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Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Kathy Harrison Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2004-05-24 ISBN: 1585422827 Number of pages: 256 Publisher: Tarcher
Book Reviews of Another Place at the TableBook Review: If you want to know what it is like to be a foster parent or a foster parent that wants to know your not alone...read this book. Summary: 5 Stars
This book is about Kathy Harrison's real life as a foster mother and the story about a couple of the children that came into her home. She talks about her true emotions and feelings as she tries to hold these "shattered" children together with, as she puts it, just love and "band aids."
Augusten Burroughs (author of Running with Scissors) said about this book...."Shocking, brutal, heartbreaking and ultimately redemptive, This is the riveting and profoundly moving story of a hero, disguised as an ordinary woman. And like every hero, it's the children she is out to save."
Unlike Augusten I did not find the book "shocking" but honest and realistic to what every foster mom goes through. I could not believe how close our stories were as I read this book. You could have taken out the names of her children and drop in some of mine, tweak their story a little, and it wouldn't ring any truer then what we have seen and gone through.
I cried as she wrote about letting Lucy go to an adoptive home. She loved Lucy but not in the same way as the children she adopted. She wanted to keep her but also wanted Lucy to have that unconditional, total love she deserved. The pain of letting Lucy go tore open those feelings and what we went through with two little boys I had for three years.
She writes about her desire to reach ever child that walked into her home and the heartbreak when she realized love, food, clothes, a home, and safety wont/cant heal all their wounds.
She talks about the times caseworkers have such caviler attitudes to their lack of action that keeps a child in the system longer then need be, or keeps them off the adoption list longer. It reminded me of the unfelt and off the hand "sorry" and "oh, well" I have heard so often. But like her, I don't know how to change things, nor do I have the time to try because there is "another child coming through my front door that needs me."
I understood as she talked about the times she stood tall and strong when she felt the weakest, because it was best for the children. Telling the emotions every foster parent feels behind closed doors. The love she has for the strength and unbelievable timing her husband had at being there when she needed him. I understood the times she wanted to yell at a parent for smoking around the baby in her care but struggles with what is good for the baby and the need to keep the communication open between them. The honest hate she felt for some of the parents that have abused the children in her care but at the same time struggle as she realizes that most likely the bio-parents were children in the same situation when they were young and haven't learned anything different. The hope that what she was doing would change things in some way screamed what every foster parent prays is true. It made me think she had a hidden camera in my home that could read my thoughts and feelings I never let others see.
The hardest part of the book, for me, was the roller coaster of emotions they went on as they tried to adopt Karen. She is elegant in relating the fear of loosing a child that, in your heart, is already yours. A feeling that can't be explained or even come close to being logical. She maps out the joys of moving forward, the pains of more hold ups, the relief that the children are in your care, but the lingering dread that things could change in an instant. She revels how everything is devastatingly out of our control and we have to stay on till the ride is done.
She is most honest about not being a saint, or perfect, or even close to perfect. I laughed so hard when she wrote about the attachment case workers visit. She says she remembers her weakest moments (when she said something she shouldn't of or didn't handle a situation the right way) when people call her a saint; so do I. It only takes one or two human reactions to realize we are not saints or perfect; but she honors us with "a warrior" doing our best.
However, she also shows why we keep doing what we do for these children. The ability to see more in these children then others do and the wonderful feeling we get when the children reach not their potential (because it is rare we get to see this) but better then when they came to our door and father then others thought they could. This might be a simple smile, or a giggle, a sentence everyone understood, going a week with out an out burst, a day with out harming themselves, or the ability to care about something other then themselves for a second or two.
I could go on and on but if you want to see what it is like to be a foster parent....read this book! If you are a foster parent and want to know you are not alone....read this book!
Summary of Another Place at the TableThe startling and ultimately uplifting narrative of one woman's thirteen-year experience as a foster parent.
For more than a decade, Kathy Harrison has sheltered a shifting cast of troubled youngsters-the offspring of prostitutes and addicts; the sons and daughters of abusers; and teenage parents who aren't equipped for parenthood. All this, in addition to raising her three biological sons and two adopted daughters. What would motivate someone to give herself over to constant, largely uncompensated chaos? For Harrison, the answer is easy.
Another Place at the Table is the story of life at our social services' front lines, centered on three children who, when they come together in Harrison's home, nearly destroy it. It is the frank first-person story of a woman whose compassionate best intentions for a child are sometimes all that stand between violence and redemption.
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