Patrick and I met in 2014. We knew, from the very beginning, that we wanted to be parents. Yet, as two men, we were aware that the path to this dream would not be an easy one. We were married in 2018, and the dreams of family seemed to be less of a fantasy. As many male/male partnerships do, we started by researching surrogacy. Meeting with doctors and another gay couple to discuss their surrogacy journey (which was well underway!) we discovered that financially this dream was an impossibility. Furthermore, we researched private adoption, even international adoption, but each seemed to feel more like an impossible dream than an achievable reality. For a little while, we continued to work, save, and dream, when one day we happened to drive past a Children’s Aid sign in bright rainbow colours seeking foster parents. It wasn’t so much that we hadn’t thought of fostering, so much as our apprehension at the challenges this would inevitably bring.
Yet, the more we thought of it, the more it seemed to be the answer. What was the reason for us wanting a family? It was not for lineage or prestige, but to love. And love was the answer here, too. Children who needed to be loved. Whether we had the fortune to adopt or ‘only’ to be the safe space when they needed one while their first families healed. It would be love that motivated us, love that sustained us and love that would be at the heart of our family.
After training and home study (a process of about a year or so, and yes, we ran into COVID complications!) we were dually approved - approved to foster and/or adopt - through CAS in summer of 2020. We didn’t realise we had just bought a ticket for the world’s wildest roller coaster.
In December of 2020, a little out before Christmas, we received a phone call. Our first placement. A little baby boy, eleven months old, whose parents were in such a place that reunification would likely not be possible. He wasn’t coming to stay for a while, he was coming home. But; anything can (and does) happen. A week into our transition to placement, a relative came forward with the best intentions to see him for Christmas. Upon learning that he was still in foster care, this relative put forward a plan to care for him, and because kinship placements are ultimately a better environment for growing up with connection to their first families, our transition was stopped, and our miracle went away. We slid his Christmas gifts out from under the tree and did our best to settle back into life without him. Changed forever, of course.
A very dear friend of ours, with a heart of gold and an absurd amount of courage, seeing how much becoming parents meant to us offered to be a surrogate for us. Of course, with grateful hearts, we accepted the offer and as soon as New Year came along we began to try. Here is where the roller coaster really takes off. Six weeks after our first placement was halted, we received a phone call from our worker. The relative had realised they weren’t able to care for an 11 month old at their stage in life, and so he was coming back into foster care. While the journey was still to be miles long, we were ready to embark on it with him. He returned to us in February of 2021. Less than a month later, our friend announced to us that she was pregnant - we were now not only fostering, but expecting!
Our first placement became permanent in October of 2021, and our little daughter was born to us in mid-November. A family of two. One biological, one adopted. More than a dream come true.
At the end of January, our roller coaster continued. We received a phone call early in the morning from CAS. Our soon-to-be-adopted son’s mother had given birth, and due to the circumstances she found herself in, CAS would be needing a foster family for this child. Would we be willing?
Love, it is said, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”. Love was our motivation and our family’s core. And love, also, makes you crazy. We said yes to love. Now, our home has a 2.5 year old little boy soon to be adopted, an 8 month old little girl who was given to us from an extraordinary gift of friendship, and a 6 month old foster placement, the half-brother of our first. It’s crazy, it’s loud, it’s sometimes enough to make you scream. But it is our family, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.