Fiona's guardianship just took a jump forward

This week I got a citation in the mail regarding my petition to become Fiona's guardianship.  The citation gives anyone who wants to object to the petition until the 31st of December to notify the court of their feelings.  Fiona's mom and Fiona have also received a citation. I have worried a lot about that.  How receiving that citation would feel to Mom J.  How it would hurt and what she would feel that she should do regarding it.

Late last night, Amazing Jane forwarded me an email she had received from Fiona's mom.  It made me cry.  She wrote to Fi that she heard she was doing well and she was glad. She said she wanted to apologize for all the mistakes that she had made and all the bad choices many years ago. That she had been suffering from depression and didn't know where to turn for help, but that now she did, and was doing better.

She went on to say that she had heard that I was a very good person and would be a good guardian for Fiona.  Fi wants to call her mom with me when she moves out here and I am fine with that.  One of the things I was told by a different therapist years ago, was that if Fiona's mom could give her permission to love others, that her healing could really move forward.  For a variety of unbloggable reasons, we were not able to connect with Mom J and try to initiate this.  Jane has helped facilitate this and I am forever and ever grateful to her.  She also has supported me as I have worked to help Fi and Rob's first families see that I want them in all our lives.  There was a real rift caused by the agency that removed the children from the birth family. While the removal most definately was in their best interest at the time, the way the family was treated afterwards was punitive, belittling and flat out made a lot of them hate me.  Though I did not do those things, I was sort of an emblem of what had happened. I was white. I was, by their terms affluent.  Surely I saw them through the same lens.  It took a lot of work to help them see that I am my own person, and most importantly, that I love these kids.  And I love their families. Fiona and i both share a very similar vision of knitting together her "two families."  I see it as a big circle around the kids, Fi I think has a different mental image but the end result is very similar.

In many ways, this is the best present all of us could receive this Christmas.