Welcome to my circus.

June 23, 2018
by Maralee
1 Comment

Dear Joanna, Welcome to the World of Large Families

Congrats, Jojo (Can I call you Jojo?)!  The news is out and I’m thrilled that you and Chip are welcoming Baby #5 into your family. You are about to make the transition from a regular family to a Large Family. Gear up, sister.

I know having four kids may make you feel like a large family already, but once you have five you move into a new category. Five children is when you can be out with HALF your kids and people will stop you to say, “You sure have your hands full.” Five children is when people feel compelled to safely assume you’re Catholic or Mormon. Five children is when you can’t travel in your average vehicle anymore. Five children is when you start having to get to church early just so you can find a pew where your whole family can sit together.

Five children is watching people count your kids when you’re out in public. Five children is the wary stares when you walk into a restaurant and people realize you’re going to be seated near them. Five children is having to buy in bulk and knowing those two dozen cookies won’t last to tomorrow.

Five children means someone is always crying. And you can’t always fix it quickly. And it’s okay. You learn to live with chaos and you learn that structure will be your sanity saver. Five children means coming to grips with your own limits as a mother and watching your children step in when you’re maxed out. Watching your big kid read the bedtime story to your middle child so you can nurse your baby. . . it’s a precious feeling that can’t be described. Watching your husband competently manage five kids by himself so you can step out of the madness and take a hot bath will endear him to you for life. Continue Reading →

June 21, 2018
by Maralee
0 comments

You Never Outgrow the Need for a Family

I remember when the thought first struck me. I was watching a local TV segment about children waiting to be adopted in our area. They were interviewing a teenage boy about what kind of family he was looking for. He mentioned how he liked to hunt and fish, so the reporter said something to him like, “So you’d really like a dad who could go fishing with you?” The teen looked down and said, “Yes. And I’d like a mom, too.” I cried. I’m crying now, just writing it.

There is something heartbreaking about the kids who are old enough to know they need a family, but are likely too old to find one. I can’t imagine being in a place in life where I knew I needed a mother, I wanted a mother, but there was no one that wanted to be a mother for me. This is a reality for far too many kids in foster care and for people who age out of the foster care system.

A large percentage nationally of our homeless population are former foster youth. If you’ve been bounced around your whole life, who cares for you once the state no longer takes responsibility for you? Who gives you wisdom? Where do you go for Christmas?

The other night I was leading an adoptive parent support group and we went around the circle to find the majority of our adopted children had biological parents who had been foster kids themselves. It isn’t hard to see how this cycle keeps going. If you weren’t parented well as a child, how do you know how to parent a child of your own? Who do you have to turn to for support?

It’s easy to have compassion on little, helpless children who have been victimized. My perspective began to shift as I realized most of the adults I knew who were making choices I couldn’t understand were once helpless children who had been victimized. As adults, they now have choices to make and they carry that responsibility, but when so many devastating choices were made for you, do you even really believe you can make the choice to change? Continue Reading →

June 14, 2018
by Maralee
2 Comments

Where “Check on Your Friends” Gets it Wrong

I read something the other day on the subject of suicidal depression that made me a little twitchy. I think you might have seen it too. It was a list of quotes from people who loved Robin Williams, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. The quotes all expressed how those people had seemed fine, “happy” even right up until the end. The quote is then followed by some advice to “check on your friends” even if they seem happy, strong, and appear to be doing fine.

I’m struggling with this. From all accounts, it seems as though these celebrities were being checked on. They had people who loved them and wanted them in their lives. They had every reason to live, but they still took their own lives.

This hit home for me.

Several years ago we lost someone very close to us. He had lived a very troubled and traumatic life and we were there to witness part of it as his houseparents. He lived with us during our group home days and continued to stay in contact with us afterwards. I can’t explain to you the grief and guilt that come with losing someone you love this way. There are endless questions about what we could have done differently to help him cope. Should we have been in more regular contact? What should we have said? How did we not know he was that close to the edge? What could we have done differently to avoid this outcome?

But I’ve had to let that go. This was his choice and I can’t own it for him. I have to make some kind of peace with the fact that “checking on your friend” wasn’t going to fix this situation. We loved him the best way we knew how. I have no doubt that he knew we cared about him and that we’d be devastated by this outcome. He had so much to live for, but his struggle with mental health issues stemming from an abusive childhood were beyond his ability to cope. I wish checking on him could have made the difference, but that’s just not how the story goes.

