Rebecca Unedited: When Love Doesn’t Feel Like Love

What happens when one child feels like home at the door and another, from the same sibling set, feels impossible to love? We open our front door and our hearts to a brutally honest journey through foster care: the instant bond that made love feel effortless, the second placement that brought our family to a breaking point, and the teen whose silence turned a celebration dinner into a night of cold rage and hard truths.

We explore what it means to expand love beyond a feeling. When warmth won’t come on command, action anchors us. That shift—love as a verb—keeps families steady while the nervous system catches up and connection rebuilds in small, faithful steps.

Then we move into the deep end: how to keep showing up when loving hurts. We unpack perception—naming “the story I’m telling myself”—to stop letting untested narratives drive our reactions. We define boundaries that are clear, kind, and enforceable. And, we explore what we really have control of... the quick answer is, on a good day, ourselves! That mix of agency and empathy lets us offer full love while limiting access to the most tender parts of our hearts until safety returns.

If you’re parenting through foster care, adoption, or any hard relationship, this conversation offers practical language, scripts, and a sustainable framework—perception, boundaries, and control—to reduce burnout and keep your care aligned with your values. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with one boundary that helped you love well.

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Transcript

Setting The Stage

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, thanks so much 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 am coming to you today from my dining room, actually. And we're going to do an another unedited version of this podcast because I have noticed that there is that I've kind of struck a little bit of a nerve with the last blog post that I wrote. And um in a really good way, in a way where I said something that just was on my heart and it seems to have resonated with a lot of people. And um I want to bring it here to the podcast. So if that is you, welcome. If it is not, um, if you have not read the my last blog post, I wrote a story about two boys in our home and how loving those boys felt so different, and how um it can be really confusing actually when we love somebody wholeheartedly and it is easy, and when in this same sibling set, maybe we um find out that sometimes love is doesn't feel like what we know love to feel like. So um let's talk about it. So the story that I share, I um changed the boys' names in this story to um Shane and Preston. And uh Preston is the younger brother, and he comes to our house first. And when he comes to our home, it's like he he rings the doorbell, the caseworker is standing there, and it is like my whole heart is staring right back at me in my face. I had not yet experienced that in a foster placement. Um, the way that I know how to express what this felt like is that it felt like my heart had always known him. And in an instant, my heart was his, and um his heart was mine, and and I know that that doesn't always happen in foster care, but it did happen then and it did happen for us. And um gosh, love was so easy with him. And so eventually, because um the reason that he came to us when he came to us is because he his brother lived very close by, and so his brother was over all of the time, and um I was taking him home every single evening, and he would just cry the whole way home, and he would be he would be crying because he would be so anxious about his brother left it, like being separate from his brother, right? And and there are some pieces of of their story that really make this make sense, but um I'm taking him, I get him like enrolled in the same school that I'm sending my kids to. I um take him home, it's the night before school starts, and I'm walking back to my house, and I just have this overwhelming sense that um that the next right thing to do in our story and in his is to um overcap our house and to bring him home to our house. And so I go through all of the proper, you know, the chain of command. I go talk to the people that I need to talk to, and I get permission to to bring him over to our house. And the cost for us is gonna be that it's gonna be um we're gonna have to our whole family that won't fit into one car no more. So we're gonna have to drive two cars. And in the grand scheme of eternity, that didn't seem to be the a reason to um to not step in. Um I did not know then uh what I do now. And so looking back, I would say that this decision is one of these like pivotal moments in my life that um really genuinely and truly bring me to a breaking point. Um not because of who he was as a as a child, but because of um because of like the events that happened in our house afterwards, right? So, so where with Preston it was easy for him, um, with Shane, there was nothing that I did that seemed to work. Like it was like I would I would rack my brain trying to find ways to to feel love towards him or to connect with him. And nothing, nothing worked. And and like to make matters worse, like outside of our home, he was like beloved. Like he was everybody loved him so much. He um was cute and charming and and um you know he had a certain smile that that truly was adorable. Um, but I could not find