Posted on by Trevor Elms

Rejection.

Hello,
I just wanted to send an email over to express my extreme disappointment over how our file was handled throughout the process of attempting to become foster parents through your county.
Before today I felt like we were not offered the same respect and honesty we gave you all, and today those feelings were confirmed. There is a large lack of looking at the big picture going on here and also some closed-mindedness and ignorance about medical marijuana itself.
Not to mention the fact other drugs that would be allowed in the household are far more dangerous and have negative impacts far larger than medical marijuana. Drugs that are also legal, and also abused by the families causing these children to be in limbo in the first place.
I digress, just wanted to let you know that Megan and I feel like we were strung along by your team and we would have appreciated you just letting us know you had no intention of giving us a chance from the get go when we told you about our medical use.
More than anything my heart hurts for the child or children that won’t get the chance for this good family and home, because you are unable to see the forest through the trees due to an old-fashioned, and frankly insulting pre-conceived notion about people who are proven to be both responsible and stable.
Hoping in time that your county will come to terms with the times, and understand that responsibility is responsibility and irresponsibility is not inherent to use of a plant that has many more medical uses than alcohol has ever had.
Good day,
Trevor Elms

Need to get this experience off my chest. Feeling rejected time and again through this particular path in life. The reflective experience of writing about things that mean so much to me always helps me get through the toughest ones.

Today, Megan and I were told that it would be a better idea to withdraw our application from the county we have been going through the process of fostering to adopt from. That in no uncertain terms we would be rejected due to our honest use of medical marijuana.

It’s a blow. Our New Year’s resolution was to begin the process of figuring out how we were going to adopt. Knowing it was going to be a long journey, certainly longer than 9 months; better now than never. We have been through many hours of training, paperwork, and travel since January. This is now reduced to another avenue we must mourn and move on from, to pick up the pieces and keep charging towards the next branch upon this crooked path.

Most frustrating thing for us both is that we are people that come from trauma. We faced some major ones as children as many people do. We have demons and failures while not being afraid to own them. To use them as lessons and reasons, the things in our lives that make us the strong and successful people we are today. We feel we are the exact kind of people well equipped to take in children that are inherently traumatized by their situations. Being removed from your family is serious business.

For this reason I need to reflect on this rejection as it not being a problem with myself and Megan — but the society we currently live in. A society that still has some growing up to do when it comes to understanding exactly what the War on Drugs was meant to do, and the kind of ignorance and bigotry it has fostered.

Rejection is just a fact of life. Getting down about it isn’t going to do us any favors and this experience, like much else that hurts — is another thing to bring us closer together.

We will have our family. We will have earned every bit of it when it arrives.

Thank you for reading.

If you have interest in reading anything else I have written please check the Table of Contents, here.

©2018 Trevor Elms
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 9 Comments

Kids.

I was feeling a little worn out again today. I thought, let’s take a break — it’s been over a week of me consistently putting out a good 1000 words. Legitimately the most consistent amount of writing I have been able to accomplish in my life. But it’s also not the first time I have been able to write approximately this many words in this amount of time.

I decided to go into my drafts and saw this picture. One of my very favorites.

My wife and I cannot have children in the traditional fashion.

I will not be going into the reasons why because those do not matter. What I am going to do today is write about what that loss means to me.

You see, I have never known what I have wanted to be when I grow up — except for a father. Since as early as five years old I can remember looking up to my Dad, wanting to be just like him, and wanting to raise a family.

My Dad has given me memories like lifting me above his head, just by his thumb.

I am also a very scientifically driven person when it comes to my intellectual beliefs about this existence and this lifetime. So I have spent my whole life wanting to continue the genes of my family and continue our line.

I was always either consciously or sub-consciously growing up looking for the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life, and pro-create with. When I finally met Megan I knew I’d found her. Megan and I had a long journey together before even being official, but I knew from early on that I wanted my kids to be drenched in everything about her personality — and her physical traits as a human being.

So to find out that our child in no way will be 100% the both of us, no matter the path we choose — is the worst heartbreak I have ever felt in my life.

Sure, there is a chance for a miracle — with an almost scientific certainty it won’t because that number has so many zeros in front of it I could hit my word quota just by typing it out. This was the one thing I always knew I wanted. Through all my troubles and my confusion. It was constant — even when I thought I was Jesus Christ who had lived for 1000 years in some poor tenants house, I knew I wasn’t a father yet and wanted to be.

I now know I am completely capable of love no matter where the child comes from.

The picture featured in this post is part of the proof for me. I have been around my nephews and nieces for long enough now for me to consider them mine. I care about who they grow to become and care about being the best example I can be for them.

I would do anything, and everything for them to keep them safe and happy. And I know that I can do this for whatever child comes our way in the future too.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.

One of the first things my psychologist told me when I first met him is that I deal terribly with loss. Insofar being that when I met him… I really didn’t deal with it at all. I thought I did, but much like a lot of things I was doing with emotions at the time I was just letting them be and putting them somewhere where they couldn’t “affect” me.

This is still a loss that I am having difficulty with, and it is why I am happy that Megan and I are taking until 2020 before we decide what to do moving forward. I’d rather now spend this time appreciating time with her, and the time and money that we have, without a child — since we cannot so easily have one right now.

I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason.

Not that the reason comes from some divine force or third party with a plan, I believe that we find reason within the things that happen to us so that we can grow and push forward as people.

There’s a large part of me thinking in this moment that had Megan and I been able to have a child that I would not have started this website — and would not be accomplishing a dream of mine. I would be too busy being a dad, dedicating myself to a child and already working my fairly time and attention consuming career.

Many times in my life now I have been hit with something that isn’t fun. Every time I have picked myself back up from it and gotten stronger because of it. There’s a really cliché saying in there about what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; what I have begun to learn is that these clichés exist for a reason.

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

Megan and I have been making a lot of really good lemonade lately. Like the best kind. We have all sorts of travel plans for this year, tattoos, expensive dinners, buying cool things on a whim.

We’re just enjoying the things we have now — and not the things that we can’t have at this moment. We’re enjoying each other, and what we bring forth from one another. At this point, I’m not sure I’d even have it any other way. We can take this time to be as selfish as we absolutely want to. So when it comes time to do the most selfless thing any one can do,

We will be ready.

I think the larger meaning in this piece is that finding a purpose, and a meaning within the things that happen to us is in my experience what helps us grow more and become stronger as people.

I do not know how our child will come to us, but I do know that child will have more love than they know what to do with. That is a pretty cool thing to think about.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms.
Pictured from left to right: Trevor Elms, Lucas Miller, Derrick Miller
Featured photo taken by Megan Elms ©2014