again. So, yeah, from the time that I was five and a half, we've had kids of all ages in our home. We kind of started with that zero to two age until we got a little bit older. And then as my brother got older, he was the youngest. So we would kind of keep the kids younger than him. Um, so we ended up with a zero to five age range for quite a while. We often had one or two placements. We took a lot of sibling sets who would otherwise have been separated. And then eventually, after um several years of fostering, we finalized two of my siblings' adoption at the end of 2018. And then we opened up our age range to zero to 18. And we took in a lot of older kids. We kind of went older than my two siblings we had just adopted, and um anywhere kind of all the way up to I never was um younger than any of my foster siblings, other than like a two-week, three-week respite um teenager that we had. Um, but we kind of kept within that age range of older than four-ish and younger than 16 for a while. So we had all different ages, lots of different experiences, lots of sibling sets, and yeah, just our family was constantly shifting. And then yeah, in the last few years, we kind of shifted back down to infants, and we've taken little ones, and right now we are on adoption placement, it's called in Ontario. Um, so basically, the we were fostering four little ones, and they all um became um they needed a home for adoption, and we step forward for all of them. And so we're on adoption placement, which is basically the like six months plus time span until finalization. So yeah, we've kind of we've our family has grown a lot. There's now 10 kids in our family. Um, we have a foster baby right now as well, and it's just been a lot of shifting and and changing over the years.
SPEAKER_01Okay, wow. Um so if I'm hearing this, if I'm doing the math correctly, there's three biological children, two adopted kids, a sibling set of four that are on the way to adoption, and one foster.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they're actually it's two separate sibling sets. Um, they're four, three, two, and one. And so we have um two sibling sets in there that are on the way to adoption, and then yes, our foster baby.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Wow.
Do you know this is random and it's just a fact that I learned um a couple weeks ago, and I can't get it out of my brain. Um that a sibling set of two, I heard you guys did a lot of sibling sets that like at two kids, there's a 50% chance that you get separated. At three siblings, there's like a 80, 80 to 85% chance that you get separated. And at four, there's a 96, 94% chance that you are separated. You have a six percent chance if there's a sibling set of four of being fostered together and being raised together in adoption.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and that's actually something we've had a few times where we've had bigger sibling sets kind of come into foster care in our area, and we've only been able to take two of them. They've been able to find homes safe for the two older ones, and then they'll call us saying we have two more that need a home. And um, we've had, yeah, we've had times where there have been bigger sibling sets of three or four that are are separated and um just kind of tried to work through that and and have visits on the outside of their regularly scheduled visits to keep them together. Um, when we got our first teen placement, we got a 15, sorry, 14-year-old, 12-year-old, and 10-year-old. And when they first called us, they only placed us with the 14-year-old and 12-year-old. And essentially, these girls had been raising each other for years. And I remember the oldest just weeping because she they didn't even let her go when they placed her younger sister in her new foster home. And so she had no idea where she was. She didn't know what what the house looked like or what the family looked like or anything. And within a couple of months, we were able to successfully have the 10-year-old move into our home as well. And and that's just something that's really stuck with me and that being able to reunify siblings within our home and cultivate that sibling relationship where they could be cared for by my parents and learn to be siblings instead of raising each other.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, such a huge thing. Okay, so you were six, five and a half, probably when your parents started the classes, and six when the first kids came. Do you remember anything about life before foster care?
SPEAKER_03Like bits and pieces, um, but the majority of my memories are there are other children in my memories. And um, even before we started officially fostering, um, my mom's cousin lived with us for a little while. Um, and so I mean, that went even further back. So basically, like my earliest memories, my my mom's cousin is in a lot of those memories, and she will kind of affectionately refer to herself as our first foster child. Um, because she was around a lot, even she lived with us for four or five months, and then she was around a lot before and after. And um, so yeah, a lot of my memories include other kids besides just my biological siblings and myself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um, in our family's story, my oldest was six and my son was four. And in the beginning of foster care, especially for the first couple years, and even a little bit now, my oldest is she's about to turn 16 this summer. Okay. Um, she had vivid memories of life before foster care. And my son, who was four, did not. And so it was very interesting to me as a as their mother, right? Like um, my oldest daughter needed different things, especially like after a placement left, um, than my son did. And for whatever reason, I mean they're different, they're different human beings. But I just remember this one time a placement left, and my daughter was so sad. Like we were laying on my bed and you know, just kind of crying and and taking a little bit of space. It was that it was that afternoon. Um, and um we had we had loved those kids. It was a sibling set of three, and and they were friends before we fostered them and all kinds of, you know, like there was different interweaving in that, right? And my son came in the room and he kind of like pops on the bed and he goes, When are we taking the next placement? And my daughter and I look at him like, What are you what are you talking about? And he was just like, We don't have anybody in our house, and we've always had somebody in the house. Our placements had always overlapped. And so he was like, I don't know what to do here in this house that has no foster kids. So when is the next one coming? And it for him, it was just like this matter of fact, this is his life. And Zoe, my oldest, was like, Oh, I need a break, actually. Um, and that is the start of our first break as a foster family, is is what that placement leaving. But yeah, um, what was that like? The coming and the going and the holding on, like your other two siblings stay there the whole time. It's years before you guys end up adopting. What was that like for you at that age or just looking back on
it? What do you think?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of um navigating grief and navigating kids coming. Um, I do I have a similar story in that we had one placement that he stayed for uh 14 months, and the conversation had kind of started to shift to adoption with him. And I would have been around 10 when we had him the first time. Um, and at the end of that kind of 14 or 15 months that he was with us, I was very emotional. And I remember a similar thing, going into my mom's room and just saying, like, I can't do this anymore. And I, the words I used were my heart needs a break. And that was where our first kind of break started, too, for the first time in several years, that um we did a year to just do like respite and emergency placements because I had also reached that point of just there'd been so many hellos and so many goodbyes and so much grief that that I didn't feel like I could handle that anymore.
