Whenever I have an opportunity to offer advice to new foster parents, I find myself coming back to the same thing: be intentional about taking care of yourself. It is so easy to get wrapped up in the challenges of foster parenting and suddenly find yourself empty, stressed out, exhausted, and at the mercy of many factors that are completely out of your control. As we have heard many times, you can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t pour from an empty bucket. Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. Or, as Sufi philosopher and poet Rumi is often quoted, “Never give from the depths of your well, but from your overflow.” Sadly, too many foster parents are just barely surviving the day. Especially new foster parents find themselves crushed under the weight of trauma-related behaviors, unreturned calls to social workers, misinformation, no information, abrupt placement changes, lack of resources, and—hardest of all—lack of community with people who understand the often surreal experience of being a foster parent.

As we finish up 2019 and head into 2020, I invite you in to my year-end process of reflection and planning for personal flourishing in the midst of what is promised to be a chaotic and stressful path. Looking back on the year behind us is a good thing—what went well? What was hard? What, with the benefit of hindsight, could I have done differently? What lessons have I learned for next time? It’s good to sit with some of those reflections.

Looking at the year ahead is also important. While we can’t possibly know what tomorrow holds, if we are foster parents, we can be nearly certain that there are going to be a lot of ups and downs, they will often come without warning, and no one is going to fight for our personal well-being as much as we can.

One area of planning I am doing—and want to encourage you to do—is to create an intentional and robust Self-Care Plan.

This is not about pampering yourself—this is about planning to flourish in the midst of what is sure to be a very, very challenging home life if you are a foster parent. Even with a child who does not struggle with hard behaviors, there are all the outside stressors involved with foster parenting. There’s no way around it: foster parenting, under the best of circumstances, is stressful. We need to plan for how we will flourish despite that.

Toward the end of 2019, I hosted a live Coaching Call for foster parents entitled, “New Year, New Self Care Plan.” In that call, I talked through six “Fields of Flourishing” I’ve recognized as areas of my life that require regular attention if I am going to stay strong and avoid burnout. These areas include:

• Heart | Soul | Mind | Intentions
• Nutrition
• Physical Rhythms of Exertion & Rest
• Tools
• Relationships
• Supports | Systems | Simplifiers

If you would like to download the little guide I use to create a robust and intentional self-care plan, in which I offer some questions to reflect on to help guide your plan, here it is! My gift to you 🙂

There are going to be some really hard times in the year ahead. I hope you have a community of people you connect with regularly who understand the unique challenges you face as a foster parent. It is so important to know you’re not walking this path alone! There are also going to be some wins! It’s important to share those too! No one understands the victories of foster parenting like other foster parents!

I am excited about this new year and how we can help one another grow and stay encouraged as we walk this road that is so needed in our world. I wish foster parents weren’t necessary—but we are, and as long as there are kids in foster care, there will be foster parents who need to keep sharpening our tools and finding encouragement from one another.

Here’s to a wonderful new year. Thank you for reading and following A Fostered Life. I hope to connect with more of you in 2020!

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash