I wish all the best to the Association and I hope that this event will open many ”love nests” for kids who need it more than anything else. I confess that I came with mixed feelings today

What can I say within 5 minutes that it yields even a minimum of experience and feelings for almost 3 years we lived with a child who literally became a member of our family.

Eve’s persistence has persuaded me to come – I owe her a lot, too, for her permanent presence, advice and help. Foster Care in my case has never been one-sided, it has given me a lot and opened up a new world – which I want to share, to defend and to contribute if I can spread it because I believe it is an opportunity for all of us to become better by helping a child, to become even better, or at least to live better with the least we consider self-evident, to have a house, a room, a family that cares, protects it and defends it – just not one abandoned and abused child but a child like any other ….

I will not tell you that love is enough, or that it is easy, or that there are no mistakes – But even if my own story is not a success story, it’s not happy, our case was a self-awareness journey for all us. The conclusion of our Foster Care was not what we expected and I’m sure it was not what the child expected when it came. However, the common journey was – I want to believe – a journey of love, a lesson of patience, tolerance, acceptance.

I wish at some point our own foster child to feel as good, to feel lucky for what we lived or we tried to do and maybe we did not succeed. However, I feel fortunate to have had this opportunity despite any turn.

Our own family was not the usual one – perhaps and typically not the most suitable to accept a foster child. A busy mother – divorced with a child in her 15, who nevertheless played a key role in deciding to open our home and not only to a new member.

With few exceptions, the reaction of most of the friends and relatives was at first the rather familiar “you go to get involved … there are not so many problems and so many other obligations”

However, the saddened eyes of the child were enough to move forward and become a Supporting Family, something I never regretted, but on the contrary I think it was one of the most correct decisions I took in my life.

So we found ourselves in a few weeks to have one more member in our little family. A boy of 13 years old, with difficulties in school and even bigger in all his relationships. The only condition was to continue the school he had almost abandoned – It was not easy – he accepted, we changed school, he did it … and he was very happy. Each of his little success seemed and measured many times because we knew what a mental effort was hiding inside him.

In the first few months I felt despite the difficulties and changes at my own pace that everything was just fine … we had communication, the boys had found each other … the school and the obligations of each of us went well enough, we seemed to have become a good team. Even our surroundings, family, friends, colleagues quickly accepted the young man. Of course everything was new and often difficult … how do you face a child who recommends you as his mother just a few weeks after he met you, how are you facing a child who wants to become someone else, who wants to hide what he was until then?

Fortunately, the presence of Eve has always been decisive, clear and crucial.

By embarking on such a process you believe that you will do everything better, you think that because you have love, good intentions, and perhaps some knowledge you will change everything and that – let me say the word – “conquest” does not let you at first at least realize correct behaviors or even facts objectively, distancing themselves from the emotional. I have often overestimated the seemingly fast positive results so that I do not realize to the extent that I have had, the difficulties that have remained throughout the course of underwriting.

Eve, of course, was taking care of me – many times and dissatisfied with – She knew that things were not changing so easily and so quickly.

The main issues the young man faced remained childhood injuries, the years spent by the child at the institution did not let him overcome his past. There was a fear, a continual sadness and an insurmountable difficulty in trusting the people who were standing next to him / her.

His last year in high school was very difficult. A vicious circle believe me. He could not cope with it and the school system was unable to help him as if the universe in his case conspired to make the mistakes everyone was expecting to do …

However, the institution’s gifted child was transformed. The child who sat in his bed with his back upside down looking downward began to feel possible, which made us happy. Feeling stronger emotionally, but without being really, easily drifting into problematic behaviors. There, the temper, the love and the great reserves of patience were the point. The tendency of the foster child to escape from anything that was disturbing him led to the constant change of camp, depending on the problems he was facing, sometimes to his grandfather, sometimes to his aunt and sometimes to his natural mother …. Not for too long – so much so that he does not have to face the truth that was cruel to him. We did not break away suddenly, there was a long separation, first the emotional after and then the real seperation… We never yelled, we never said bad talk … …. He just slowly left. One day after many frequent absences – I did not have an exact picture – he did not come back … I tried to maintain a relationship with him. I visited him one or two times after, eventually he stopped answering my messages … I lost him. I can not conceal myself that I was disappointed, I felt angry but I never stopped having him to understand his demons, to feel how difficult he was going through and how many weights he was carrying within him … A few days ago he turned 18, I hope he has managed to throw over all of these sacks of pain, frustration and sadness and smile in life with his beautiful dark eyes. However, I will be here, because I am sure that when the things are better for him, we will come back and continue the journey from another point to what we started with the foster care…