The Family That Grew from Grief

On October 19, 2016, 41-year-old Bobbie Floyd went to Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia and released dozens of balloons. The occasion was more somber than celebratory; she was honoring her late husband on the two-year anniversary of his death. As she and her two sons, ages 8 and 13, watched the colorful balls float up to the heavens, they thought of the missing member of their family and of the motorcycle accident that had taken him away from them.

Later that same day, Floyd’s phone rang. It was a social worker asking whether she’d be willing to foster two

sisters, ages 7 and 11. Floyd and her husband had talked about adding to their family, a dream she had initially thought had gone with him. But about a year later, she had reconsidered and signed up to become a foster mother. “I was lonely,” she says. “And fostering is not adopting. That was my mentality. I’m just fostering these kids, loving them and then giving them back.” And now, at last, the call had come.

Floyd was happy to take in both girls, but when she opened her door to greet them, there were three children, not two. The girls’ brother, Lysander, 9, also needed a foster family. Floyd agreed to take him in as well. Siblings often get separated in the foster care system, and she wanted to prevent that, even if she had only three bedrooms.

Per her fostering agreement, Floyd took the kids every three months to family court in case their biological parents were ready to take them back. Each time, the judge extended the foster agreement for another three months. Meanwhile, the longer the kids stayed with Floyd, the more they grew to trust her. “They wrote notes saying that they wanted to stay here,” she says. Months turned into a year. When Floyd learned that “her” three kids had three more siblings (a sister and two brothers) in the foster system, she decided to make room for them. “We started adding bunk beds and making lofts,” she says. For some of the siblings, Floyd’s house was their ninth foster home. “I just kept seeing this family getting tossed around in the system,” she says. “So I figured, why not take them all?” When Serenity, one of the three girls, asked that she officially adopt them, Floyd couldn’t say no. Her two biological sons were on board.

Last year, the adoption became official for four of the six kids, and it’s almost complete for the other two. Then Floyd will be the mother of eight, ages 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, and 17. “We’re like a well-oiled machine,” she says. “In the kitchen, we’re sliding and grooving. We glide in and out of bathrooms. We make it work.”

Just a few years ago, Floyd was a lonely widowed mother of two. She can’t help but think that her late husband had a hand in her life’s transformation, especially since the phone call from the social worker came on the anniversary of his death. “I feel like he was saying, ‘Here, take these kids. Get busy. Stop crying.’ And I was busy, but I was still crying. Then he was like, ‘Here’s three more kids. Take them.’ Now I have no time to cry, so I just laugh and play and yell all day. Then I wake up and do it again.”

WHEN ONE OF THE THREE GIRLS ASKED THAT SHE ADOPT THEM, FLOYD COULDN’T SAY NO.