15: Family Preservation in Foster Care: Building a bridge between two families through radical compassion

Aaliyah and Jamyla have three moms - their birth mother Nicole, their foster mom (soon to be adopted mom) Chalice, and Chalice's fiancée Rachel. Chalice and the girls met eight years ago when the girls needed a foster parent. In the eight years they’ve known each other, Aaliyah and Jamyla have learned how hearts can expand to love many parents in their blended family. 

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
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Julia Winston: I’m Julia Winston and this is Refamulating, a podcast that explores different ways to make a family. 

Aaliyah and Jamyla are two sisters who live in Charleston, South Carolina.

Aaliyah: Hi, I'm Aaliyah and I'm 14 years old. 

I really love drawing. Like, it's so fun to do. And I also love reading, like on my free times and playing video games.  

Jamyla: I'm Jamyla and I'm 10 years old.

Jamyla: well at school I really like focusing on what the teacher says. But at home, I usually just spend a lot of time outside sometimes. I really like biking. And sometimes when I'm in the mood, I like coloring.  Um,  and I really like playing with my dogs. 

Julia Winston: In fact, when I asked them to describe their family, they started with the dogs..

Aaliyah: We have Wonder. She's, um, a golden doodle. And then we have Charlie.  His breed is… 

Jamyla: He's a Catan Catooli. 

Aaliyah: And then we just got a new puppy, and her name is Evie, and she's a husky, and   she's so cute.  

Jamyla: But she can be very, very wild. Yeah. 

Julia Winston: And…they have three moms. Two that they live with…

Jamyla: it's kind of hard because everybody is like saying, why do you have two white moms, or what happened to your other family or something like that. 

Julia Winston: And, yeah, what do you usually say when people ask you about, why do you have two moms? You know, what do you usually tell people?

Aaliyah: I usually like tell them like, my mom couldn't like take care of like all of us so she had to like Give us a safe place for us to live you know, 

Julia Winston: The girls’ live with Chalice and her fiancé, Rachel. These are the white moms Aalyiah referenced. But the woman who gave birth to them is Nicole. They call her Mommy Cole. 

Nine years ago, when Aaliyah was five years old, Nicole couldn’t care for her, so she entered the foster care system. A year later, Chalice became Aaliyah’s caretaker and has been ever since. Not long after that, her sister Jamyla joined her to live with Chalice. 

Today we’re going to tell the story of how Chalice and the girls became a family, and the bridge they’ve built between this family they’re creating and the family the girls came from.  

Just a note- that Nicole was not available to do an interview, so we will be hearing the story from Chalice, Aaliya and Jamyla’s perspectives. But as you’ll see, Nicole is a very important part of their lives. So we’ll be holding her experience with love, knowing that everyone’s voice matters.

Julia Winston: We’ll begin this story with Chalice, the girls’ second mom, who met them when they were placed in foster care. Chalice grew up in the South, and always imagined herself as a mom. 

Chalice: I was raised in the church, in a very conservative family, and so I just always assumed it would be me and a husband,and I would have biological children, many of them. I always wanted children. From my youngest memory, I remember thinking like, I think being a mom would be like the truest expression of who I am.

Julia Winston: When she was a kid, her aunt and uncle adopted two children from Romania, and Chalice formed a close bond with them. 

Chalice: watching them come home, needing so much repair and healing and watching my aunt and uncle walk with them and love them to life was really beautiful. And so I started to notice other adoptive families, whether it was in our church or in our community. And I think I was a young teenager when I was like, I think I'm going to adopt one day. And that was when I had very rose colored, like, Oh, I want, I too want to be a hero and take a little child who needs me and love them to life.

Julia Winston: And this idea of helping kids stuck with her. 

Chalice: I did a project on high school and the invisible children of Northern Uganda, and I really wanted to go to Uganda. I just felt like that's what I have to do. I have to go to Uganda and, um, help these child soldiers and these kids. So I, I did, when I was 21, I went to Uganda for about six months. But I went and worked at a special needs orphanage and  the kids were so Either scared of me or enthralled by me. And none of those things are helpful in a child healing and, um, from trauma. But when I would watch the Ugandan mamas, that's what they called them all, like the mamas or just the women who worked at the orphanage, they were so intuitive. They spoke their language. They made them feel at home. I mean, it, it was just so clear, like everything was right about Ugandan women caring for these children. And everything was weird about like white people coming in and out, um,  taking lots of pictures and trying to help these kids. And the biggest thing I learned in Uganda is that Africa does not need me.  And there are so many beautiful, restorative NGOs, you know, nonprofits, charity efforts that are happening there. And what they need is American support monetarily. Like they need money to keep going. They need resources. 

Julia Winston: Chalice also learned that she wanted to help children closer to home. So when she returned from Uganda in her early 20s, she moved to Alabama and signed up to provide respite care. What this means is that she helped foster parents by watching their kids for a day or weekend to give them a break. 

While Chalice was dipping her toe in the Alabama foster care system, her friend Joy was fostering children in Charleston. One of the kids who came to stay with Joy was Aaliyah. Aaliyah was in and out of Joy’s house for a year. It was during this time that Chalice met Aaliyah, when she was visiting Joy in Charleston for Easter.

