I’m passionate about the problem we have in Manitoba with people living in third world conditions on reserves. The poorly constructed houses made with the cheapest and most bare bones materials. The mold, the neverending plumbing issues and lack of clean drinking water and sanitation. The overcrowding and cycles of abuse, addictions and neglect that there seems to be little solutions for, in certain remote places.
It’s ALL a result of colonialism. You can argue or dismiss the facts all you want but we stole their land. It’s what happened.
And it’s the innocent little beautiful kids who suffer. It makes me so sad.
Once again, I was awake in the night last night worrying about anything I could find to worry about. I was laying there staring at Sid in his angelic little slumber, and I went down a spiral of worrying what if they took him from us.
He came to us through the foster care system, because his parents had multiple demons that prevented them from being proper parents. He’s been ours for over three years now. He’s our world. There really aren’t words to describe how much we love him. And I like to think we provide not only endless love, hugs, kisses, safety and security but also the best little life he could possibly have.
But we aren’t the parents who conceived him or brought him into this world. What if they decided they wanted their family back together? What if, with just a phone call to their social worker it meant a phone call to us, out of nowhere, saying he was going back?
Back to poverty. Back to overpriced and unhealthy food. Back to winters in a drafty house that’s not properly insulated with stagnant air and mold growing in corners. Back to a tiny house with ten people living in it. Back to being exposed to excessive drinking, drugs, fighting, yelling.
Not only that, they are strangers to him. He was taken from them at two months old. He knows our next door neighbors better than he knows his bio family. That’s just facts.
I don’t know why I do this to myself. Dream up these situations that will more than likely never be more than just scary thoughts in my head. If he ever had to go back, we’d be beyond devastated. We’d be sad, brokenhearted shells of the people we are now. I’d never get over it. But when I imagine that he would go back to a happy place with loving people and lots of hugs and kisses, endless supplies of fresh fruit and veggies, and a great community filled with activities and opportunities, it eases the pain. A bit.
Yet I know that’s a pipe dream. It would never be that.
So this is what I feel passionate about. It gets me hot. I’m sure if I checked my blood pressure right now it’s going to be up.
The other problem I am passionate about and makes my blood boil is people who sign up to be foster parents only to take that cheque you get each month and NOT spend it on the child they’re supposed to be looking after. Kids in care are often neglected. And abused. All because greedy disgusting people want the money.
But that’s a spiral I’ll save for another day.
bloom.planted.north 
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