Imagining we could prevent these issues by just checking on our friends may make us feel more powerful than we are. And it’s going to make us own our “failures” more than we should. Continue Reading →

June 13, 2018
by Maralee
1 Comment

Parenting Tweens, Identity Issues, and Mostly Still Being My Five-Year-Old Self

On my birthday this year I had a bit of a realization. I looked down at my plate, at the Death Star shaped waffle, the Minecraft themed adoption mug, my Star Wars t-shirt, my necklace with a bear on it and the word “Mama.” I had a deep sense that my five-year-old self would be nothing but proud of this version of me. Whatever I thought birthdays in my mid-thirties might be like, they have ended up being mostly confirmations that my life has been on a steady trajectory toward kids and writing and nerd life and church and reading and friends and music. All the same things I loved when I was five.

www.amusingmaralee.com

But there was this weird period. There was this time when I didn’t know where that trajectory was heading. From about ages 11-21 things seemed kind of confusing. I was an opinionated and ambitious woman. Maybe I wasn’t going to be married? I loved school and looked forward to a career. Maybe I wasn’t going to have kids? I loved to write, but hated having to be alone to do it. Maybe I needed to let go of writing in order to pursue more “team” oriented work. I played around with ideas of my future that went in every different direction from lawyer to therapist to special education teacher to florist.

And yet, here I am. Pretty much exactly the person I hoped I’d be back when I was a kindergartener.

Continue Reading →

June 11, 2018
by Maralee
0 comments

Radio Interview on Self-Care

I’m back on My Bridge Radio! Before deciding what I wanted to talk about for my first interview back in a long time, I took to my A Musing Maralee Facebook page to ask for topic suggestions. There were lots of requests for more thoughts about self-care: what it is, why we need it, how we make it happen, etc. This is a topic that’s so close to my heart, so I was happy to make it our subject on The Morning Conversation with my friend, Stan Parker.

I’d love to hear any other thoughts or questions you have! Here’s the interview in two parts with some additional links below:

Continue Reading →

June 6, 2018
by Maralee
3 Comments

I Am Not Enough

I think it’s supposed to make me feel better, but somehow the current motherhood mantra of the day is having the opposite effect on me.

“You are enough, Mama! Just as you are. You are enough for your children. You are enough for your spouse. You are enough for your friends. You know everything you need to know to be the mother your children need.”

I’m sorry, but this is not encouraging to me.

I know exactly how much I fail. I know how much I don’t know about being the best mom for these kids. And some days I don’t even know how much I don’t know, I just know it’s a lot. I’m raising six kids with five different sets of parents and genes and histories and if someone thinks I was just naturally gifted with all the knowledge I’d need to do that well and be “enough,” they are nuts. When that judge said I was their mama forever or when they placed that sloppy wet baby on my chest, I did not magically become “enough” for anybody. I was still fumbling around, doing my best, hoping I didn’t mess it up too much.

AND THAT’S OKAY.

Why do we believe we’re supposed to be enough for our kids? Were my parents “enough” for me? They were (and are) wonderful parents, but they were also not the only people speaking value and truth into my life. Is my husband “enough” for me? I love him with my whole heart, but I also need friends to support and encourage me in the ways that only friends can. Are my kids “enough” for me? I adore them, but also need other people and activities in my life to keep me refreshed, fulfilled, and on mission. If I know those people aren’t enough for me, why do I assume I’m supposed to be enough for anyone else?

Enough is a lie we keep chasing and can never catch.

I think I understand the sentiment. We need to embrace the fact that we don’t have to be more than we are, more than we can be. We need to be comfortable with the way we were made and proud of what we can offer to the world. But enough? I don’t need to take on the responsibility of being enough for someone else.

We weren’t designed to be enough. We were designed to be part of a whole. A beautiful piece of the puzzle.

Continue Reading →

June 5, 2018
by Maralee
0 comments

Everything I Know About Empathy I Learned from “American Pickers”

Maybe it’s the Midwestern sensibility. Maybe it’s the cool junk. Whatever it is, I’ve always had a soft spot for “American Pickers.” As I watched an episode recently, it got me thinking about what a great display of empathy always exists in that show. Different from other reality shows about people’s junk, there always seems to be a kindness present and a respect for someone’s story. It got me thinking. So here’s a little primer in how to be an empathetic person, courtesy of Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz.

(If you haven’t seen the show, Mike and Frank drive around in a van, looking for people who have accumulated a lot of junk. They will look through their junk and make offers on pieces they think they can sell at their store Antique Archaeology. I don’t know what these guys are like in their actual lives, so I’m talking about what we see on the show, not necessarily anything more than that.)

See the potential. Where the rest of us might just see garbage, Mike and Frank see “rusty gold.” Having empathy means looking at the wounded among us and recognizing that even what looks like trash can have immense value. Those broken parts of our story make us who we are and have value. Our imperfections are part of us, but they don’t define us. We need people in our life who can see beyond our flaws.

Be curious. Being empathetic means learning how to ask good, gentle questions. Mike and Frank are masters at just being joyfully curious. They seem genuinely interested in the stories behind the objects even if that story doesn’t get them to a sale. People are willing to tell them things they might not tell others because of the disarming nature of their curiosity.

Honor someone’s story. When they hear the stories behind the objects, there often seems to be a follow up comment or question about the relationships and memories involved. They don’t jump right into offering money, but acknowledge the value inherent in the story. They listen with the intent of learning, not just to try and make a deal.

