May is National Foster Care Month, and WSLS is partnering with HopeTree Family Services to highlight the need for more foster families and share what foster care can look like for children and parents alike.
For Sarabeth Shorter, she can’t imagine life without her son, Orion. The nine-year-old is finishing third grade.
“Time flies,” Shorter said. “When they say time is a thief, they are not kidding.”
Shorter said her journey to motherhood began after learning she would not be able to have biological children of her own.
“My mother fostered before I came into the picture,” Shorter said. “Through a lot of different avenues, I found out that I was not going to be able to have children of my own biologically. And I was single, but I still wanted to be a mom.”
She said she also wanted to make a difference in a child’s life, which led her to becoming a foster parent.
Orion came to live with Shorter in July 2018, when he was still a baby.
“He had been in care for about three weeks prior to coming to live with me,” Shorter said. “After about 15 months, he had a biological aunt that had petitioned for custody.”
Orion lived with the relative for about two and a half months before returning to foster care. Six months later, Shorter finalized his adoption.
“We’ve been a pair ever since,” she said. “It’s just really been incredible to watch him grow and turn into the human that he’s becoming. And just to see every milestone he hits and just to know that we were a created family and I couldn’t imagine it any other way.”
In total, Shorter has fostered seven children. She said every child who enters foster care has a unique story and different needs.
“Regardless of whether they returned home and we were going through the reunification process, or whether their journey took them through adoption, it was just great to be able to go through that journey with them and know that you had people supporting you along the way,“ Shorter said.
“No story is ever the same,” she added. ”So don’t make assumptions because you never know what’s going to happen from start to finish. But it’s a beautiful story, no matter what."
For Shorter and Orion, fostering became the beginning of a family.
“So we made our own family, didn’t we?” Shorter asked Orion.
“Mm-hmm,” he responded.