After that, Chalice started checking on Aaliyah, asking Joy how she was doing and if she’d found a permanent place to live. This went on for a year.

Chalice: My friend Joy had actually just adopted two children. And so she was fostering Aaliyah, but she was realizing, uh, her needs are really beyond the scope of  me being able to care for her.

Julia Winston: One day, Joy asked Chalice if she’d consider caring for Aaliyah. It was a huge ask. Chalice was 24, single, and working as a full time nanny. But Chalice says she felt called to working with and caring for children. So…she considered it.

Some of us might not relate to this at all, because when we were 24 we were partying or traveling or throwing ourselves into a career. But Chalice calls herself a boring 24 year old, and says at the time she wanted to settle down. So moving to a new city to take care of a child felt right.

Before the move, Chalice talked to Nicole on the phone to learn more about why Aaliyah was removed from her home. In that conversation, Chalice learned Nicole has four kids. Aaliyah, Jamyla, and two boys. One of the boys is Jamyla’s twin. Chalice also learned that the Department of Social Services, or DSS, had gotten involved, and that all four kids had been in foster care at different points.  

Out of respect for Aaliya and Jamyla, we’re not going to share exactly why DSS got involved. All you need to know is that they were in a situation that was deemed unsafe. 

When Chalice spoke with Nicole on the phone, it became clear that Nicole needed help. She had four kids, mental health struggles, very little support, and felt like she was drowning. And she was asking for someone to help her by taking care of her oldest, Aaliyah.

Chalice: She was really, like, devastatingly honest about that. She's like I'm kind of done. All I knew was that, this woman is at her max. And for one reason or another, she doesn't feel like she can care for this kid.

Julia Winston: Chalice looked at this as a temporary situation, Nicole just needed help, and right now that meant giving Aaliyah somewhere safe to live. 

Chalice: What if I can care for Aaliyah for the next year while she goes through kindergarten and mom can stabilize and maybe get some support and some therapy or whatever she needs, and then maybe a reunification can happen.

When I became her caregiver, she was five years old. And man she's just the best little thing. She was like, she was funny. She was animated. She was like really, really sweet. Um, and those things are not typical of kids who have, you know, come fresh from a lot of trauma, but she was so dear. She had these big two, I got to show you a picture of these buck teeth, big old teeth that stuck out of her mouth. And I just thought she was perfect. She's so perfect.

Julia Winston: Aaliyah, what do you remember about being five and going to live with Chalice for the first time?

Aaliyah: I think that my other house that I like lived in, it was kind of like dark all the time. Like the windows were shut, the like, I don't know, the blinds were shut and everything. So it was like, we didn't get any light in the house. But like, I think when I came to Chalice's house, it was just so bright and welcoming. And I just felt like it was, I don't know. It just brought me to a good place.

Julia Winston: What did Chalice do to make you feel welcome and safe at her house? You talked about the light in the house. What else did you like?

Aaliyah: I think she knew what was going on at our other place. She was like, very comforting, and like, keeping us safe, and like, was saying like, how can we help you guys, and stuff like that. So she was like, she knew what was going on, so she just was, Like, I don't want anything ever happening to you guys like that again.

Chalice: You fight for the reunification. You fight for the family being back together. I even told her if Aaliyah comes back to live with you in a year, like I can still take her on the weekends, like whatever it, whatever it takes to like kind of make this work. The kid's fathers were gone. Her biological family, Nicole's family was pretty uninvolved. People need help. Like you don't have help. You don't have resources. 

Julia Winston: When Aaliyah first moved in, she needed to process some heavy stuff that had happened at her first house. 

Chalice: Aaliyah had very conscious, very recent memories and recollections of trauma. And so our first probably six months together were really, really sweet. It's a time I really treasure because over the course of the last nine years, as she's worked through different trauma, there have been seasons of rage and seasons of just deep, deep pain. Um, and we've been through so much together, but the first, the first six months, I really got to watch her kind of exhale and watch her nervous system like stabilize. 

And so I started to see her come alive and that's where it starts getting really tricky, right? It's like, I know in my heart, I am fighting for unification. I am fighting for unification and also This could not feel any more like my child, you know, like every maternal instinct is like, how do I care for you and love you? And prepare to release you like these two things don't go together. 

Julia Winston: That feeling was something Chalice wrestled with on and off for years. But most days, she was focused on everything she had to do to take care of Aaliyah. Chalice was just a 24-year old working as a nanny, and living far away from her parents, so now she needed to find some support as a single mom. She moved in with her friend Joy, the one who’d first fostered Aaliyah, and who had also adopted two children while fostering.

Chalice: And over the two years that we were with her, I think we had maybe 12 or 15 other kids come in and out that were technically under Joy's like legal care. We were kind of operating as one big family. That could go a lot of different ways, but it really worked for Aaliyah. And I think it created this safe place of getting to see all these other kids in unconventional, conventional, hard situations, you know, like it's not just me. I'm not the only one. There's so many kids in need of care and that looks like so many different things. And maybe we'd have a kid for a week or we'd have a kid for two months or a year.

Julia Winston: For 15 months, Chalice and Aaliyah figured out their routine together. Aaliyah would see her Mommy Cole and other siblings sporadically during this time. And then…something else happened at Nicole’s house. And Aaliyah’s sister, two year old Jamyla, needed a new home.