it inside of myself to feel love towards him. And the more that I tried, the worse I felt. And the worse I felt, the harder our relationship was. And and he wasn't like an easy kid, like don't get me wrong. Like he was um, he was hard in our home. Um he was very, very hard in our home. And so, in addition to this, like not being able to feel love towards him, I also felt a whole lot of like, oh my God, like stop making everything so much harder than it is. Um and because I'm an external processor, I would process this with friends and family, just trying to find that shred of um love for lack of a better word for him. And one day I was talking to somebody and they said words that in the moment did not um didn't really like this is horrible to say, but in the moment, like they didn't they didn't help. It actually like I I fought against this, but I've been thinking about this now for years, and and I think that what they said was true. And and that person said to me, Rebecca, do you feed him? Do you clothe him? Do you advocate for him? Do you do you defend him in public? Do you um do you do all of these things that like mothers do for him? And the answer to all of that was yes. Um in a lot of ways, I don't think this child would have known my struggle to to love them, right? And then they said, then that is like like love. That's love. You're you need to expand your definition of love. Like love doesn't always feel like a feeling. Love is also actions. Love is feeding him, love is clothing him, like love is these things. And in understanding that, I mean that that child ended up ha like eventually the displacement ends up leaving our home for for a variety of reasons truly devastating reasons. Um and I wrestled with that through the entire time that they were there. But but those words have stuck in my head and they have been around when connection with other children has been hard. And it is like, am I doing the actions of love towards this child? And if I am, then then some days that has to be good enough. With some children, that has to be good enough. Um and it's like reducing this expectation of perfection as a mother in these relationships and saying, is am I showing up in a way that protects and provides and cares for and clothes and feeds and and does homework and like those things, then regardless of the feeling that I feel inside of me, I am actually loving this child. That has been helpful now in the same vein, and and um the kind of the way that I organize this now in my brain, and and like I guess part B of the same conversation would be like when loving somebody hurts, because that's the other part of this. Like sometimes it's that we don't feel love towards a child in our home, and that's hard, uh like on its own. But there's another part of it where it's like, no, sometimes we we are hurt in this relationship, and loving this child is painful for us. And how do we show up there? And what do we do then? Because I I don't know about you, but like my immediate desire is to completely shut down and to just be like, nope, I'm out. Um, pull back, withdraw, not be vulnerable at all. And so, like, I learned this through a teenager that we had in our home. And um, well, I guess I started learning this lesson with her. And she came at 17. So um we knew that our yes was a forever yes. Like we knew that teenagers who are 17 in foster care do not have family typically to go home to, and that they need a place to go to for Thanksgiving and Christmas and summer break and winter and all of that stuff. And so uh that was our yes. And she came, she had been in our house for a little bit of time, got to know us, try she was trying us out as family. Um, and eventually she was like, Hey, I am in. I also want this. I I want you guys to take the take the roles of mom and dad in my life. And and we all kind of understood that that was not gonna be the same as somebody who had come to us as a baby or as a two-year-old or as a five-year-old, even, right? Like that coming at 17 means that we're taking this kind of like um coach, mentor, um relationship with them. And uh, we were all on the same page, and it was great. I mean, it was wonderful. And then this thing happened in in her world that that um really kind of broke her. Um her one of her parents still had rights, even though there was um yeah, I want to be careful in how I say this. Like, even even though they had not been around for for years or not engaged in their case for years, the way that her case had played out, they still had rights. And so we had to get because because also because of her age, like time was of the essence. And so it wasn't gonna be, you know, this like long drawn-out court thing. It was like, okay, let's go let's go re-engage over here with with this parent. And um that parent said that they would be very willing to terminate their rights and um and in doing so, like was like, you know, wished us well and off and off we went. That broke something inside of this sweet girl in our home, and of course it did. Of course it did. And she um changed overnight. The the teen that we had in our home one day was not there the next day. She began icing us out and uh silent treatment for one wrong thing. Like if we said one wrong thing, it would just be the silent treatment for days. Um and we tried and we tried and we tried, and and that went on for a couple months, and then eventually it just kind of became this like holding