Before going to Mr Sharry’s talk I thought it was just going to be about the logistics and the reasons why everyone should foster kids. But I was wrong. Instead, he shared a sad but important story about how sometimes things don’t work out the way you want it. He starts off describing raising David – a child whose father was a drug dealer- because of David’s traumatizing childhood raising him was hard. Mr Sharry found many challenges in preventing him from stealing or giving disturbances to other people. Because of this, he was often exhausted with keeping up with David and would sometimes lose temper, noticing this behaviour Mr Sharry was starting to understand what a difficult journey this would be. However in the end, when asked to adopt David, Mr Sharry declined because of hardships. It could be argued that Mr Sharry shouldn’t have done so, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to continue to raise David he was raising him now. Raising him would cause more harm that supports and so Mr Sharry declined the offer to adopt David. This struck out to me as in many stories we hear, it is all about going through the hardships and achieving your goal. Mr Sharry’s gives a unique lesson, that sometimes it is better to quit when you know it isn’t sustainable for you to continue. However, it is not a story of being a ‘quitter’, or just quitting when things are too difficult it is a story of making a difficult decision to continue to live a happy and sustainable life for both parties. Often in life, people get obsessed and sacrifice everything in order to achieve something to end up nowhere. It is okay to quit when things are unachievable, however hard the decision is. Mr Sharry’s story wasn’t a conventional story but it was an important one.