Chalice: For Aaliyah, she was doing some home visits on the weekends at that point. Right before Jamilah came to live with us there's some really unsafe, really tragic things that had happened on one of her home visits and so that's when DSS intervened and removed her sister as well and she came to live with us.

Aaliyah over the course of the first year that she was with me, we immediately got into a lot of counseling and different therapy modalities. And, she did have a really tough first year, but when Jamila came to live with us, like her eyes were brighter, she was breathing deeper. She immediately like took on this really, um, like beautiful caretaking role of Jamila and she was just at ease in a new way. The sisters being together, It was so good for both of them. It was everything that they needed given the really sad situation they were in of needing to be from their first mom.

And Jamyla was also very dear, but she had mastered the eye roll at two years old. She was unimpressed with everything about me. 

Julia Winston: Jamyla was only two, but she does remember what she felt in the first few years she lived with Chalice. 

Jamyla: When I went there, I was like, What is happening? Why am I here? And, I kind of missed my mom. But, I knew it would start being a little bit more safe around Chalice and stuff. Once I got used to being at my mom's house, Chalice, I kind of, I started really liking it there.

Julia Winston: Chalice was so happy to bring the sisters together, but she was also overwhelmed about having another kid. 

Chalice: Two was really scary. One to one is one thing, but being outnumbered, was scary. I Mean, Aaliyah had become my full time job. She was in multiple speech therapy, occupational therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy. Um, it felt like my full time job just to walk with this little girl towards healing and meeting all of her needs. 

And so Jamilah was two and a half, fairly nonverbal at that point. But, um, Jamyla, I think, like, God knows me well, like my favorite thing about life is laughing and like, My favorite people have a good sense of humor and Jamyla was so weird and hilarious that like, she just made it fun. Even when it was really chaotic. Um, like she was just odd in all the best ways. And I, to this day, I tell her you are so weird and wonderful. And it's like the highest compliment, like he's like spunky and confident and like full of so much personality. Again, it was the comic relief we needed as shit got really real with the court systems and with the whole next many years of Drama back and forth the court 

Julia Winston: So you were a very young person. And that's an age when a lot of adults are still figuring out how to be on their own and who they are. What was your experience of getting to know yourself and growing up, you know, as someone in your young 20s while parenting? And did you imagine that this was a long term situation or that it was temporary?

Chalice: All of my friends were wanting to get married and wanting to be in relationships and I couldn't really relate to that. But I wanted, like I said, more than anything to be a mom. And so when I got Aaliyah, I did feel like I am doing what I was made to do. And so it was really hard, but as soon as she came to live with me, I'm like, I had so much confusion when I was 18. I like went to college, found out college wasn't for me, But I kept feeling like none of this fits. I can't think of a degree that I want. I can't think of a, like, I can't think about what I want to do, but I love children and feel like called to, um, nurture children, um, specifically like children from hard places.

When I started mothering Aaliyah and caring for the other kids in our house, I just remember feeling this relief of like, Oh, I, like, I'm, I think I'm good at this. Like, I, I love this work. This is so fulfilling. It's so hard, but it's the right kind of hard, you know, like you can do a million hard things that just feel pointless. But when you're doing what you're made to do, the hard will feel like, okay, this is the right kind of hard.This is like the rightest thing I've ever done.

Julia Winston: One question I have about this whole time is what kind of financial support did you have? What was the situation that you were in that enabled you to support, you know to support not one but now two girls?

Chalice: Yeah. Oh, I did not expect this to be such like an emotional trigger, but, um, I worked full time as a nanny. Um, being a single mom is so hard. I never felt like we had enough. I think the first year with them, I made like $26,000. The next year I made like  $28,000, like slowly, very incrementally. But like, we were, I was definitely under the poverty line I had to turn in all my financials to DSS. So they saw but they were like, all right, good enough is good enough. Sounds like you can like put food on the table. We'll see you at our next check in. 

Julia Winston: And Chalice had no help from the state. She wasn't an official foster parent because she’d been connected to Aaliyah through a friend. She was considered a kinship placement, which is what they call it if someone like an aunt or grandma steps in. So she had to provide for Aaliyah and Jamayla all by herself. 

Chalice: That has been one of the hardest parts of my past nine years with the girls is constant hustle. I started as a nanny and then I did a nanny share to take on more kids. And so, um, I usually had between four and five kids with me every day, you know, from eight to five.

I would babysit in the evenings and take the girls with me and put them to sleep on the couch, wake them up at midnight when the parents got home. So, um, I was tired. I was tired. And I remember thinking like all throughout that journey with them and feeling like, Oh my gosh, can I, am I going to be able to like, is this sustainable? I just feel like, as I tell the story, I'm like moment of silence for Single parents, because the stress of the financial needs is pretty relentless. Um, and it feels miraculous that we've, we've made it like we've kept making it. 

Julia Winston: Chalice, Aaliyah and Jamyla learned a lot together as they created their family. The girls did tons of therapy. Some forms were related to their development, like speech therapy or occupational therapy. They also did therapy to process the traumas they experienced. 

