She’s always been with family. Her mom is unstable, so they’ve gone from relative to relative since she can’t hold a job or house. It’s only the past 4 months that she hasn’t lived with a grandparent or aunt. She’s never done a full school year in one place until this year where she was in care for most of it.

Her team thinks stability is most important for her, and they’ve gone so far as to bus her an hour each way for school every day and she has visits with many safe family members. Visits with mom would probably end with adoption, but not the rest of the family.

If we were able to stay in the state or even the same coast we wouldn’t hesitate if it were possible. We’ve discussed the practicality... timeline wise he would have to move ahead and we’d stay behind until adoption could be finalized.

But with so much moving already, her team doesn’t think moving from perhaps East to west coast and leaving her whole family behind is the best plan. We’ve always been told that keeping a connection to birth family is important, I figured it was kind of selfish of us to want to move her away from them especially with the emphasis everyone has placed on keeping her in the same school and activities.