Rebecca Unedited: From Tenacity to Trust, a Lesson in Letting Go

What happens when grit becomes a trap and control masquerades as love? I open the curtain on nine years of foster care and adoption, from my early "This is a sprint" mindset to the slower "marathon" pace of adoption. The story moves through the highs of first placements, the heartbreak of an international adoption falling apart, and the relentless push to “fix” what was never mine to heal. Along the way, you’ll hear about the Kintsugi moment that mirrored my need to make the pieces fit, the overlapping placements that stretched our home to the edge, and a pandemic pause that revealed what I really needed was rest.

The turning point wasn’t pretty. A destroyed patio set and a red-alert text to my best friend cracked my certainty wide open. Therapy helped me name superhuman expectations and the codependency hiding beneath them. I started using a simple backpack metaphor to right-size my responsibilities: my time, choices, values, and behavior belong to me; my kids’ outcomes, healing timelines, and adult friendships do not. That shift allowed me to set down the heavy, invisible loads I’d been dragging—like making siblings become best friends or proving I was a “good” wife by appearances alone.

Here’s the paradox that changed our home: connection thrives where control ends. When I stopped clawing my way toward attachment and started showing up with clear boundaries and humble repair, everything softened. School days got calmer, sibling tension eased, and my own nervous system finally exhaled. This episode offers grounded takeaways for foster and adoptive parents, educators, and anyone navigating trauma-informed care: honor limits, release the script, and trust that presence beats performance. If you’re carrying too much, consider this your invitation to lighten the load.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs relief, and leave a review—then tell me one expectation you’re laying down this week. You can message me on Instagram @behindthecurtainpod or email rebecca@havenretreatsinc.org.

