For The Love Of Family

As addiction to opioids and other drugs separates parents from children, foster families with unique qualifications have made room in their homes—and hearts.

- Melody Warnick

The Empty Nesters

When Brian and Jewel Miller* told their adult son, David, that they were thinking of becoming foster parents, he had three words for them: “You are crazy.” But the time seemed right. In 2012, Brian, 61, and Jewel, 54, stepped away from full-time work to move to Colorado to help care for their granddaughter, Layla, while their daughter was in nursing school. With Layla starting kindergarten, Jewel found herself rattling around their four-bedroom house south of Denver: “I was like, We have all this kid stuff at our house. Why not?”

No palm trees swayed in their empty-nester dreams, anyway. Having built careers around service, Brian as a firefighter and Jewel as a high school teacher, they were drawn to a newspaper ad for a foster parent orientation session. And as semi-retirees, they had the stability and flexibility younger-people often don’t. “I felt like we could help people who couldn’t help themselves,” says Jewel. 

In October 2015, the Millers completed a six-month process of classes and paperwork. Two days later, they were sitting at their kitchen table when the phone rang. A newborn boy at the local hospital, J.D., had tested positive for opioids and suffered from neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a complex set of issues stemming from prenatal addiction that can include feeding problems, tremors, irritability, and developmental delays. (Because of the opioid epidemic, the number of babies with NAS has increased fivefold nationwide.) Still, Jewel and Brian didn’t hesitate. They brought J.D. home and loved him instantly and wholeheartedly. After two months of high-calorie formula, J.D., underweight at birth, grew rounder and started to flash a charming smile. Overall, “he was a very easy baby,” Jewel recalls.