Home.

Sitting in the car, engine off, in front of my house. I’m sure many can relate to the feeling of calm before a coming storm.

What will I be walking into?

Sometimes there was no pause. Messages and texts would come through with updates on how the day was going, and almost before the car had stopped I’d be collecting up my detritus from the day and be running up the drive.

Home, a sanctuary for most, a place to recharge and restore, often felt like the exact opposite. My children – with complex life stories and experiences of adversity and challenge – were feeling unsafe in our home. Their experience of homes was not one of safety and nurture, but often of conflict and absence. Now that is replicated within our home, with children set to hypervigilance and hyper arousal, reactive and explosive, their needs consuming the environment. Us, the adults, are needing to be hypervigilant, anticipating challenges and responding to explosions and reactions.

So I pause on the drive. I breathe. What will I be walking into?

It may be calm, but there will always be a story to tell. Something had happened, or something was brewing. Sometimes I’d walk in mid-explosion, in the nick of time, and step in. I’d be trying to mediate or placate, ‘changing the face’ to bring calm.

For many families their home feels like a battleground – not a place to recharge and relax, but a place that depletes and consumes.

This is the lived reality for many parents and carers, not just adoptive parents. How do we carve out safety and rest to allow us to recuperate?

My desire is to help build moments for parents where they can feel safe, accepted, and normal, to recharge and recoup. Walking with Families is part of that, an online community that offers a tiny bit of hope, where parents can be heard, welcomed and not judged. I’m under no illusion that it’s a drop in a bucket for some, but none the less it is a drop.

To sit with others who know what it is like to sit on the driveway and take a deep breath before opening the front door to who-knows-what has value. To know what it’s like to half-sleep listening for footsteps, to remain hyper vigilant and ready to step in and regulate, negotiate and placate every moment at home has value. Walking with Families is a support group for adoptive parents that creates a space to be heard, to hear and to know that you’re not alone.

Support for Adoptive Parents