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Transcript

Setting The Journey’s Frame

First Placement And Identity Shift

Adoption Collapse And Grief

Tenacity, Kintsugi, And Control

Overlapping Placements And Burnout

Pandemic Pause And Unexpected Rest

Sibling Set Of Four And Overdrive

Sprinting Mindset Meets Adoption Marathon

The Furniture Incident And Breaking Point

Redefining Family, Marriage, And Self

The Backpack Metaphor And Codependency

Releasing Outcomes To Find Connection

Listener Challenge And Ways To Respond

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, thanks for joining me 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'm skipping the usual pattern just a bit and recording another unedited podcast for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is my schedule, which is back in full swing after the holidays and travel has been picking up a little bit. In fact, uh I'm gonna break a podcast rule here and date myself. But if you're listening to this and it's as it's being released, um I'm going to be at the field gathering this weekend in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So if you're listening to this and you're gonna be there too, I would love to meet you. Today I want to take you on a little journey with me. I want to paint a little bit of a picture of where I was when I started my journey as a foster mom to where I am now, just shy of nine years later. And through it, I want to talk about one of the hardest, most excruciating and life-changing lessons that I've learned and am still learning. This lesson is the art of letting go, of releasing the outcome and unclinching my fist. Oof. Um even just saying that sentence stirs up emotions inside of me. This has not been a simple or straightforward journey for me. It has been um rocky, and I have fought against it every step of the way until recently. Um, so okay, let's start back in the spring of 2017. We are in the middle of an adoption from Ethiopia. One that we've been in for years at that point. It's a horrible time to start fostering, uh, but something draws us in. So we take the classes, and if I'm being honest, which I tend to be, I was a little smug sitting there in the class. Like, I'm good with kids, I'm good with people. I tend to excel in chaos and under pressure. Like, that is when I shine. I was sure, sure that I didn't have unrealistic expectations of what I was about to walk into. I'd read the books, I'd wanted to do this all of my life. I was ready. Can you hear it? Do you hear it there? Right there in the story. Can you see it yet? It's one letter, one word, and it made up my entire existence. I was going to. I had. I was good. I could. I was made for this. May of 2017. It's a Tuesday afternoon, and a caseworker shows up at my house and drops off two kids. I've got chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. Uh, the items that they came with dropped off at the entryway, a text on my phone that says, Oh, I forgot to bring the meds from daycare. Can you drive across town and pick them up? I've got a baby in my arms and a toddler at my feet. And the moment freezes in time. Because this moment, this one right here, it is where my identity shifts. I freeze the frame in my head, lock it into memory, and then figure out car seats because we've got to drive across town. For the next six months, I rise to the occasion with excellence. I was right. I have a natural instinct for this. I was made for this. I was made for this, is a sentence that I have said to myself for nine years. And and I don't uh I don't fight against that sentence. I was made for this. I do have natural skills for this. Um, it's when it becomes this uh unreasonable battle cry for me. I'm gonna intersect these kids' lives right when they need it most. I'm gonna help them get on the right course, their family get on the right course. I'm gonna send them back home to mom. Everything goes right. It goes actually, it goes as right as it can possibly go. At the very end of that comes my first lesson in truly letting go. Our adoption from Ethiopia falls apart. It falls apart within 24 hours. Um, at the end of the day, it's an email that I have to send. And um and when I let go of this, it is one of the most excruciating nights of my life. That placement goes home and my next one comes and on the heels. So I'm not I'm not over my grief of this, of this um kind of adoption miscarriage. Like I call it a living miscarriage. This is in no way, shape, or form the same as having um a baby in your womb miscarriage, but it is the closest word that we have to what we experience in adoption when an adoption falls apart. Um and I don't give myself time to grieve. I go right into the next placement. And when that one comes, I find out quickly that I don't have what it takes. Which is an interesting statement because the way that I approach it is like, no problem. I'll go find what I'm lacking and I'll add it to my skill set. Um, is this a trick that I've used my whole life? I don't have this skill, that's no problem. Somebody out there does, I will go find it. What I learned, um, well, I learned so much, but what I learned more than anything was that I had tenacity. I could get up and I could try again the next day. I could hold on for one more day. For one more minute longer than I thought that I could, I could hold on. In fact, um, several months into that placement, I was in this kind of art therapy exercise at this conference that I love to go to every year called Christian Alliance for Orphans Kho. And I'm doing this um form of Japanese art called Kinsugi. And this form of art is where um artists take pottery that has broken and they put it back together. But as they put it back together, they lace it with gold in the cracks because they this idea that beauty is found in these cracks, beauty is found in this imperfection. So I'm sitting there in this conference room in a church, and there's three pieces that will not go back. I cannot figure out how to get these three pieces back for the life of me. And something came over me that the determination that I felt in the depth of my soul, these pieces