Jamyla: It would kind of change my life when I went to therapy, because they just listened. The therapist would just listen and they wouldn't like get in a fight with you. They would just listen and that felt really good to know that someone was actually listening to you.

Aaliyah: I would say it really helped me to like Think about things that it's like not my fault, like of some of the things that's happened to me, and that like, I'm okay, and I'm in a really good place now.

Julia Winston: Chalice was also educating herself. She had to learn how to work with kids who had complex trauma.

Julia Winston: How did you educate yourself to be a foster parent. how did you educate yourself about the system that you were a part of and what your place was in that and how to support these girls through a transition that involved trauma?

Chalice: So a funny part of having ADHD is like, I am not interested in anything unless I'm interested in it. So I was really interested in this and so there was no Podcast, no book, no stone left unturned. Like advocating for Aaliyah and Jamyla became my full time job.

I knew they may or may not stay with me. The goal was reunification with their mom. If their mom can complete the treatment plan, then they will go back to live with her. And so that was the goal. But in the meantime, I was their mom and it became like my joy and my hyper focus to, um, find out what resources they needed.

Julia Winston: I do want to ask you about the transracial element here. The girls are black and you're white. Can you tell us how you've educated yourself and what you've learned about parenting kids of color and, you know, how have these dynamics played a part in your family?

Chalice: I have to be honest and say that like, I wish I knew what I knew now before I started parenting them, but I didn't. I had to learn with them. And I wish it did not take me parenting black children to see the reality of being black in America the way that I saw it. I hate that that's true, but that's my story. As I started raising Aaliyah, especially that first year, I just had to start leaning into, the black friends that I had and I needed to to learn not only how to care for something as seemingly like simple as her hair, but like, how do I care for this young black woman? We are growing up in the same place. But she is having a totally different lived experience than me. And I'm raising a child who I cannot prepare for certain realities that will be present in her life. 

Julia Winston: So Chalice was reading books and listening to podcasts, but she was also seeking out adult adoptees on social media. She wanted to hear directly from people of color who’d been adopted or lived with white people to learn how to best care for Aaliyah and Jamyla. 

She also realized she could only do so much as a white parent. So she leaned hard on her Black friends. 

Chalice: One of the sweetest years we had together was my friends, Erica and Desiree, who are both black, lived with us for a year and we all moved to this downtown apartment and it was the five of us and it was so cool to watch them like auntie, the girls. That was the pandemic year. All along I had been learning, but suddenly being the minority in my own house, it felt like the sacred space that I got to be a part of. They would have like jokes and interactions with the girls that I was kind of on the outside of. And that was cool to me, like to see the girls just have this like joy and comfortability in their blackness with these two black aunties that they lived with. 

Julia Winston: The girls have also had to navigate being in an interracial family. One challenge has been explaining visible differences to other kids. 

Aaliyah: Like at school, there's this one year when I was having like a really awful time. There's this girl and on my birthday, she was like saying, like, I think her birthday wishes to find her birth mom. I just ignored them. Cause it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter what your family is.

Julia Winston: What does matter to Aaliyah is that she’s found love and support in Chalice. 

Aaliyah: She's been through those hard times with me. I don't know. It's just, she's really awesome and special. And even though she might not be the same color as me, I just love her so much.

Julia Winston: What do you love about her?

Aaliyah: She comforts me, when I'm going through a hard time. 

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Julia Winston: While Chalice and the girls were in therapy, learning together and trying to create a cohesive family unit, there was an elephant in the room. They still visited with their first mom, and reunification was possible if Nicole could meet certain goals laid out by the state. 

Julia Winston: I want to talk about the plan for unification with Aaliyah and Jamyla's mom. So tell me about the plan for reunification and the eventual custody agreement that you made with her. What was happening there?

Chalice: That was really tricky because that kept changing so many times. The hope was always Reunification. So we were back and forth to court for four years. It was every three months for four years. I Had this really felt like an impossible role sometimes my little one, Jamila is two, three years old, four years old. She is just kind of living in like, The beautiful oblivion of being a tiny kid, you know, she, she didn't have to hold quite as much.

But Aaliyah knew every time I was going to court. That is so much of the trauma of all of those years was how do you go to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade? How do you like, Make friends and have a, like, childhood of vitality and joy when you're constantly holding, like, Where am I gonna be? Who is my mom, ultimately? What's happening next, what's coming and the tragic reality of foster care is like the court dates, especially I was preparing her for those things, but those things could happen at any time. I mean, in foster care, sometimes decisions are made in court and then sometimes decisions are made outside of court. 

Julia Winston: I know that you went back and forth for a long time to know, you know, where was home So Aaliyah, what was that like for you?

Aaliyah: I felt confused, but I also felt like kind of sad because it felt like I was going back to the same place, like dark, scary place. And it just brought some back, some dark memories and stuff like that. 

Julia Winston: Jamyla says it added a lot of uncertainty to her life. 

Jamyla: I found it really annoying sometimes and I felt like I felt I didn't really like going back and forth because like I just like staying at one place and then like moving slowly I don't really like I don't like busy things and I just thought it was kind of scary because like I sometimes I finally felt like good at one place And then I have to go to another place, which I didn't really like.