SPEAKER_01My heart needs a break. That is such a profound way to say it at 10 years old, and such a true and honest way to say it at 10 years old. Um, I love that your parents listened to you. That is that feels so important that your parents heard you and they listened. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and that's a really big thing that I kind of talk about in my like workshops when I run workshops or on my social media pages, just how important it is to listen to your bio kids and hear their worries and their fears and and the good things. Hear the good things and the joys and the excitement that they have, but to really make sure that you're hearing what they're saying and following their lead. And I also say, like, don't don't let them hold the weight of making a decision. So the weight of us taking a break was never placed on me. It was okay, you've verbalized that you need a break, and that's true for our whole family. We all need a break right now. So I didn't feel like that kind of that break was because of something that I said or because of something I did, it was in collaboration. And I think that's really important too, because there's a lot of really heavy decisions that happen in foster care. And so to make sure that that your your children know that they're heard when they have concerns or or just things they want to share, but also know that they're not they're not the one making that final decision because it's a really big weight for a six or 10 or 15-year-old to hold.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I kind of talk about it with my kids as like we're all pieces of a puzzle and we're all we're just looking at different pieces at different times and um managing needs accordingly, right? And this can be something as big as taking a break from foster care and as small as like one kid's summer schedule kind of influences the rest of the house because this is this is the puzzle piece that is getting the um precedence right now. And it's not a um it's not like a burden to accommodate, it's it's our great joy to accommodate in a family. Exactly that has multiple pieces, right? Yeah, and that sometimes, and I've um when I talk about ending our closing our home, ending our ending our license, um, it's again, it's my daughter that says to me, Mom, I'm all out of yeses. And um I talk about that like her like courage in saying that gave the rest of our family the ability to also say it, right? Like she said it first, but she was just saying something that the rest of us all had in inside of us, and um her ability to say it moved us in the next right direction for our family.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's really a an environment that you cultivated, right? Is that you made a space for her to know that when she verbalized her feelings and thoughts that she was heard. And that comes down a lot to like the way that you have had these conversations with her in the past and encouraged her to have those conversations with you too, that she felt like she could come and
say that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's talk about open lines of communication. How do you feel about open lines of communication, tell your Ray?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, that's something I talked about a lot because there's just so many ways to keep that open. And um one of the one of the big points I make is don't just talk about the the hard things. Don't just check in when like a goodbye happened or a big court date happened or something like that. Like check in all the time, every day after school. Ask them how they are, how their school day was, because just those little everyday conversations make space for the bigger conversations to happen. And that safety and and trust between you and your biological children has been formed, and those communication lines are open and they know that they can come to you, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that they need to talk about and process with you. Because all of those, those little times of checking in and saying hello and seeing how they're feeling have just have just really created this space that they can come to you. And it doesn't feel intimidating to share their feelings.
SPEAKER_01When you're going to your parents and you have a medium thing, like let's not even say like a really hard thing, but a medium thing where they are kind of laying the groundwork for you to be able to bring a hard thing later on. What was the best way for you that your parents showed up in those conversations? Does that question make sense?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. So I think I think I would just say like there was a lot of listening and not a lot of talking and trying to fix things in that moment. A lot of hearing what I had to say and them hearing it and processing it, but not trying to to offer solutions in that moment. There was kind of a collaborative, like, like, yes, we're both struggling with this, or this is something that's heavy on both of our hearts right now. And and like, let's have this conversation and then, but let's not worry about having a solution to this problem right now.
SPEAKER_01I like that. I like that a lot. I do you feel like your parents kind of intuitively knew how to do that, or did you watch them learn how to do that?