will go back together. So help me, God. And if I have to sit here through the duration of this conference until these pieces go back together, I will do that. Um, I was telling a friend about this experience, and she was like kind of borderline shaming me for how I responded during the exercise. And in my gut at the time, I knew that that wasn't right. And I looked at her and I said, and and like I really respected her, I valued her input in my life, but I looked at her and I said, That that tenacity is exactly what's keeping these kids in my house right now. I know how to sit it out, I know how to cling to hope. I'm not letting go. Not with pottery and not with these kids. This is what makes me a great foster mom. And I like name it, right? I don't let go. I think about that interaction every so often. And um, and really what I was saying is like, I will find a way to put their pieces back together. So help me, God, I will find a way to put those pieces back together. Um and what she was trying to say is sometimes, sometimes it's kind of you gotta, you gotta let the pieces be where they are, right? Um and so nine years later, ish, um I have a clearer view of it. And and I think we were both right, minus the shaming, but but she was alluding to an ability um to let go that I didn't possess at the time. Our next placement came uh on the heels, they overlap, and I thought, if I if I thought uh for a second that I was in it before, well now I was in the depths. And we are in at this point the first um we're coming up on uh like a year and a half of fostering, and I was sinking, but I couldn't let go. I couldn't let go when it was killing my family. I couldn't let go when it was killing me. I was drowning and had nowhere to go. Um, in this season, I spent days, I mean whole days. I would go and I would drop the kids off at school and I would come home and I would crawl into bed and I would just be there. I I was literally, I was physically incapable of moving. I didn't quit. I didn't let go. Instead, I started a nonprofit. I would figure this out. I would figure out how to attach to kids in my house that try as I might, I just couldn't experience connection with them. I would figure out how to put these pieces for this new placement back together. More placements come and more placements go. I get my feet underneath me, and eventually in the fall of 2020, we get a call for a sibling set. You know, obviously in 2020, so much else was happening. So the season that I'm just that I was just describing happens like um th late 2018 and throughout 2019. And um, and then that placement eventually ends up having to move on. It's one of it's one of the only placements that we ever ended, and um and it was for safety reasons inside of our house. And had there not been a safety issue, like a true, genuine safety issue in our home, um I'm not sure, I'm not sure what it would have taken for me to eventually um you know what? You know what the d God The thing that makes me so mad is that when the when the person called me who eventually adopted those kids, she called me to say that she had heard stories from the caseworker, and she just didn't feel like they were right, because those kids were in our home for a long time, and for a decent chunk of it, we thought that we were gonna be adopting those kids. And she called me to say what the caseworker said caused the end of the placement, and that it was just one day I just decided I wasn't gonna do it anymore, and I just gave up and I listened to that and I was like, my god, if I was gonna give up, I would have done that literally a year ago. I would have done that, I would have done that a month in. It annoyed the Jesus out of me that she said that to me, and it still does today. Anyhow, we take that through 2019, they move on, and and we get a series of placements that brings rest to our souls. We get a series of placements that are that are easy, that are joyful, that they come with their challenges, but they fall far more into the realm of normal than than what we had just experienced. And and our family begins to ask this question like, we've been surviving. What would it take to thrive? And then a global pandemic hits and our life shuts down, right? And um we have eight kids in our home. You've heard me say this before. I am homeschooling six of them, getting a nonprofit off the ground, and feeding um what is the total? It's it is it's like 210 meals. Uh I was trying to do mental math right there. It's 210 meals a week plus snacks. 210 meals a week plus snacks in home when you can't find toilet paper and and everybody's making their own bread and and there's uh r like rations on on milk. But we had nowhere to go in the morning, and so the mornings Brad and I would sit outside and we would watch hummingbirds come into the garden, and we would watch butterflies dance, and we would watch the sunrise. And after schoolwork was done, the kids went outside and and they played and we and we didn't have anywhere to go. We rested. And I know that that's not the experience for everybody in the spring of 2020. Trust me, I know, but it was ours and it was healing for us. Um, those placements go home and we take our first break and and we begin the process of talking about letting go. What does it look like to let go of this dream of adoption? What does it look like to let go of what we thought this season was going to be and to really just settle into what it is? And we answer those questions, or so we think, and then we get this call for this sibling set of four. Um and it is the first time, and it is the only time in fostering that we were told that they wouldn't be with us long, that they would be going home soon. And we said yes, not because of what they said, but a little bit because of what they said. Four clients four kids so close together in age is a lot. Uh, it's a lot on its own, it's a lot without global developmental delays, it's a lot without sensory delays, it's a lot with neurotypical biological kids. You have four kids ages uh four to five and a half months. Um, you're in it. Um, but dang it, I'm in it to win it. So I dive in head first. All of the