Julian’s future

“Attachment is the root of suffering, and also the doorway to compassion.”

Robina Courtin

I am noticing how many truths can live in the same breath.

There is hope and anxiety. There is love that wants to stay. There is love that wants what is right, even if that means letting go.

Fostering Julian has opened a place in me I did not know existed.

It is not just affection. It is responsibility without ownership. Devotion without guarantees.

I love him in a way that does not come with a promise, and that is exactly what makes it ache.

Part of me wants certainty. A future I can grasp. A story where I know the ending.

Another part of me knows that the most loving thing I can offer him is not possession, but presence.

To care deeply without clinging. To hope without demanding my own security. To advocate for his safety and flourishing while remembering that his life is larger than my dreams for it.

I feel the tension between wanting his family to be whole and wanting his future to be secure. Between celebrating reunification and grieving what it would take from us.

Both desires come from love. Neither cancels the other. Together they make the weight of Julian’s life more visible.

This experience keeps teaching me that love is not proven by how tightly I hold on. It is proven by how honestly I show up while I am here.

Right now, my job is simple and impossibly hard.

Love him today. Protect him today. Delight in him today. Do not ask today to promise me tomorrow.

I cannot secure the ending.

I can be here for the part of his life that is ours to hold.