Julia Winston: The girls didn't always want to go back to Mommy Cole's house, but she was also their first mom. They loved her. So it was confusing sometimes. One of Chalice's jobs as their caretaker was to help them process these complicated feelings. 

Chalice: It's always been so important to me to frame Their mom's experience in a way that leads them to compassion. There's this part of them. Yeah. We want to go back to mom. We want to go back and live with mom. But then there's also like a, wait, they have a bad experience with her on a home visit. Now they don't want to, they don't want to. 

And that's tricky because you always want to also say like, you get to be angry and you get to be hurt and you don't have to forgive anybody unless you want to, but also keep a tender place open.

And I would say, here's the thing. Mom has a broken heart, something broke her heart. And we don't know what it was. We don't know how it happened. Um, we can make some guesses, but we don't know for sure. And mom acts this way or that way towards you because she has a broken heart and she never got the healing that she needed. So we're going to keep hoping that she gets that healing, but it's not you.

This is mom's broken heart. You're not the problem, you know? And so they kind of adapted that language and could frame like, Really hard interactions with her through, okay, that's not me. That's not my fault. That's mom's broken heart. Mom was not the only abuser in their life.And again, like some people have been really angry with me, even friends about my framing of this. But that is the only way I found to explain these things to kids. It's like big, evil monsters and perpetrators they weren't born like that. 

You know, you want to just like get on their side and be like, yeah, they're terrible. They're awful. And you should have never had to experience that. And I've had those moments, but it's like nobody dreams of growing up and abusing their kids. Nobody dreams of growing up and having their family torn apart. And so it's like something happened, many things happened and their hearts were broken and they didn't have someone step in and say like, what's happening to your heart? That must've really hurt. You know? Um, we don't know all of the things that happened.

Broken hearts are a really big deal. And our responsibility is to make sure that we keep pursuing healing for ourselves. Um, Because when you heal, then you get to be a healer to other people. And when you don't heal, you run a very high risk of hurting other people. So I feel like even now, as I'm talking to you, I'm not meaning to talk to you like a kid, but like, this was our language for so many years. 

Julia Winston: No, I'm so glad that you shared that. I mean, that specificity, it's just like radical compassion, like the deepest kind of healing work. 

Chalice: I was so committed to like, I am not the good guy and your mom's the bad guy, like that is not what this is. I am the person who was given resources to be able to love you well and your mom was not given this. And so their mom did terrible things and would say terrible things to them and would say terrible things to me. But I think the beauty of having this obligation and this commitment to teaching radical compassion was that it forced me no matter what was said or done. It's like, I don't want to raise kids that sort good and bad people. I want to raise children that are emotionally intelligent and are able to see bad behavior and bad choices and think, I wonder what happened to you?

I do know specific incidences of things that have happened in their mom's life. Let me tell you who I would be if I lived her life. I would be her. I would not magically do things better if I was treated the way that she was treated and went through some of the medical trauma that she went through. And if I was a black woman raised in the South in Charleston, South Carolina, it's a lot of really intense, um, racial history and devastation and inequity, obviously. Like if I was her and I was raised that way. This is what would have happened, but I wasn't. I was raised in a stable, loving, loving family. Mostly a little bit jacked up Christian family situation, but I had resources and I had tools and I had materials and I had people and I had books and I had opportunity for healing and I grabbed hold of that and that was not ever, ever anything that was within reach for her to grab hold of. So that is the difference.

Julia Winston: For four years, Chalice, the girls and Nicole were in and out of court trying to figure out a permanent custody situation. The two brothers, including Jamyla’s twin, were living with a different foster family, and the judge’s reunification plan gave Nicole the goal of getting all four kids back. 

Julia Winston: Tell us about the conversation with Nicole that led to you getting full time guardianship.

Chalice: our relationship over those four years was really up and down. And depending on the day I was either like, you know, thank you so much for all your help, or you're the reason my family's separated, which very understandable. And so it was really up and down and you know, she would confide in me and say, I don't think I can do this. DSS wants me to complete this parenting plan and get all these kids back. And that terrifies me. But if I say I can't, then, then I'm a terrible person. So, you know, she would be going along with the plan with DSS and then be telling me, like, I don't know how to do this. And so all along I would try and say you know, I'll be there with you as much as I can, but also like, I understand, cause I'm raising two of the four, we're both single moms, like, I don't, I don't know how you would do all four of these kids, but I can help as much as you're able and as much as you're willing to let me.

You can tell that she has not had a lot of people to trust. And I was probably the least likely person that she could trust in a lot of ways. Um, because out of my protection for the kids, I had to stand in opposition to her many times. She didn't know whether or not she could trust me, but my hope was that over all these years together that she could see that like, yes, I'm fighting for them, but I care deeply for you.

So a lot of conversations came up where I would say I'm willing to raise these girls and to do it with you. We live 10 minutes apart. I live on the side of the city and you're over here. And if you can try and be creative with me, like we can make this work. And that was just too scary for her for a long time. It was like, no, I can't do that. I can't do that. Which I understood. And so I would say, you don't have to, I don't have to adopt them. So we'd have these really honest conversations but then, you know, this person or that person would get in her ear and say, you know, that woman's just trying to take your kids from you or who gives up on their kids. She had a lot of shame from her family, which was really sad. And so the conversation went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. it would keep coming down to was like, Nope, I need my kids back. I just got to get my kids back. 