therapies, all of the interventions, all the IEPs and the 504s. Two of the kids came prior to elementary school age with like with IEPs already. They were in our like early start, like child find early start programs at schools. I advocate and advocate and advocate. We were so far behind the curve with some of these kids that I just pushed and pushed healing. By God, these pieces are gonna go back together. I pushed it like it was my job. Who had time to connect? We had to heal. Who had time to slow down? Four kids in all of the therapies, plus two kids leading normal lives. And oh, by the way, I was homeschooling them and and they're growing. They've got middle school schedules, and now they've got high school schedules and high school lives. We were just going, going so fast. Um, here's the thing. I understood the pace for foster care. I could do this as a sprint, honestly. I'm I'm good at it. I've always been a good sprinter. High school swim team, put me in the sprints. You want to put me in a 500 on a swim team? And if you're not a swimmer, sorry about that. That's that's like I think it's like 20 laps. Like, absolutely not. Put me in two laps, and I can win. Sustained effort though? A marathon? Oh. My friend. What is adoption other than a marathon? And I've never been good at that. Uh burnout looked different for me in adoption. It didn't it didn't come suddenly, like um like in 2019, um, when it just kind of crashed into me. This one came in stages. It came um one day after school pickup, trying to work from home while the kids played in the backyard. Um, I looked out the back and they had destroyed uh piece by piece, destroyed our pratique of furniture because quote unquote, they needed it to build pieces of their castle. Uh it came one day looking at a pile of dirt on my floor that I had just swept up, understanding that this was gonna be forever. It came um in a tent. And this one is hard. Oh man, this is hard. It came in a tent in the mountains out west, crying myself to sleep, wondering when, God, when would these kids feel like they were my own and not like I was fostering them? This is this is a couple years after we adopted them. It came when I mentioned that in therapy, and our couples therapists asked me if I knew that I had superhuman expectations of myself. That stopped me in my tracks because of course I didn't. This has just been how I always have been. What do you mean, superhuman expectations of myself? It came uh year after year trying to connect with one of my kids. Uh, but the word trying there is actually a misnomer. It was really striving, clawing my way towards connection. God, if I could go back and tell that version of myself one thing. It would be that you can't claw your way towards connection. It doesn't work that way. Every single one of those situations, piece by piece, dismantled my ability to push my way through. Um, it dismantled my ability to fight my way through. And so, you know, the process of letting go truly began. And I am here to tell you, I fought that too. And it didn't come pretty. It didn't come, it didn't come like um the end of your rope is not a pretty place to be, right? This came in is this came through a series of like panicked text. I remember after that furniture incident of I don't know, 2023. I should be a chapter in a book. The furniture incident of 2023. Anyhow, um, I I texted my best friend um and I said, uh, this is a red alert warning shot across the bow. I need you to call me immediately. And my phone rang quickly. We have a we have a code system for that, right? And and that day the end I just I want to be as transparent as possible and also protect my kids. It was not pretty inside of me that day. I wanted I wanted to quit. I wanted I wanted to dismantle everything that I had built, just like they had done to the furniture. I wanted to walk away and never look back. And and that's not a pretty place to be, guys. That's not an easy place to be. That's not a that's not something that feels good as a mom. And also that specific moment radically shifts. It begins to shift um my insistence that the future looks a certain way. It begins to shift my expectations of myself as a mother here. I begin to start asking different questions, better questions. I didn't want to let go of my idea of what a family looks like. I didn't want to let go of my dream of secure attachments to all of my kids. I didn't want to let go of my expectations in marriage. I didn't want to let go. And this is a really hard one of the of the image that I have in my head of what it means to be a good mom. Mostly, though, I didn't want to let go of my quest for perfection. But I needed a better way to move forward. And so I spent years in in these situations from 2022 to 2025, slowly experiencing these realities, slowly getting to the point. Like I said, burnout didn't come suddenly, burnout came over years. All of these individual experiences, they start telling it a story of a mom who's in too deep, of a mom who is carrying too much, of a human being who is carrying too much. And 2025 was the year that I shed it all. 2025 uh was a year that I shed, uh said better, it was the year that I shed as much as I was willing to shed for this round, right? There's I don't know what's left under the surface. I know humanity, I know, I know cycles, and and that were we have layers and onions, and we don't there's the work is never done. But man, did we make a leap in 2025? Um 2025 was the year that I walked away from the cycles that I was actively participating in, and I searched for a better way. I love a metaphor. Um, so if we could picture this, like I was climbing a mountain, I asked myself, what's the least I can carry up the side of this cliff? Turns out uh it's way less than I thought I needed. I can't tell you really what's in your backpack, but I can tell you what was in mine. Um, for starters, and easiest, my kids' behavior was on me. Their ability to perform well at school and in social situations reflected, I carried that reflection. Um my kids' healing, um parts of their story, those pieces, those pieces that I'm so so, I felt so responsible to get back