Court Day

They know what is going on. They overhear the conversations even if you try to be discreet. They understand what it means when visits get cancelled and their parents aren’t doing well. We lovingly use the word “healthy.” We want everyone to be healthy. Each day we reassure them that their parents do love them, but they don’t know how to show it in safe and healthy ways. We let them know it is right to miss them and even more right to be angry with them while you miss them.

Court day brings a feeling that I can’t necessarily describe. My first inclination is to describe it as relief because we can move on, move to permanency. But in a situation, such as this, relief seems like such a wrong response. I know sorrow is part of the emotional smorgasbord that comes along with this experience.

Whenever a biological connection is severed in a removal it affects everyone involved. When that connection becomes severed with an era of permanency, the heart wound grows even deeper.