SPEAKER_03I think it came with like years and years of fostering and and raising, raising us through a world of foster care that that I don't look back and remember times where um I feel like they weren't listening to what I was saying. Um, but maybe like maybe it was a little bit, it's it's a little bit different when you're younger, right? And so so maybe they were learning through those smaller conversations that were happening when I was six, eight, nine years old, and kind of formulated the way that that they could navigate those conversations as we got older and had more complex questions and things. They kind of had a base, a baseline of just experience and talking to other people who were also raising biological kids in foster families. Um, yeah, very collaborative between like learning from other people or just learning from their own kind of conversations with us.
SPEAKER_01I love that answer so much. I feel like it's this as a as a mom, it's like um I think that there's some intuition, like there's people who kind of naturally start that off easier, right? And there's then there's the learning process of it, and there's this thing inside of parents of uh that when the painful stuff comes, we feel like it's our fault because we're the ones fostering, like we're the ones at the end of the day that said yes to this, and so when we see it causing our kids pain, yeah, there's this like knowledge that's running on the back burner that I'm the one that did this, I'm the one that said yes to this, right? Yeah, and so there's this like um deep urge that has to you kind of have to swim against to shut it down because it's so pain, it can be so painful for the parent to hear the the pain in their kid that you that the the urge is to make it be quiet. Um and so it takes a lot of intuition and it takes a lot of patience and like what you were saying, like experience as a parent to sit in that and to make your peace with that, and then to get curious about what your kid is saying. Um I have found, and my kids might grow up and say what I don't know what they're gonna say when they grow up, right? Like this, I don't know. But I have found that this one aspect, this open lines of communication, sitting sitting in that hard spot and um letting my kids have their feelings, yeah, has been the number one thing that I have done for them as their mom in this. I think that and quality time. Um do you want to talk about that? How did you experience quality time? Because with 65 kids in and out of your house over
your life, fostering sibling sets, that's all that we ever did. There was only two times, and it was teenagers that we took individual like placements.
unknownI
SPEAKER_01I know what that life is. Like I know the octopus arms that a mom has to have in order to accommodate everybody's needs in the house. And it literally feels like you're never doing enough for any one kid. What did it feel like for you as the oldest bio kid in the house?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of times as we were growing up, since we kind of kept that younger age range of zero to five kind of age, what we would often do is kind of stay up later than them, watch a movie, play a game, have that kind of quality time after the other kids went to bed or were on naps or or whatever that kind of looked like. We'd do a lot of quality time kind of parent child dates on visits. When the other kids left for their visits, we would know, like, okay, we have two and a half hours to spend time together. And what do we want to do together today? And sometimes it's as simple as everyone is home. There's not been any visits for a while. Maybe when the kids are kind of the same age as us, that it's just sitting down and doing our hair or cooking dinner together, or just something that's like really small that you already either need to do in a day or or can make a little bit of time to braid your daughter's hair or whatever that might look like. That it's maybe 10 minutes that you're spending together. And it can really just fill their cup and help them feel like renewed and able to have as many kids around as there are because they got that little bit of time with you. And it it doesn't need to be extravagant and it doesn't need to be um like you don't need to make a big deal out of it necessarily. Um, like I remember once or twice that we went to the movies as a family. And I think that's that's kind of a we live in a culture that pushes like going out for dinner or going out to the movies or um going for an ice cream date or these more kind of consumerism type of activities to do with your kids. But I think it can be so small and slipped into your day and just something that is that flows very naturally into your day and just is that kind of that kind of check-in time to get them through to the next day when you can do that again. And maybe there's times here and there that we needed a little bit more, and there were definitely times that we would go out for ice cream with a parent or um do those bigger things, but I don't think it needs to be often or all the time. I think your kids want to spend time with you as the parent. I know that's what my siblings and I kind of talk about is we remember spending time with our parents. We don't remember the things that we bought or the things that we did. We remember kind of how we felt after that. And and just knowing that we were seen and we were heard, and our parents wanted to spend time with us even amidst all the busyness that was happening around us.
SPEAKER_01I love that so much. That is um quality time is my love language, tell you, Ray. Like it is like um, it is the thing that I reach for first in parenting and relationships is um how can I squeeze in some quality time? And when I heard you talk, I just want you to know that as a mom who I'm like every mom has like all these check boxes, right? There's a couple check boxes where I'm like, this thing I know that I've done. And it is exactly what you were talking about. It is not necessarily like the huge and the extravagant, although with my personality type, there is also huge and extravagant because I can't help myself. Um my Enneagram 7 ADHD brain loves some dopamine. Yeah. So but it's also the after bedtimes. It's the like we are going to this day, like as soon as the kids go to bed, my daughter is in my room. My son will come like matriculate to my room at some point throughout the in the evening, and like we cuddle up, and it's it's a habit that we've built for years. Um, I wonder, as you were talking, I was like, oh man, I wonder if your younger siblings, how do they? And I know that I'm asking you to like talk for somebody else right now, but I'm assuming that you guys have had these conversations. How do they process this as adults? They they are adults now, right?