together. That was on me. My kids growing up to be functional members of society. And that's on me too. Now, granted, we do want our children to be functional members of society, but um, you know, maybe that happens, maybe that doesn't. I know way too many stories from way too many foster and adoptive families to say, yeah, we have a guaranteed path of success here. But I was gonna try. I was gonna try to guarantee it. Um, my kids being best friends with each other as adults. I took that burden on. I wanted for my kids this story of just like their sisters being the best friends and their brothers being the best friends, and and like they sing kumbaya around a fire. Uh and and let's remember, I didn't do this passively, I actively pushed towards it. I was going to make my kids be friends, so help me God, right? This is this is what this is what a good family looks like. Uh being a good wife, that was a gigantic weight in my backpack, and and how I defined that was a gigantic weight in my backpack. Appearing to be a good wife, even bigger, and and and more damaging, honestly. Um, I came face to face with codependency in 2025. And uh when that weight finally came out of the backpack, you guys, I could walk with ease for the first time in my life. It wasn't easy. 2025 was a year, oh my god, it will go down in the history books of my life. Shedding, shedding layers and layers of of behavior and pattern is good, holy, deep work, but my god, is it hard. But I began to let go of expectations. I began to let go of my story of how the future should look. And and I'm not here to say that I have no expectations, obviously, right? I I'm saying that I I began to redefine what those were. I began to redefine what it means to be a good wife, who I I began to come home to myself. And I didn't I didn't just begin. By the end of the year, I had created a steady rhythm of coming home to myself. When when you start to unravel the chains of codependency in a relationship, all hell breaks loose, first of all. But but the benefit is so good. Um and and you begin to understand, like, I'm I am an adult, and I know we're not talking about codependency and we could in a different one, but but I have a list on my phone from from this book that I read. And it's like, as an adult, I'm responsible for my time, my my feelings, my beliefs, my values, my choices, my behaviors. Like this is what I'm responsible for myself, and I'm not responsible for it for other people. Other people are individuals. That and that alone, letting go of the belief system that I was somehow responsible for every other for, not two, but for every other person in my inner circle, the weight of that in my backpack. I'm not saying that there's nothing in my backpack right now, but I am saying that it's right-sized. Um the backpack in this metaphor, it fits correctly now. I'm aware of its existence and I monitor monitor what goes into this bag. I'm I am very, very aware daily paying attention to what goes into this bag. And you know what? Everything improved. Everything. Every single relationship inside the walls of my house, the more that I let go, the more that I unclinched my fists, the more that I put down all of the weight that I was carrying, everything improved. It's not a magic trick, right? I I needed to lay those burdens down no matter the outcome. I needed to lay them down for myself. But for me, the outcome was and is that everything got better. Every single point of connection with my kids. Because you know what? As it turns out, when you're not clawing your way to connection, convinced of your own ability to make it happen, connection can actually happen. Turns out, and this was shocking to me, connection requires two people. Who would have thought? That's exactly the piece that was missing for me at the beginning of my journey. All of this healing, all of this connection, all of these outcomes that I was pushing towards, not only does it require two people, but I'm not even actually the primary one. My job is to show up. It's to be faithful to the work that is in front of me today, to release the outcomes, to know my boundaries and my guardrails. It's to repair when I need to, to fairly and calmly reinforce my personal boundaries and relationships, and to love to the best of my ability that day. That's it. That's way harder than it seems, by the way. But but gosh, it feels like freedom. I love it. I have I've been waiting to talk to you guys about this because I needed some time and I needed some I needed some space to see if it held, right? But the more that I come back to to being in to understanding that on a good day, the only person I can control is myself. And the only things in my situation and my in my life that I can control is myself and my my things, really, right? I can control whether or not my bed is made, whether I make my bed. I actually, yeah, anyhow, I will I digress. But the more that I remember that, the more that I release the people that I love from measuring up to a standard they could never meet, anyways. Because my standard is perfection for myself and for others. The more that I let go of that, the easier I walk through life, the more freedom I experience as I walk through life. So that's it for today. And now it is your turn. What is in your backpack? What burden are you carrying that you need to let go of? What expectation are you carrying that you need to let go of? Obviously, guys, I want to caveat this by saying, like, there's still obviously an expectation for safety, for food, water, clothing, shelter, love, right? There's there's obviously, we don't reduce expectations to lower our standards of of living or relationship. We reduce expectations to give other people freedom in our relationship, to be who they are, to love them as they are. And we have boundaries. And it's complicated, and it's not complicated, and that's kind of the beauty of it. So um, I'd love, I really would love for you to tell me. So you can message me on Instagram on behind the curtain pod, or uh you can shoot me an email at Rebecca at Havenretreats Inc.org. So Rebecca1B2Cs at havenretreats with an sinc.org. Talk to you next week.