Be fair. There are times when you see they could offer less money for something because the collector didn’t know they had a treasure on their hands, but Mike and Fritz will offer what they believe is fair. I think we have to keep fairness principles in mind when we’re listening to the hard stories of someone. There are people who have been wounded to the point that they no longer have appropriate boundaries around their story. We don’t need to be pain voyeurs, just getting some kind of perverse joy from hearing someone else’s suffering. It is on us to be fair with their stories, to treat them with dignity and to have appropriate boundaries even if someone doesn’t ask for them. Continue Reading →

May 29, 2018
by Maralee
1 Comment

Nebraska Foster Sibling Rights Q&A

In July of 2016 it became apparent to our family that there were some problems in the way the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services was interpreting the rights of siblings in our state when it came to their ability to remain connected when a child entered foster care. We found that while our state law said that siblings were siblings no matter what the status of their parental rights, in practice, our state did not seem to consider biologically related children to still be siblings once one of those children had been adopted. We knew from listening to adult adoptees and from talking with our own adopted children that they still very much wanted connections with their siblings, even if they didn’t have a previous relationship (which is what happens when one child is adopted from foster care, then a sibling is born and placed in foster care). We spent about two years doing research, working with advocacy groups, partnering with our state senator and eventually getting a law passed that protects the rights of those siblings, grants them access to information about their siblings, and allows them to have their voice heard in court.

www.amusingmaralee.com

Our family at the state capitol with the staff of Nebraska Appleseed the day LB1078 passed.

I wanted to communicate the changes in that law to fellow foster and adoptive parents in Nebraska and advocates in other states who are looking to make changes in their own laws. As a mother, I feel genuinely ashamed that we went through multiple sibling separations before we were even aware that our state law clearly stated that our children had rights to contact with their siblings. This is the problem with good laws— if nobody knows they exist (including the juvenile court attorneys), it doesn’t do much good to have them. We are thankful for the changes this law makes, but we know accountability will be necessary and it may need to come through well-informed family members. If we assume the caseworkers or even the lawyers know the ins and outs of all of this, we may be disappointed.

I know sometimes these laws can be complicated, so I asked Sarah Helvey from Nebraska Appleseed to help clarify exactly what this means for foster children and their families. Nebraska Appleseed was the agency that worked tirelessly to offer their legal expertise both in our daughter’s individual case and in crafting the legislative changes. For the majority of our case we worked with Robbie McEwen (far right in the above picture), but Sarah (back row, third from the left in the above picture) is now the go-to person for all things child welfare, so she’ll be sharing her expertise with us.

Sarah, tell us a little bit about your role at Nebraska Appleseed.
I am a Staff Attorney and Director of the Child Welfare Program at Nebraska Appleseed. Nebraska Appleseed is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that fights for justice and opportunity for all Nebraskans. We take a systemic approach to complex issues including child welfare, immigration policy, affordable healthcare and poverty.

What rights do siblings and their families have now that they didn’t have before?
​Siblings now have the right to have their voice heard in juvenile court. Continue Reading →

May 23, 2018
by Maralee
12 Comments

I go to a Church Where I Don’t Agree With Everything

My oldest child was baptized this last week. It took three pastors from three different denominations to make it happen. Let me explain.

We are a dunking family that attends a sprinkling church. I’m not trying to convince anybody that this is the one right way to do it, but I also know what my conscience is. And I know I’ve sat through many infant sprinklings and felt nothing but support and love for that family and baby. I’ve been moved to tears by watching adults we love be sprinkled in our church. I can get behind a good sprinkling, but it just wasn’t what we believed was right for our family. And yet here we are, in a church that only sprinkles.

So when it came time for our son to be baptized, we sought the blessing of our church. Our first hope was that we’d be able to have him immersed within the context of our church, but that wasn’t possible. So we got their go-ahead to have him baptized by a pastor/mentor friend of our family. We were able to do this at a church facility that both sprinkles and dunks, but that required the permission of another pastor friend of ours to use their building. Three pastors. One baptism.

If that sounds like a lot of logistics, you’re right. If you wonder why we attend a church where we’d have to jump through these kinds of hoops to honor our conscience, you wouldn’t be the first. But we’ve found there’s something beautiful about attending a church where you don’t agree with everything.

Continue Reading →

May 18, 2018
by Maralee
0 comments

How Moms Take a Relaxing Bath (in 50 easy steps)

Have an emotionally and physically exhausting day.

Decide to take a bath.

Put all children to bed.

Wait 30 additional minutes for the child who always has one last thing to ask (“Where does Superman change clothes if there aren’t phone booths anymore?” “Why do these pants have dinosaurs on them?” “Is my birthday on a Tuesday next year?”) to come out and ask it.

Wait another 15 minutes for anybody to ask for the last glass of water or to take their last potty break.

Tiptoe to the bathroom.

Remove all bathtub toys from the bathtub.

Remove the soiled toddler undies you had hanging to dry over the edge of the tub. Continue Reading →