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, I would say we all have pretty similar like outlooks on kind of these things. Um kind of to touch specifically on like quality time and like feelings seen by my parents as well. I know we were all, we all did sports, and so that's something we talk about a lot, is that it was like when maybe my mom stayed home to watch the kids, and my dad took us to, we were on swim teams, so it took us to our swim meet. And we remembered the conversations that we had in the car, or the fact that they figured out a way to make time for them to come and watch us swim and watch us compete. And so we talk about that a lot and just how my brother plays high-level baseball. He's um he's just turned 19. So he's um also kind of he's still in that kind of phase of like he's still playing ball before he goes off to school. And so even now, like that's something we prioritize is having a parent there or or myself or my sister there whenever he's pitching, because it means a lot to him to have someone there and watching him, and amidst all the busyness of having 10 children in our family, um, really seven children now, age kind of that like actual child age, the rest of us are older, but we're all living in the home together still. Um, that just that there's still we're still able to make that time to kind of focus on him and and know that we still want to like want to see him perform and even amidst the busyness. And um, yeah, we I think we all feel very similarly about kind of the ways we were supported growing up and the ability we had to be able to just go to our parents and have hard conversations. And um, I mean, we all we all grieve a little bit differently. We all have like little things that that are different, but um we do have, I think, a very similar outlook on our experiences over the years.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Um you just mentioned grief, and this is one of the things that when you were talking, um
shocked is not the right word, but the emphasis that you put on it definitely took me by surprise. Um, so we do at Haven, we have this bio kid camp that is every summer. And so I've listened to kids for years talk about like, I love this and I hate this. I every kid says it. Every single kid. It's one of the first things that I say to a parent is listen, your kid, this is how you're like, they love it and they hate it. Yeah, most of the time they love it, sometimes they hate it, they wrestle with sharing you. They love that you are caring for somebody that needs help. They love that it's happening in their home. And also they there's some jealousy there. Like this is a common thing. And so if we don't normalize this emotion, then it creates shame, right? Like this is and and if it was just one kid saying it, then fine, that's one experience, but it's literally every kid saying it. So we need to be paying attention to this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so I'm used to that, but then you talked about the grief and the um kind of like the big three emotions of jealousy and and um I don't know, I don't remember the other one that you talked about, but you want to talk about that for a second because the way that you emphasized it really stood out to me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I am really big on naming the emotions. So when your kid comes to you, being able to say, I can tell you're feeling frustrated right now, or I can tell you're feeling sad right now. Um for emotions like anger, I know like I often use anger as a shield for the grief that I don't want to feel. So I'll get, you know, a kid, a kid will be moving and I'll be mad at the bioparents for putting the kids in that situation in the first place. I'll be mad at the workers or the judge or or someone, and it will come out as anger. So naming emotions and being able to say, I can tell you're feeling angry right now. Like, is there something more you're thinking about? Or I can tell that um, like you're jealous, you're struggling with sharing us right now. Like, let's let's spend some time together tonight. Like naming those those different things, and of course, naming the positive emotions too. But there's a lot of a lot of good in naming the the harder emotions too, because it gives kids a name to like understand how they're feeling and maybe why they're feeling those ways too. And so, yeah, that's that's something that's really big for me, especially when it comes into it all comes into grief. And and when when a kid's feeling jealous, they're grieving the fact that they're sharing their parents. When they're feeling angry, they might be grieving a goodbye that's happening or or another part of their life that is shifted. And I think a lot of it kind of is related to grief in some way for those harder emotions, some kind of grief that is happening.
SPEAKER_01And so then, as parents, just knowing that is that helpful? Like just knowing it and being and going, okay, that what I'm really working with is grief here and having kind of like a soft place to land, if you will, or just kind of like a grief toolkit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think recognizing that the the anger is coming from a place of grief can help the way that parents respond instead of coming in a way of like, why are you so like why are you why are you yelling at your siblings? Why are you um like being so fiery about this situation with the judge or the workers? Seeing like, okay, there actually there's this, there's this layer of grief here that I need to come at gently and carefully to help them unpack that. And I know that grief is something that is really scary for a lot of, like we were kind of talking about earlier, for a lot of parents to think about this grief and putting their kids through the grief and the changes that come from being a foster family, but there's also so much privilege that foster families have in being able to guide kids through grief. And your kids then either are gonna grow up and they're not gonna experience grief for the very first time by themselves. As a foster family, you've had so many opportunities to guide your kids through grief and teach them how to have healthy coping strategies and safe people to talk to when they are grieving and just ways to manage all of the other emotions that come along with grief.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I, you know what's so interesting is that you really see this as a parent. Um, my 16-year-old and and 13-year-old have words in their vocabulary that I didn't have until I was in my 30s. You know what I mean? Like I just was I had nobody articulating a grieving process. And um so as anytime that we experience grief, um now my 16-year-old is is was soon to be 16-year-old, she's just naming it. She's just like, oh, we're Harvins. This is one of the ways that we like X, Y, Z, right? Like this is one of our coping schools that we use, and and making it um not hide in the dark, right? And I have found for myself like like doing that out loud for as I experience it helps my kids do it also. Would you say that that's true as a kid?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yes. So I place a lot of value on the ways that my parents grieved alongside us and talked through their experiences alongside us because not only did it give us the vocabulary to be able to share how we were feeling or the ways we were grieving or whatever that might be, but it helped us see that okay, like our parents are also going through this, and it's okay to feel those emotions because they're feeling those emotions too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's the opposite of like being strong, you know, like that the strength actually is in the vulnerability when it comes to parenting our kids. Yeah. Because it gives them a roadmap and it it helps you feel seen in your grief, in your in your whatever, right? Like I think it would be really interesting if we pulled some foster and adoptive parents and asked them how often they experience jealousy in this, um, which is not often talked about on the as the caregiver. Jealousy is not something that is often named. And it's just kind of like a random thought fluttering through my mind right now, where I'm like, you know, jealousy is probably more around than we think. Yeah. Um okay if you could name it, like, or if you could like narrow it
down, what do you think the top three things that bio kids experience are? Like collect like just collectively. Like if you're a bio kid, chances are you're going to have experienced these three things.
