If strangers ask me how many children I have, my answer is complicated.

I birthed two children and am working on raising them to be really good humans. But I also mothered a third child for a year and a half, and I can’t just erase that relationship. I’ll answer “Two, a boy and a girl,” and then launch into the verbal eruption of: “We’re also foster parents and we had a placement for 18 months and we also do respite care for other foster families, so the number of children is sort of fluid.”