The Unexpected Joys and Realities of Becoming a Kinship Carer / Special Guardian
There are moments in life where you stop, look around, and think, How on earth did I end up here? Recently, it was one of those days for me. My little girl has just turned 13, and while birthdays always bring some reflection, this one feels different. A teenager. A whole new chapter. And I can’t help but sit with the memories of how she came into our lives, and what these 13 years have really meant.
The truth is, we weren’t planning for more children. We already had three boys, and after my husband’s vasectomy, I thought that chapter was closed. We had our rhythm, our routines, our noisy house full of muddy football/rugby boots and endless boxes of cereal disappearing overnight. Life was full enough. Settled enough. Or so I thought.
Then she arrived. A tiny baby girl, my stepson’s daughter. One day she wasn’t here, and the next, we were being assessed to become her guardians until she is 18. Not just temporary carers, not a stopgap, but forever. It was overwhelming. The kind of thing you read about happening to other people, not to you. I remember the shock of it, the sudden sense that the ground beneath us had shifted, and the weight of responsibility pressing in before we’d even had time to breathe.
We had no warning about the trauma she carried with her, no preparation for what that meant for her or for us. Trauma is an invisible backpack, heavy, unpredictable, and always spilling over at the most unexpected times. It didn’t just affect her; it rippled through the entire family. My boys felt it deeply. Their world had changed overnight too, and I often wondered if they resented me for saying yes to something that demanded so much of us all.
Those early days… I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. The sleepless nights. The tantrums that came from places I didn’t understand yet. The guilt of feeling torn in five different directions: three boys who still needed me, a baby who was grieving and unsettled, a husband stretched thin, and myself, barely keeping it together. I remember thinking, I’m not cut out for this. Someone else could do it better. I’m failing them all.
But time has a way of softening the edges of even the hardest times. Slowly, we learned. I read, I researched, I asked questions, I made mistakes, and I tried again. We stumbled through together. sometimes clumsily, often imperfectly, but always with love at the heart of it. And here we are, 13 years later.
My little girl is no longer so little. She has grown (taller than me) into a young person who is both gentle and fierce, thoughtful and strong. Yes, the challenges are still there. Trauma doesn’t just vanish, and neurodiversity adds its own unique rhythm to our days. But she has taught me patience I never knew I had. She has stretched my heart wider than I thought possible. And she has given me the gift of a mother-daughter bond I never imagined would be part of my story.
That’s what surprises me most. I never thought I’d know what it feels like to have a daughter confide in me about her first crush, to sit together and laugh over makeup experiments gone wrong, to hear her chatter endlessly about friends and school and her latest Roblox adventures. We’ve created our own space, just the two of us, where she knows she can bring anything, joys, worries, or struggles and be met with love. That trust is everything. It’s fragile and precious, and I hold it close.
When I look back, what I see most clearly is that kinship care is both brutally hard and breathtakingly beautiful. It tests you to your core. It changes your family in ways you can’t predict. It forces you to confront parts of yourself you didn’t want to see. But it also opens up a door to a love you never expected, a kind of love that grows not out of ease, but out of persistence, sacrifice, and shared resilience.
There are still days when I feel the weight of it. Days when the old guilt creeps in, when I wonder if my boys lost more than they gained, when I feel worn out by the constant balancing act. But then there are the moments, the laughter around the dinner table, the quiet car rides when she tells me her secrets, the ordinary, everyday things that are really the extraordinary proof that we made it this far. That she feels safe. That she feels loved.
So, as she steps into her teenage years, I carry both the memories of how hard it was, and the joy of what we’ve built. Becoming her guardian was not in my plan, but life rarely follows the plan. Sometimes it throws you into the deep end, and you either sink or learn to swim. We swam. And somewhere along the way, we found something special that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
About me
I am a married mother of four children. One of those four children is our granddaughter, for whom we are SGO (legal guardians)/kinship carers. I run a small business and enjoy writing, so I blog. My blog focuses on my family life as well as my experiences of living with chronic illnesses and disabilities such as ME/CFS, spinal stenosis, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia. Oh, and I am only in my mid-40s.
