“Sugar Skulls” by Julie O’Sullivan

$1,200.00

This is a very personal painting. It is an illustration of the intense pains I went through to become a mother and the ultimate sorrow when that dream was crushed.

I am unable to have children, but my husband and I wanted to have a family. We looked into various ways to make this happen and after some avenues failed, we decided to enter the DCFS Foster to Adopt Program. We jumped through hoops, assessment after assessment, inspection, interrogation, and finally approval.

We made it clear that we were interested in adoptable children only and were given our first child about a month later. We cared for this child, bonded, loved, and created the family we so desperately longed for.

We were given 2 hours notice that there was a hearing with the birth family and the judge decided to award them custody. We had only 2 hours to pack up and say goodbye to the child we were told we were adopting. It was death number one. You don’t get to be a part of that child’s life after that. You don’t get to know anything about them ever again. A piece of your heart dies.

We went through this 6 times. We were either given or vetted to adopt a child, only to have it end in sorrow.

The 6th child we had for almost a year. A year of milestones, mommy & me, baby yoga, playdates, therapies, inpections, interogations, love, and care. We were told he was our son and we believed it. We lost him. The system is broken. We went through 3 different social workers with him. The last social worker had a caseload of 50 and did not know wnything about our child. He had a half an hour to learn everything from us.

We were told that the mother was getting him back. She completed rehab and wanted him. We lost him and my heart was irreparably broken.

This is a very personal painting. It is an illustration of the intense pains I went through to become a mother and the ultimate sorrow when that dream was crushed.

I am unable to have children, but my husband and I wanted to have a family. We looked into various ways to make this happen and after some avenues failed, we decided to enter the DCFS Foster to Adopt Program. We jumped through hoops, assessment after assessment, inspection, interrogation, and finally approval.

We made it clear that we were interested in adoptable children only and were given our first child about a month later. We cared for this child, bonded, loved, and created the family we so desperately longed for.

We were given 2 hours notice that there was a hearing with the birth family and the judge decided to award them custody. We had only 2 hours to pack up and say goodbye to the child we were told we were adopting. It was death number one. You don’t get to be a part of that child’s life after that. You don’t get to know anything about them ever again. A piece of your heart dies.

We went through this 6 times. We were either given or vetted to adopt a child, only to have it end in sorrow.

The 6th child we had for almost a year. A year of milestones, mommy & me, baby yoga, playdates, therapies, inpections, interogations, love, and care. We were told he was our son and we believed it. We lost him. The system is broken. We went through 3 different social workers with him. The last social worker had a caseload of 50 and did not know wnything about our child. He had a half an hour to learn everything from us.

We were told that the mother was getting him back. She completed rehab and wanted him. We lost him and my heart was irreparably broken.