Julia Winston: Four years into living together, Chalice, Aaliyah and Jamyla were back in court to talk about reuniting with Mommy Cole. 

Chalice: And she came to me, minutes before we went into court and was like, would you still be willing to raise the girls? And I was, Like shell shocked. I had initiated these conversations so many times. I couldn't have ever imagined her initiating the conversation.

I just said, yes. I don't know how to explain like the tumultuousness of all of these years. I think she really believed, I think Chalice is going to do what she says she's going to do, which is like not take the kids away from me, but provide a safe space for them to grow up where I can still be their mom. 

So that day in court, in front of the judge, she told the judge Change the whole plan. All the caseworkers, the guardian ad litem, everyone's looking around like, what is happening? And she tells the judge like, I'd really like to give it a try with the boys and see if I can be successful with them and the girls are doing really well with Chalice. And so I'd like for Chalice to keep them with, legal and physical custody, not an adoption arrangement. Her parental rights would stay intact. She would hold the right to visit. She would, she holds a lot of rights with her parental rights intact, but they would live with me and she was voluntarily giving legal and physical custody, which was crazy and amazing.

Julia Winston: What was it like to tell the girls?

Chalice: I have a picture of when I went and told Aaliyah. She just like leapt into my arms and it was so beautiful because it wasn't I won in court. It was, let me tell you what your mom's idea was. Your mom loves you so much and knows that you're doing really well and that life is good for you right now and she wants it to keep being good for you. And so your mom asked the judge if you guys could stay with me. And if we could keep being a family. 

Aaliyah: I remember when my mom told me I gave her a big hug and I squeezed her and I was like, mom, really, really? I was so excited. I just felt happy. It's like the best day ever

Julia Winston: how about you Jamyla?

Jamyla: I also felt really excited. Like to stay at one place and like stay somewhere more safe. At my Mommy Cole's house her house was really dark and I felt really scared sometimes And then when I found out I was like Yay, that's gonna be so fun. I felt good, like, that we wouldn't, like, be scared anymore, and we wouldn't, like, have to be, feel, like, anxious and sad. I felt like I was going to have a really fun time.

Julia: The girls and Chalice celebrated together that day, but they also had mixed feelings about what this decision meant. 

Aaliyah: I think that I felt like a little bit sad for my, um, brothers.

Jamyla:When I found out I, I was sad too for my brothers.

Julia: Their brothers were going to live with Nicole for the first time in a few years. 

Chalice: Cause they were with a foster family that we knew. Once they went back to live with mom, you know, that was a big transition for the boys. They had now been away from her for three years. so they had a lot of transitioning to do, and there was a lot of confusion. Where are our sisters? Why aren't our sisters coming back? You know, they thought that was the plan. So all along these like victories, there's like, you hold this heartbreak. My girls were celebrating, like, we get to stay at our school, we get to stay with, you know, this mom. Our life gets to stay the same, and the boys are grieving, and so we're having to be sensitive to that. 

Julia Winston: It's been four years since Chalice got legal and physical custody of the girls. In that time they've been able to settle into a new chapter of their lives, including all the complicated family dynamics that come with it. 

Chalice: I just have had to like make friends with awkward. With my own family of origin, like there are beautiful, wonderful times on family vacations, and there are times when you're like, Get out of my face. You're the worst person ever. I consider Nicole like an extension of that in a very real way. Like she makes me really mad sometimes and she cracks me up sometimes. And I'm so endeared by, you know, the little card that she sent or the new school outfit that she got for Jamila, like the ways that she's thoughtful. And I'm also really pissed off because she forgot this or that. And she certainly feels that way with me, you know, like I can be very intentional and inclusive. And then there was a mother's day that went by that I, I forgot, I forgot to reach out. And that was so painful and how could I, you know, and so that's very real. 

Julia Winston: How have the girls brothers and Nicole been sort of integrated at this point? What does the family look like?

Chalice: We had already over the past four years, as tumultuous as it was, we were doing Christmases together. We were doing birthdays together. we were hanging out, we were going and getting pizza. We were meeting at the park. We were, so I was establishing along the way, like, this is what it could look like. One of our favorite memories every year, thing we look forward to. I always host like a Christmas brunch in the morning. They come over, like we open our presents, do our thing. And then the boys and their mom and usually their mom's mom Would come over and we'd have a big feast. And that got really cool through the years because you know, the first year would be mom and the boys. And the second year was mom and grandma and the boys, and then their aunt and uncle would catch wind of it.

And there was one year, I think we had like 14 or 15 people from their biological family that just showed up because they heard there was going to be pancakes on Christmas morning. And so, yeah, that's been really, really special. Um, we always celebrate the twins birthday together and we'll have them over or we'll go to the pool or something.

We're in pretty constant communication. Um, and yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty unconventional. Like we, on the one hand, we're living these little separate lives, but there's an open door policy. They're always welcome here. They're always wanted here. And we get to go there too. We love going to their apartment and hanging out with them. Even after all of these years, it's beautiful and it's hard. It's beautiful because they know their mom and, and she can write them birthday cards and she can love them in the best way she knows how. And there are still very real scars from wrongs committed against them. And so we just keep going a day at a time. There are seasons when the girls are wide open to her love and, um, when Christmas morning is really special. And there are seasons when it's not that way. And that's in every family, right?

