Foster Family Spotlight: Meet the Gleasons
For National Foster Care Month, Project Belong wants to say thank you to our local foster families in the Northern region of Virginia.
Foster families are needed for providing safe, loving homes for children in crisis.
By doing so, foster families give struggling families a chance to work out the difficulties preventing them from being able to meet their children’s needs. Every child deserves safe and stable place to land.
Families like the Gleasons have done just that, welcoming five placements into their home over the years.
What inspired you to become foster parents?
Since I was a teen myself, I wanted to build a family that included children who didn't come the usual way and needed a place to belong. While my husband and I had talked about adoption when we were dating, we both saw it as something for "later" -- maybe after biological children were grown. When we tried and didn't get pregnant, we sought fertility care for awhile, then began to sense God was taking us in a different direction. We became foster parents, fostered an infant who was later reunited with her mother. Then, we fostered and adopted three siblings. Now, our first placement is back in our home again.
How has fostering changed you and your family?
It's changed our relational network a great deal and I've gained a great deal of self-awareness as well as awareness of how trauma and resilience shape people.
What resources or support systems have been most valuable to you in your fostering journey?
Other foster and adoptive parents who I've formed close relationships with. Most of our friends from before this stage of life didn't stay as close -- that's not necessarily their fault. We had little relational bandwidth for YEARS and so many of those relationships faded while new ones formed.
What would you say to someone considering becoming a foster parent?
God knows my year has been rough, but I suppose I would say that love may not be all you need, but it sure is essential.
Thank you to the Gleasons for allowing us to share your story!