Welcome To Our New Series
Hello, Jolie here from Bananas Foster! Thanks for checking out this story with The Holmes Family, our first celebrated BFF at an NFL Stadium. This game is the largest crowd, to date, for the game of Banana Ball and the largest crowd we get to inspire more fans to get involved in foster care. The awareness for foster care at this game will be HUGE, and it is because of The Holmes Family that we get to inspire more.
In honor of these stadiums we want to “Go Big” on these celebrations, so we decided to put their celebrations in a two-part series! Part one is the background of their story and the additional in-depth information we can’t get into on the field. Part two will be the celebration and a recap of the day as a BFF.
We are so excited to share these stories with you, so without further ado let’s…START THE CLOCK! (IYKYK)
PART ONE – Getting to Know The Holmes Family
Why did you become a licensed foster family? – Having biological children wasn’t necessarily easy for our family, but we’ve always envisioned a house full of kids. We we have a lot of love to give and had always planned on having kids and so we were sitting in church one morning and there was a guest speaker there. It was actually a pastor who had founded a child placing agency and summer camp for less fortunate kids in our area. We’ve never heard of it before, so we immediately felt the tug to attend the information session later that evening.
And before we knew it, here we are today! We do believe that God calls us to help orphans and widows in their distress and we just feel like this was definitely our calling for our family.
Is there anything that he said when talking to you guys that really like struck a cord? – He gave a ratio of within our county that let us know how many children he was serving on the on a weekend basis. They attend a camp for the night and they learn about Jesus. At this camp, they’re provided that safe environment and we always knew there was more that we could do. It really spoke volumes when he put it into perspective like, “hey it’s not just foster care in the United States, it is foster care in this exact county.”
What is the most rewarding part of being a foster parent? – The most rewarding part is being able to partner alongside these biological families. We are really big on building relationships with them to help them and to guide them. Some of them just genuinely don’t know cause they’ve never done it before. Maybe it’s their first kid. We have a family we’re working with right now and we’re letting like walking in through registering their children for school next year because they’re getting ready to go home, so helping her understand they don’t just automatically get enrolled and things like that.
We really enjoy being able to assist them with things that they need or if the kiddos are getting ready to go home and they’re short a bed, so we ask, “what can we do to get them a bed,” so that they can be approved to have all of their children safely in their home. True passion is is just helping these families with whatever we’re physically able to do.
What is one challenge you face as a foster parent? – We are often judged based on the children in our home. Sometimes when people aren’t educated enough on parenting and the difference between children with trauma and the average child. There are specific boundaries and behaviors, what’s appropriate and what’s not, most times foster children do not understand, so that can sometimes create a problematic situation.
It’s a little bit more attention to de-escalate and a lot of times friends and family can unintentionally escalate problems just because of what they are used to doing. I would say that is one of our biggest challenges is just not feeling accepted in certain areas because of traumatic inducing behaviors.
What advice do you have for people looking into foster care? – Foster care is hard and is definitely what we consider heart work. Our advice would be to find that community and lean on them. Let them help you. It is hard to ask for help, but when it is offered, it is the most beautiful thing. Also, we would say that you might not see an impact immediately on a child that you are helping in foster care, but just keep planting those seeds and keep doing the hard work because it will eventually come to fruition.
Is there anything else that like you want to say about foster care that we can cut into a video or just put out there in your in your story? – My huge thing is foster care is temporary. It is not this child’s full story. We are just a small piece of their story, but we do hope to always be remembered within their story. The main thing I just want people to understand is when you do foster care it’s about the child. It’s not about my family. It’s not about, “oh you are just the best person.” We’re not. Every child deserve it, and even though they’re in foster care, it makes them no less.
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PART TWO – Getting to Celebrate The Holmes Family
To be continued… tune in for The Holmes Family celebration at Raymond James Stadium live on The Savannah Bananas YouTube – March 15, 2025. Click Here…
If you or someone you know is a foster family and are interested in sharing your story with us, please visit Tell Your Story.
Created by Jolie Chabala, Bananas Foster