Julia Winston: So that was, I think that was two, two and a half years ago. How have things felt different?

Aaliyah: well, obviously our family has grown like so much and Some family we've lost but like it's been Really happy to like see our family grow in different ways.

Julia Winston: How have you seen your family grow?

Aaliyah: um, our other mom, Rachel, our mom's fiance, , and I mean our dogs, obviously.

Julia Winston: Rachel was a big addition to the family. Chalice was single for a long time, focused on raising the girls. And Rachel was just a “really close friend”. 

Chalice: So all those really, really, really intense years felt that felt really solo. She kind of came in at the tail end of that and I just thought we were best friends, sisters. We have our whole crazy story of four years of repression and denial and all of this. It was mostly my denial and she, she knew what we were and she knew what we could be and she stood with us and she has loved those girls with everything she has and, now we all live together and it's wonderful. In the last couple months, even she's always been Ray Ray and both girls of their own have Uh called her they start calling her mama. So we're just a big mother trifecta. 

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Julia Winston: Tell me, tell me about when you met Rachel for the first time.

Aaliyah: Um, I think at first for me, since I've been with Chalice for a long time, I got the jealousy feeling that she was, she was going to like take her away or something like that. So I obviously felt really jealous. Jamyla felt like it was the best thing ever.

Jamyla: I felt like Rachel was really fun and she like did a lot. She was like understanding and it was really fun to have her around us. And I really liked her attitude.

Aaliyah: I think I want to share one more thing. Um, ever since, like, my mom is lesbian, she's, uh, queer. And, um, I would say there's, like, kind of a lot of people who just don't accept her for who she is. And it's just Like makes me frustrated because for me, I think it's the best thing ever. Like having two moms, like it just is amazing. And yeah,

Julia Winston: Yeah. What do you, what do you love about having two moms? 

 Aaliyah: I mean, both of them, they are very talented. Like my other mom, she like built my bed and she's so good at cooking. Like her food is just the best thing ever. And I think it's just like girl power around this house. Like, it's just amazing. And we can do whatever we want. Like it's girl power. 

Jamyla: It's like a, it's like a restaurant in our house. Like she can cook so good. And every night there's just a great meal for us.

Julia Winston: What's your favorite thing she cooks? 

Aaliyah: she makes these like bagels and they have like cream cheese in them and she puts like this rosemary thing on top of it and it's so good. So good. 

Chalice: It's a lot of frozen pizza before Ray Ray came.

Julia Winston: When Nicole voluntarily gave up her legal and physical rights over the girls, it did give them some permanency. But Chalice says even after that decision, Aaliyah wanted more. 

Chalice: Over the course of all of these years of back and forth to court, um, that really took a toll on Aaliyah, especially Aaliyah was always the oldest and the most cognizant of everything that was happening. She was constantly being interviewed by this caseworker and prepped by the guardian and light him about this and talk to with this therapist and that therapist. And so she, had to learn to hold Maybe this will happen. Maybe that will happen. Even as I told her, even as we were celebrating after court that I had custody in the back of her mind, she knew enough about the court system to know what custody can be changed. Custody placements aren't permanent. 

And so she never let go of the desire to be adopted. Since we were friends with so many foster families, she would see kids go through foster care and get adopted or kids go through foster care and get reunified and both of those are, you know, permanent situations. So that was always Aaliyah's deepest hope and dream was that she could be adopted.

Aaliyah: I think I just was like, okay, we need to stop going back and forth, back and forth and I think I just want it to be like, I want to have a life with her, you know, cause she's like a really special person and I want her to be there with me in my life.

Julia Winston: What made adoption the answer to you for that? Just to, to know that it was official. Like what was it that was important to you? 

Aaliyah: I think I just wanted people to know that like, she's my mom, you know, even though like I have a birth mom, I just wanted people to know that like, this is my mom and I'm proud of that. 

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Chalice: Over the course of the next couple of years, I would go to her mom and say, Hey, do you see how we're doing this? I'm not leaving Charleston. I'm not packing up the girls and taking off like. Would you reconsider adoption? And it was just absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. And so Aaliyah and I kind of had this contingency plan that when she was 16, um, she could get emancipated or when she was 18, she could change her last name. That's kind of what we looked forward to is like these, this sense of permanency is so important to you.

And I've fought for that as much as I know how, um, but I, I can't do anything else except take their mom to court and try to terminate her rights was, was completely off the table. Like We had gotten to a point where I'm like, we will only do this peacefully or we won't do it at all. I would tell Leah, maybe when you're a little older, you can talk to mom. 

So she was 11 or 12 when she's like, I'm not waiting anymore. I'm talking to my mom and I'm like, I want to talk to my mom. I want to tell her I want to be adopted. Rachel and I and Aaliyah and her mom all sat down. And Aaliyah just said, Mom, I really love you. But I want Chalice. She said, Mom, I love you, but I want Mom to adopt me.

