A foster mother cared for 77 children over a decade, then adopted two of them. The stress felt normal at first, like being slowly boiled, until she hit severe burnout with PTSD, elevated cortisol, and unresolved trauma.
How did you know that cortisol or stress was your issue? So it's interesting. My husband and I, as you mentioned a little bit, we were foster parents for 10 years. We took in 77 children. I was the epitome of the slowly boiled frog. I thought the water was cozy and comfortable until I was completely fried. When we walked away from our foster care journey, we had adopted both of our daughters, so which gave us a total of our 4 children. And I walked away with a very generous compensation package of PTSD, high cortisol levels, a lot of unresolved trauma.