SPEAKER_03So I would say the first, and I I I guess I'll start with the most obvious, in that they're going to experience grief, and that's going to be a big part of their story. But also, right alongside that, with like kind of the second thing, is your kids are going to learn how to welcome people who are different from them, who have different life experiences, who you know have had lots of different stories and lots of different things happen to them in the past. They're going to learn how to collaborate with them, how to live alongside them, how to develop, like they'll develop empathy and learn how to be empathetic in other areas of their life too, because of those experiences within their home and within their family. And I think I've seen over the years kind of how that has been made clear to kind of put my siblings, especially like I don't necessarily notice it with myself, but to see like how my siblings respond to situations differently than than their peers. And just seeing that like empathy and that ability to collaborate with others and and not back down when there's a challenge of differing opinions or different life experiences that might get in the way of collaboration and working together. And just I think that's a really big one too. Then the third thing would be I guess just I kind of it kind of sums up in those two, but I would say just like the love side and being able to show love and um and love as a way to to guide their new siblings and to teach them new skills and love as a way to forgive when things happen that that were not expected or um that are really challenging, and being able to kind of kind of love their siblings or love other people around them. Again, this is this is not just within their family, it it extends outward to other areas of their life and just be able to see the others around them in a more positive light because of the many experiences they've had within their own home.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Yeah, it is um, you know, I say that a lot to people that one of the things that my kids never got because they were six and four when we started, right? And so same for you. Like the only reason that you can answer this question the way that you just did is because you never got Sunday school Jesus. And that the even the concept of Sunday school Jesus, I'm assuming that your family is okay. I'm like, I just made a total assumption there, but um that that even the concept of a Sunday school Jesus might be foreign to you because you never experienced it, right? Like that it's a that's a whole different way of existing in this like kind of safe Christianity where you go to church, you have you know, your fellowship of other believers, and you have all of these things that are nice and prim and proper. And life happens, but life happens to everybody. And so, like, that's like you know, but in in our particular homes, life is messy inside, and our and our hearts feel messy inside, and the stories that we're exposed to are very messy externally, not even just on the inside, right? And so our lives just become this kind of like cluster of um the harder parts of life, and we get to see Jesus show up all the time, yes, right? So so my kids have this relationship with him that is so beautiful, but it was never about like you know, Noah and the Ark or Jonah and the whale. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02Like it's like sometimes I'm like, do you even know those stories exist in the Bible? I don't know because we didn't spend much time on them. Because when I would have been teaching them to you, we were, you know, well, actually, I'm gonna stop myself on what we were doing. Like my brain just went to all of the nasty, disgusting things that were happening in our house, uh, in a human excrement kind of way. It's like I didn't have time to teach you about Noah and the Ark. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and and I think you sum it up this so beautifully, like it doesn't just stay inside the confines of your house. Like you have had, you've seen the the depth of the human experience from a really young age.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um and that's hard to hold in a little tiny six-year-old body, like you don't have words for it at six and seven at eight, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um oh my gosh. Can I tell you this really funny story? And then I'll stop talking and you can talk some more. The at one point in our foster care journey, there was an incident with drugs that um shows up, and we I don't know what the humor is like inside of your house, but in our house, it is epic and it is wildly inappropriate sometimes, and it is very, very funny. And we love humor in in the Harvin household. And so we are making this joke about this um about this drug, and um it's like the answer to everything. And I'm like, Do I say it or do I not say it? Because I don't want to have to put an E next to this podcast title, but it is um, it's a white powdery substance. Okay. So and so we're like anytime that somebody says like what's for lunch, one somebody would say probably, and then they would enter the name of the drug. And it was h it was hilarious. I need you to understand how good my kids' timing is on some jokes. Okay. And so, especially my son, especially my son. And so I'm dropping my daughter off. She is 12 years old, and I'm dropping her off at like a youth group um weekend, camp weekend, and we had been having this conversation about. What was happening, and and then I mean it was it was we were in the very center of it. So this is flying around in our house. And I walk outside and somebody says, How was your week? And I start telling them what had been going on in the in the case. This is like a trusted friend. So it wasn't like I wasn't like sharing crazy details with people. Okay. And I look at them and I go, Oh my God. Oh my God, I'll be right back. And I'm right back inside the church that I just dropped my daughter off. And I go, Hey, real quick, you know that you can't make jokes about this drug this weekend, right? And like you know that church isn't the place for this. And she looks at me and she goes, Yeah, mom, obviously. And I was like, Okay, great, thanks so much, have a good weekend.