I really want to be a Howard. My last name's Howard. And her mom, again, just like that court day where it was like, no, no, no, no, no. She just looked at her and said, Is that what you want? And Aliyah said, It's what I really want. So she said, I can do that. I'm like, what? Like, what? I can't, it's like, even in telling the story, I cannot convey, like, The impossibility of that situation and how in the right time from the right voice from the non threatening voice of her daughter. I actually think it was really healing for, for Nicole that Aaliyah could come to her and say, this is something that I want. Can you do it for me? And she could say, yes, because she, Aaliyah had been hurt by her so many times and there have been major fractures in that relationship. 

I could see in Nicole's face when she said yes to Aaliyah. It was like one of the most deeply maternal moments I've ever seen. My child is coming to me asking me for this thing and it means that I have to step down and say yes for her good and the way that she, the ease that she said yes to that, it's like, I've always known that was in her, despite just the horrible, rotten, no good days I've known that there's care and love, and I saw that, and so she said yes.

Julia Winston: Two years later, the adoption still isn’t finalized because the girls’ birth fathers need to complete the process of signing over parental rights. 

Julia Winston:  When the adoption is finalized, you plan to change your last name to Howard tell me why you want that.

Aaliyah: I would say I'm not really like proud of my last name because it reminds me of my birth dad Who's in jail right now. And, um, he's like the one who keeps like trying to like stop the adoption or like try to hold it back. That's why it's taking like a long time for it to happen.

Julia Winston: what is it about sharing chalice's last name howard that's important to you?

Aaliyah: Our family, like the Howard family, they're like so kind, and like we just, I love them so much, I have so many awesome and wonderful cousins, I just like, I feel honored to share the last name.

Julia Winston: Jamyla also wants to be adopted by Chalice, but has a different plan for her name. She's going to hyphenate her current last name with Howard. 

Jamyla: My twin, um, Jamar, he has the same, he's going to have the same last name as me. He's really special to me. And I really felt like I really, I still wanted my, my last name. So I just hyphenated it because my birth family, are still very special to me and I really felt like I really wanted to keep their last name.

Julia Winston: The adoption will also allow Chalice and Rachel to focus on solidifying their roles in the family. 

Chalice: Once the adoption finalizes, Rachel and I will, can legally get married and we'll hopefully be getting married in the spring. Um, I would love for Nicole to be my maid of honor. Like I, there's nothing I could hope for more than that. I hold her in such a place of honor.

Julia Winston: When Chalice was younger, she looked up to her aunt and uncle who had adopted kids, found them inspirational. She saw the situation from the adults’ point of view, that they were helping kids who needed a new home. But she didn't always see it from her cousins' perspective, the adopted children, about what they’d lost. Now, Chalice sees the situation with a wider lens. 

Chalice: Part of the reason I wanted to tell my story is because I've met a lot of people who want to foster, adopt, or meet the girls and I, and think like, Oh, that would be so cool. And it's so important to me that people understand that by nature, adoption and foster care are birthed out of tragedy. It is not inherently beautiful that a child needs a different mother than the one that they were born from. It's devastating that for whatever reason, someone's not able to, to care for their child, especially because most of the time that is the desire of the parent, right?

I was this person at one time, thinking there's saving to do,and if we can start from the vantage point of like, wow, there was this family that existed apart from me and I'm being given the honor because of my resources to come in and to maybe help with some mending that is the vantage point that I hope that can start to shift. 

The work of foster care and adoption in my life and in my heart is family preservation. It is still my role as another mom to keep preserving this family unit, to keep drawing them back to each other, to keep helping them see each other. And so I hope that I hear that in the years to come as like more of a theme is really, being a bridge and not being a savior. Like these girls need their mom, their first mom. They need me too, but it has been out of my love for them that I fight for their relationship with their mom, um, because she deserves that and they deserve that.

Julia Winston: What advice would you give to other kids who are going to live with a new adult or guardian like you did?

Aaliyah: I would say that can be like hard sometimes, but it can also like, if you're coming through like a hard place in your life, it can be like, really like, joyful and exciting. don't know, just feels really safe. It's like a safe environment. 

Jamyla: Yeah, um, I, I really agree with Aaliyah too. When you're going to a new person, it can be really hard. But also, if person, if you think they're safe, then I think that could really change your life, and Be a lot more better for you

Julia Winston: What do kids need from adults in this kind of situation?

Aaliyah: Um, especially like need comfort because they're coming. They're probably coming through a hard, um, place. They also might need, um, I don't know, I don't know how to explain it. But, um, with Chalice, she like did a really good job. And she just like, I don't know, did her best that she could and like everything was good.

Jamyla: First of all, I think they need a lot of love and I think they really need to listen to them. And Like, if they're having a hard time, you should, like, say, like, what's wrong, like, can I help you? And, like, really try to help them, and make them feel comfort.

Julia Winston: Aaliyah, Jamyla and their moms have been refamulating for many years, and their story continues to evolve. Like all refamulating journeys, theirs is one of inner and outer transformation. The structure of their family is still changing on the outside, and the love inside each of them continues to grow and deepen.  For Chalice, becoming a mother has been the biggest transformation of all. 

Chalice: I love my life. Like, I love my life as the mother of these two girls. They are The best things that have ever happened to me.