pattern of how do we show up here? And and uh there was a time when um she made it very clear to me that I was the equivalent of her math tutor. Um and I that for me, that was my first like kind of true sucker punch in in foster care of um loving can hurt. Um I remember being she had gone in, she had she had said the thing that she did, and then and she went into her room and shut the door. And I just remember standing in the hallway and like bracing myself against the wall and kind of like a little bit doubled over, like, oh my god, oh my god, like I'm she thinks of me like her math tutor after all of these months, after everything that I've done. And not that she needed to be grateful at all, but it it was intended to hurt and it did. Um, the second thing though, and and this is where we'll kind of sit here, is that in trying to connect with her, there was a there was something that good that happened in her um world, and we wanted to celebrate it. And so we sent a text and said, Hey, um, we want to make a special dinner tonight. What would you like? And she told us what she would like, and so we prepared that meal, and uh she came home and she went into her room and she did not come out again. And you know, every one of us in this field understands what is happening here, but but living it, living it that day. Um we put her plate on the table. I sat at the table and waited. Brad knocked on her door. She acted like she wasn't in there. He went back a couple minutes later and knocked on her door again, same thing. Um, I sat at that table all evening long, waiting for her to come out. And at 10 o'clock, I threw the food into the trash can and put the plate in the sink and I went to bed. And if my husband had not been like crying real tears in our bed, uh, I don't know. I I what I can tell you is that that day is when I discovered like what the saying meant of like um like cold, like a cold rage or like ice in your veins, like I watching my husband be so hurt took me um past where I had been emotionally in foster care. And so the question then becomes how do we continue to show up in this relationship? When there is like active hurt happening, how do we continue to show up? And and the answer that I have for this is simple in in what it is and also incredibly difficult. Um, and it is actually true in in both of these scenarios. Um the first one is about perception, and the second one is about um boundaries, and the third is control. And so um this is true in both places, right? Because like we are people of story, so we're constantly telling story, and and like neuroscientists would tell you that that what you are experiencing is actually your perception of what you are experiencing. It is not the actual thing. Um, it is how you are perceiving it. This applies everywhere, this applies to everything. And and if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, right? But but this sentence, this this, you know, we could tell that same story. Like she was in her room, she shut her door because she hates us. It's it would be very easy to say that then. But I don't actually know that. That's a story that I'm telling myself. The story that I'm telling myself is that she has decided to reject us, and she is she hates us, and um our family would be much better off if she wasn't here. It's a hard story to tell yourself. It's a hard story to feel it's it is um hard to live in that. And so um the second thing that we do after we say like the story, like we bring awareness to the story that I'm telling myself. The story that I'm telling myself is this. Then the second thing is we say, is that true? Do I know that she hates us? Do I know that our family would be better off if she wasn't here? Do I know is this true? Am I absolutely certain that this is true? Um, 99.9% of the time, the answer to that question is no, because I'm not in the other person's shoes. I'm not in the other person's brain, I'm not in the other person's experience. And so I don't actually get to say what it is unless they have told me, right? And so bringing awareness to our perception, bringing awareness to the story that I'm telling myself puts words around my experience, not not necessarily theirs. This is how we show up. The story that I'm telling myself is causing more harm to me. And so it takes the ownership of the relationship and it it rightly distributes it. These three things, perception, boundaries, and control, rightly distribute relationship dynamics, relational power. So the second thing, boundaries. We are responsible, and I'm gonna do a whole deep dive into this. We are responsible for very little. We are responsible to a whole lot, right? But if we go, if we break down what I what am I responsible for? I am responsible as a mother for my children's um Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm responsible for that bottom tier 100% till the day they turn 18. I am responsible for food, water, clothing, shelter, um, protection. I'm I am responsible for nurturing them and making sure that they grow up in a nurturing environment, right? I'm responsible for their education. Whether I send them to school or I homeschool them myself or I send them to a charter school, like as their parent, I am responsible for this. In the same manner with my children, I am responsible to them for a whole lot of other things. And we're gonna we're gonna parse that out in just a second. What I am responsible