The sound of her voice makes me want to shove my eyeballs into my ears to block it out.

Over the last 35 years I've taken in & raised quite a few 'extra kids'. To the tune of dozens. From family, friends, neighbors, kids classmates. From a few days to several years.

I decided that being disabled so young was an opportunity to be at home with kids who needed it.

In my entire life, I've never seen a middle school aged boy lie down on the ground in a courthouse to meet Mom where she was at (court was, obviously, an incredibly stressful event for all of them) and the gentle love, a far cry from the profanity he sometimes used, makes me tear up 25 years later.

Their favorite shared activity was buying stuff for Mom for Mother's Day, her birthday, really any holiday.

It wasn't their mom's fault, she'd suffered SEVERE brain damage in a domestic violence attack & could no longer care for the kids herself & dad was rightfully in prison. They adored her.

I spent a decade as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) & we all made a pact in training that if any of us got assigned a sibling of the other person's cases, we'd ensure weekly visits between the kids.

Impostor syndrome sometimes requires bouncers.