SPEAKER_02And I walk back and I'm like, what is our life? That I just said this to my daughter at a middle school youth group retrial.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it was our life, it is it is our life. Like the joke still hits at like it's still funny in our family years later. Okay. But she doesn't, she didn't have Sunday school Jesus. So like her life has has been like there's there's so much sheltering that happens in Christian homes, and it's like we can shelter to a point, but I'm sure that you would say, Yeah, I my parents could shelter me, but they couldn't shelter me from everything.
SPEAKER_03Right. Definitely, and and I think just such an emphasis on like you kind of said, like, like you mentioned like Noah's Ark or Jonah and the whale, and we were living out every day the love your neighbor side. And we were just that was just our life was love your neighbor and love those around you and care for them and guide them and and all those things. We were living it every day, not just hearing the stories.
SPEAKER_01It's so hard, isn't it? Like it shows it shows up in so many different ways how just how hard it can be to just do that simple thing, that one simple thing in our faith. Love your neighbor as yourself, yeah. And the way that I fail at that all of the time. Gosh. But it really is like it's this like central thing. Um, okay, in the same way that I said, like, what are the top three things that bio kids experience? What are the top three things that um that you think that parents can do, even if we already talked about it? Like just name it if we've already talked about it, but what are the top three things that parents can do to support the biological children in their home?
Yeah. Um the top thing, and I know we talked about it, but just keeping the communication open because I think that provides the basis for everything that happens in your family as a foster family. Your kids need to know that it's safe to come to you and talk to you and share how they're feeling. And they need to have that trust built with you that you're going to listen to them and you're going to hear what they have to say, and you're going to take it seriously. So keeping the communication open and just emphasizing to your kids, like, I'm here anytime you need me, no matter what it is, talk to me. And and and that comes from the parents, too, of doing the check-ins and and keeping the communication lines open on their end as well. And the second thing kind of goes along with that communication with the kind of quality time and finding times to pour into your kids and support them. And so that might look like quality time. That might be your kid is responds best to words of affirmation. So maybe it's writing a note and putting that note in their lunch pail or on their pillow for them to um to find and just be reminded like, hey, you're a great foster sibling. Hey, I love you so much. Thank you for the ways that you love the people around you, or um just those little, those, those words of affirmation. Maybe it's physical touch, maybe it's hugs and and and just cuddles. And there's so many different ways that that you can show your kids you love them and you can pour back into them. And and I think those are three really main ones for for your kids and ways to be able to pour into them, to support them and show them that they're they're seen. Um, then for the third one, I would say kind of that grief support. And it kind of goes along with the quality time and the pouring into your kids and the communication, but supporting your kids in grief, especially the not being afraid to grieve alongside your kids. I look back so many times and I see like that one little boy that afterwards I said my heart needed a break. We were grieving him as a family. He stayed with his biological mom for three years and he came back into care. And he stayed for another 16 months. And again, adoption was thrown out there. Um, and the conversations kind of kind of included us as bio kids because we we thought that was the way that the case was going. And then he ended up going to his um grandma. And we haven't seen him since he reunified with his grandma. But that was a major grief because we'd been involved in his life for five and a half years at that point. And I remember my parents crying alongside me and grieving alongside me in that, and we would celebrate his birthday later, and we'd all be crying while we would celebrate his birthday, and just those times of them not being afraid to show their emotions and grieve alongside us and and and really just teach us that safe grief and um that we don't have to be afraid to share our emotions and and to just show us they were right there if we needed anything while we were grieving. Just that grief support is so huge. And I guess like grief, grief can last years, or it could last a couple weeks, or it could last a couple months. Like it's so different in timing. And so to see that I was still grieving my brother, I remember specifically his when we celebrated his seventh birthday. So he left when he was five and a half. We celebrated his seventh birth, and I remember we were all very emotional and just feeling so reassured in that it's okay that I'm still grieving this, even though it's been a year and a half since we've seen him since he left. It's okay to still be grieving this and feeling these big emotions. So just that grief support is so huge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, grief is a complicated beast, isn't it? It's complicated for adults who have a fully developed frontal cortex and and a wide vocabulary. And it's so much more complicated in a kid's body. And and um it's so much more complicated in a foster and adoptive home because the bio kids are not the only ones in the house, right? Like this is um we've been talking about this this week in our home. That like the layers of grief, the layers, the the experiential layers that add to the equation, right? Because in our in our home, there's four kids who for whom grief is a very complicated matter. So a butterfly dying, and uh a bad day at school, and uh spilled ice cream cone, and a thing that anybody would actually call grief can all feel the same, can all trigger the same under underlying emotions of I lost the most important people in my life, right? Um and then