Gratitude

How I Let Go of What Ifs

On acceptance and staying present

When I started to think about this week’s WriteHere prompt about retelling the past and imagining what might have happened if certain what-ifs had become realities, I found myself doubling down on my life choices.

Maybe it’s my history with psychotherapy talking, but when I think about the past, rather than imagining how I might have acted differently at key moments, I usually try and understand more about why I chose what I chose, and I look at what I’ve learned since then.

Also, my mom taught me not to focus too much on what-ifs. As a kid, I thought a lot about what-ifs, and they acted like a little fence between me and doing anything out of the ordinary.

My mind was always filled with questions, even when I tried not to worry. I want to wear my new lightweight sweatshirt, but what if it rains and I get wet and cold? I could go to my friend’s house on Saturday, but what if I don’t like what her family has for lunch?

My mom taught me to prepare and to compensate. I could bring an extra jacket and leave it in the car. I could eat a sandwich when I got home.

As an adult, I remind myself that even when something does go wrong, I tried my best with what I knew and felt at the time. Just as the what-ifs could bog me down, so can regret.

In particular, I think anyone who has parented at all can look back and second-guess themselves, but what good does it do unless it helps with looking forward?

My former partner and I took foster placement of a three-year-old girl back in 2014, and she lived with us full-time, or almost full-time, for just under two years.

Can I look back and find moments I wished I had helped our daughter more? Definitely. Can I list times that I wish I had reached out to my partner in a different way to share our unique experiences of parenting and to try to connect more effectively? Yes.

But more than anything, I’m grateful that we were able to welcome a little girl into our lives at a time when she needed it. I’m grateful that her mom had time to work with social services and find encouragement within her family to be able to live on her own with her daughter, coming to know that she has a lot of people (including my former partner and me) who care about them both and will help however they can.

When you take a foster placement, you have a series of present moments with your child. When your child was born, you didn’t even know them. And in the future, they won’t be your foster child anymore. If you focus on regrets, you lose the present.

I’m grateful for the present. I’m grateful that seven years down the road, I still see my former foster daughter. She’s turning eleven next month, and I’ll give her anime books and manga t-shirts for her birthday.

If I could change anything, I would have worried less about the upcoming meetings with social workers and the ever-changing visit schedule with her parents.

If I could go back in time, we would bake more cakes and paint more pictures and do more jigsaw puzzles. And we would play more games of Candy Land until she had figured out every way possible to adapt the rules so that she never got mired in the swamp.