for, though, truly, really, in life, is I am responsible for my time, my behaviors, my choices, my thoughts, my values. I am responsible for um my talents, my desires, did I say that? My feelings. My limits, and I'm responsible for my love. And that's it. I'm gonna say this list one more time just in case I missed anything, and just in case you need to hear it again. As an adult, I am responsible for my time, my behaviors, my choices, my thoughts, my values, my desires, my feelings, my limits, my attitudes, my talents, and my love. I am not responsible for anybody else on the planet in those ways. I am not responsible for anybody else in my family. I'm not responsible for the behaviors of anybody else. I'm not responsible, and that's hard. I know, I know, I know, I know that that is hard to understand. Now, if one of my behaviors affects another person in my house in a way that causes them to exhibit other behaviors, there is definitely some repair that I like. I don't, I don't just get to say, like, well, I'm not responsible for your behaviors. No, I'm responsible for mine, right? Okay. So in this same scenario, I value repair. I well, actually, I value connection in relationship. And so therefore, I value repair in relationship. Which means that the next day, because I know where my heart was the night before, I have some work to do in this relationship. I do because I am a person who values connection and I value repair. I'm gonna I'm going to at least attempt repair. I'm going to at least attempt to to bring things out into the open to make things right. Um I'm also responsible for the way that um the way that my house is used, right? I if I get to um decide what my boundaries are and what my values are, like I value family. And so um one of my boundaries is I'm not gonna provide free room and board for an adult who didn't care to have relationship with us. So we're not talking about when she's 17. I'm talking about when you turn 18. This is this is my house, and and my house is not just free room. Now, my my doors are always open for somebody who wants relationship, for somebody who wants connection, but but we are not a place for free room and board. That's an okay boundary to have. The decision to stay or go is always hers. The clarity around say around like what she's saying yes to if she stayed, that was mine to provide. Okay, the third thing: control. There are roughly one billion things in this world that we do not have control over. There's a lot of things in this world that we do have control over. So um what do we have control over? And I have talked about this on here uh again many times. Um we have control over the color of paint that's on our walls. Easy. We have control over um the clothes that we wear as an adult. We have control over whether or not our bed is made. We have control over um what time dinner is served in this um scenario. So it is understanding I have agency as a person. And the person next to me, they have agency. And the children in our home, they have agency as well, hopefully. So I can exist in this world as a kind and considerate human being, aware that I am in relationship with other human beings and I can consider them in my actions, but I do not have to be consumed with how they are going to respond to my actions as long as I have considered them to begin with. Does that make sense? Like, I don't have control over how they respond to my actions, but I do have control over whether or not my actions are just and fair and kind and good and and loving and like all of that stuff. Okay. Um I cannot tell you how many times and how many scenarios in my life that I have had to, I have tried to control or have believed this lie that I can control another person's perception of me, another person's experience with me. It is a losing battle. And when you win, you still lose because you just feel like you're performing all of the time. Okay, so let's let's like put all of this together. And this is also like, let's uh let's apply this to that first one. When when love doesn't feel like love, what what do I have control over? What do I, how can I show up in this relationship? Well, probably a story that I'm telling myself is is standing in the way of me and feeling like I love this kid. One, uh I would be curious to, I would, I would get a little curious there, right? Two, I have I get to have boundaries around how I spend my time, what my values are. I'm I'm responsible for those. So if I'm a mom who values, let's say, repair, then with this child that's in my home that I don't feel love towards, I am still determining that I am a mom who values repair. So that's how I'm gonna show up. In the same way, like, what do I have control over? I don't have control over how they perceive me, how how it's all working out. I do have control over every day. I'm going to make one like one. Um I'm gonna reach out one time, right? Okay. So let's let's put this together. Let's wrap this up. There's a kid living in my house that is hard to love, or there's a kid living in my house that is that where it's painful. We're gonna use this teenage girl. Teenage girl is living in her home. Something has happened in her life, and she's putting the weight of her grief and her anger on us. She is actively sabotaging our relationship and our future in our home. We are devastated. We try to connect, we try to make her favorite dinner. She refuses to come out of her room. Dinner sits on the table until 10 p.m. when we go to sleep that night. Perception. She is trying to hurt my husband. She is rude, she is selfish, and she is acting like a complete and total jerk. Our family will heal once she's out of the house. New option. The story that I'm telling myself is that she's doing this on purpose. It's intentional and it's designed to hurt my husband. I am also telling myself that our family can only thrive if she's not living in our home. Is that true? Um, I don't know. Um, but I because I don't know what her motives are, but I do know that I'm the one who decides if we can thrive here. Okay. Boundaries. My knee-jerk reaction. Oh, and you guys, I hope that you understand exactly how deep this is in my bones when I am saying this. My knee-jerk reaction is to say, this is my house, and these are my rules. You can take them or you can leave them, and you can imagine how and where I got that that vein of parenting from. This is my house, and I make the rules. My knee-jerk reaction is to take the lock off of her door so that we can open it from the outside whenever we need to, provided that, you know, we're not like encroaching on like true privacy. My knee-jerk reaction is to ground her for being a jerk. New option. I'm responsible for my values. Not hers. Mine. Okay. Um, I value repair. Tomorrow, when I see her, I'm going to tell her that I didn't appreciate the way that she treated us last night, and I'm going to ask if there's something that she needs from us. I value my heart. I'm not going to ask her what she wants for dinner until after she's eaten with us for at least a week. I'm not going to put myself in the same place again. But I am going to make myself slightly vulnerable to her because I value that as a mom. Control again. My house, my rules, eat or don't eat. That is what it would be so tempting for me to try to control. New option. Uh, I'm in control of what time I place dinner on the table and what time I remove it. I am in control of how much or how little I let her see my heart in our relationship. And bonus, because it is my house and these are my groceries, I'm also in control of when food is available and when it's not. I am not, however, in control of what she eats. So I type up a text and I say, hey, we waited to have dinner with you last night. Missed you. Moving forward, dinner is going to be served at 6 p.m. and I'm going to clear the table at 6 45. Would love to see you. If you decide not to eat with us, remember that there is always peanut butter and jelly in the cabinet, and you can make yourself a sandwich at any time, day or night. Leftovers are off limits unless you have eaten with us. Love ya. Before I send that text, I'm gonna actually check it though. I'm gonna check it for healthy relational boundaries. Am I clear? Am I kind? Am I being passive aggressive? Are those boundaries that I want to set? Can I enforce those boundaries? Boundaries actually, one of the definitions is like this is something that I and only I can enforce. So we don't say random boundaries. We don't, we don't just like throw things out there that we can't back up. We only throw things out there that we can back up. Can I back up this text? Uh no, I can't. I realize that I can't enforce all of those boundaries. I'm not willing to stay up at all times, day or night, to see what she's eating in the fridge. Don't want any part in that. And I'm not willing to put a lock on my fridge if she doesn't choose to eat dinner with us in order to like bar her from eating food that's in the fridge. So we hit the edit button. Hey, we waited to have dinner with you last night. I'm showing her because I value vulnerability in relationship. I'm showing her vulnerability. I missed you. Moving forward, dinner will be served at 6 p.m. and I'll clear the table at 6 45. Would love to see you tonight. If you decide not to eat with us, leftovers will be in the fridge. Love ya. And I can send that text. Is it clear? Yes. Is it kind? Yes. Did I show her a small piece of my heart? Yes. Can I control when I put dinner on the table? Yes. Can I control when I remove it? Yes. Does any part of this depend on her? This is how we show up when loving hurts. We know what our values are because we are in control of them. We decide what aligns with our values in relationship to the people around us. And then we we walk that out day in and day out. I send that text. So now I'm not walking on eggshells, right? I'm living in peace. She can engage or she cannot engage. I don't control that. I release that. If love is a verb, and it is, am I loving her well? Yes. Does it hurt? Also, yes. Am I okay in the middle of hit? Yes. Because I know that I control my time, my behaviors, my choices, my thoughts, my values, my desires, my feelings, my limits, my attitudes, my talents, and my loves. My love. I am not in control of other people, but I am very much in control of their proximity to my heart. Hard relationships can get all of my love. However, they rarely get full access to my heart anymore. They can get all of my love though because it's it's a verb, right? It's showing up, it's doing my work in the relationship. But they do not have to get full access to my heart, and they don't always. And that's wisdom. It's healthy, and it's sustainable. So if you are experiencing this in a relationship, I'm here. I I've been there before. I will likely be there again. You are not alone. And um and you are not uh without hope.