they have their responses to that grief. So in an extended period of time in a family, so like three years ago, we had an an older dog, very senior. It was time. We put her down, but the the kids in our home, right? They had come in, she was there, she was part of it, like all of that stuff. One of them laughed. And I understand this as a mom. I can promise you that my then 10-year-old son did not understand it when his beloved, you know what I mean, and like the resentment that can come from like you didn't care for my heart in the middle of this grief, right? To a four-year-old that is not like there's not like it's it's so complicated, exactly. Yeah, it's so complicated, yes, and and but that can hold, right? And so then when as a family we experience another grief, it's assumed like by my by anybody, by my son or by like you're not gonna care, like I don't trust my siblings here because they didn't care for me in my grief in the last round, right? Now, whether that is true or not, it's just this like immediate assumption and navigating that is gosh, I don't know how we got onto this topic, but um, but grief is a complicated, complicated, complicated thing.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01Um and hard to talk about, and hard to talk about, I'm sure, as a as a bio kid, like sharing your experience of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's very isolating the kind of grief that we face as a foster family and as bio kids, because the grief of saying goodbye, I know it's often compared to like to a death I've seen on social media, especially, but but there's so much more to it because what you're really grieving is is the goodbye and the fact that that your sibling is going to go and live this life for years and years and years that you're not a part of. And and it's it's very complicated and it's difficult to talk about with people who haven't experienced it because my friends didn't understand the grief that I was going through because they couldn't, they didn't have the same um experiences with with a goodbye like that, and so it can feel very isolating as well.
SPEAKER_01You're 22, 23 now? 22, yeah. 22. And if I did my math right while you were talking earlier, you were 15 when your brother went to his grandma?
SPEAKER_03Yes,
yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's seven years ago, and he left it five and a half. So he's 12 now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he actually just turned 13.
SPEAKER_01He just turned 13. Yeah. Oh man, I have so many questions and I want to tread so lightly here. Does grief still show up? Yeah. Yeah. Like yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's I know every year, so he left on October 1st. And every year, October 1st rolls around, and I feel it in my body. And I know this is a conversation I've had with my sister too, because when I was in university, there was one day, and I would just I was so unmotivated to do any work. I was just like, I could not get in the headspace of doing any work. And then I looked at my calendar and I realized that it was the anniversary of him leaving. And I had this same conversation with my sister just this past year where she messaged me and she said it was October 2nd, and she said, What day did he leave? And I said, October 1st. And she goes, That explains it. She's like, I'm in a group project right now, and she's open about this too. But she's like, I'm part of a group project right now, and I can't even get my part done because all I can think about is like I can't think about anything other than just something is wrong, and I can't figure out what exactly it is. So she's like, My brain is working overtime trying to figure out what is putting this block in my system to being able to focus on the work I need to do. And she she said, she messaged me and said, I I thought he left at the end of October. And I was like, No, he left October 1st. And she said, That explains everything. And it was just, it's it's been years since he left, and that's still the experience that we're that we're having and that we're going through.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like you carry this brother with you, right? And it's but there's so many unknowns. What do you do for yourself on October 1st? Like, how do you care for yourself on October or on his birthday? Like, how do you hold that grief now?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Honestly, like since I do, I've always done a lot of journaling. And so journaling would help me a lot. Um, I will often write a post um for my social media around that time. And I and I I try to kind of tread lightly and carefully around not sharing too much, but also sharing that this grief is still happening, and it's very helpful for me to feel like, okay, I'm I'm sharing this side of myself with other people who are maybe going through the same thing. Um, so I'll I I kind of just treat it as a journal that day, and then I'll end up posting, posting something of that I'll do. I distract myself a lot. So um I'll maybe in school I would place lower expectations on myself that day and I would go for a walk, or um I would just take some space to read or listen to a book or bake something and just try to kind of fill my day so I wasn't stopping to think about it for too long. Um, but also knowing that I probably wasn't going to get very much done for my schoolwork that day.
SPEAKER_01Just kind of giving yourself some space. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last question. Um and yeah, I'm not even gonna apologize for asking it. You had 65 siblings. Did you attach to all of them the same way?
No, honestly, there were some that we like I never really bonded with. Um, there were some that I was intensely bonded with, and they only stayed for a month. And it was this whole it's something I've wrestled with a lot because um, especially the one that I really never bonded with or grew attached, he was a teenager and he ended up staying for three and a half years. And in all of that three and a half years, we never had a bond like I had with other siblings. And yeah, with some, it's so instantaneous. And with others, it takes a little bit of work, but it's definitely been very different for every situation, every sibling. Um, that kind of bond forms a little differently.
SPEAKER_01How did you learn how to be okay with that? I'm assuming if your experience was anything like what I have seen in my own home and and what I see in other people's homes, like sometimes there's like some resentment when kids come and they're not as easy to bond with. Like, like the initial thing is to push that on the other person, right? Like it's because you're like blah, blah, blah. And I totally get that. Like, but how how did you end up making peace with that?
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, there was definitely a lot of resentment um at the beginning of just like I felt like I was putting in so much effort to bond with him, and it wasn't happening. And um yeah, that took a lot to wrestle with and just kind of navigate because that was that was definitely the biggest um experience I'd had of struggling to bond. And so that's that's kind of one that sticks with me. Um, there were others that it just wasn't as as prominent, I guess, of like in my face of not bonding, um, just kind of like maybe a less close bond. Um, but it took a lot of like, okay, I know I've done everything that I can to bond with this child or that child or this sibling set or whoever it was. I know I've done everything that I can, and they're just not at a place right now where they can can bond and can form that attachment. And for some of those kids, it took years later for me to be like kind of come to terms with that and know like I did everything and and I tried and I did my best. And with some, like especially my teenage sibling who stayed for three and a half years, he like I kind of had to come to terms with it during that time because there was I'd kind of realized there was only so much I could do to form this bond. And when it didn't happen, I kept the opportunities open to kind of spend time together here and there, but but it was coming to terms with I'm doing as much as I can and and it's not gonna be enough. And we're gonna have to learn how to function as siblings that that are not as close for now and eventually work through it. But even some of the like the insight on that has come with maturity and over the years, because in the moment I remember just being very frustrated and um yeah, very frustrated with the fact then that he was not responsive to my attempts to connect with him the way that I wanted him to be or expected him to be.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I think that this has been one of the biggest struggles in my house over the last eight years of this life is um the different levels of connection that kids have with the whole the whole conglomeration. Um it's not it's not easy. It is not easy, but it's worth it. It's worth it. Um okay, at the end of every podcast, we do a little bit of a lightning round. So if you are willing to participate, can I ask you the lightning round questions?
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01Okay. First question is what is on your nightstand?
Um, a book, my AirPods, my water bottle, and my Bible.
SPEAKER_01A clean nightstand. I love it. Yeah. It's so telling of a person's personality.
SPEAKER_03Like see the rest of my room doesn't look like that. But my nightstands, the shelves are good. The shelves are the shelves are manageable, the rest questionable.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Okay. Um, what book or podcast are you loving right now?
SPEAKER_03Um, I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I just finished one called Shelterwood, and it was really good.
SPEAKER_01Okay. What genre is it?
SPEAKER_03It was it was um a historical fiction. It kind of bounced back and forth between like present-day set in like the 1990s and then back to like the 1910s, I think it was. Um, kind of like the same location, but showing the story, like what who was living there and what was happening in 1910, and who was living there and what was happening in 1995.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever read um The Things We Leave Unfinished by Rebecca Yarros?
SPEAKER_03Uh yes, yeah.
unknownOh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01That same, like kind of the same historical fiction bouncing back and forth.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I do I do love a lot of historical fiction.
SPEAKER_01Okay, awesome. Um, I'm assuming you've read The Nightingale then. Okay. I quite loved that one. Number one fiction I've ever read. Like that is a okay. And then my third and final question is what is bringing you joy right now?
SPEAKER_03Um my siblings, I'm just spending time with them. And we just yesterday we I bought this. Um, it's called a water blob, and it's just this, it's much bigger than I thought it was gonna be. It's nine feet long. I thought it was gonna be like four feet long, and it just fills up with water and has like a sprinkler thing. And so we set it up, and they were just so excited, and it was just bringing me so much joy to watch them like explore that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that is awesome! Um, that's so fun. Tell you Ray, you are the full circle. I just I want you to know in case no other mom is telling you this outside of your own. Um, but um, and by that I mean like foster or adoptive mom, right? We spend so much of our time worried that we are ruining our kids and you bring hope to this community. And I am so thankful for the work that you're doing and your your ability and your willingness to put your voice and your experience out into the world. Yeah, um, not only because you are helping bio kids feel seen and heard and understood, that you're going in front and saying, Hey, I did this and I did this with my life, right? Like, um, but because you are showing the parents that there is hope and that with the right ingredients, that we have a chance of um our kids growing up and not resenting the life that they lived in, but actually leaning in to it, even if that's not the goal to lean into it, but like the fear that we're ruining our kids lives inside of parents in this work. And so I'm so so so thankful that that you were out here sharing your story and your experience and bringing hope to this community. It cannot be said enough how valuable that is to people like me. Thank you. So thanks for coming on today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thank you so much for having me.