A few months ago, he moved into a
room in the basement after experienc-
ing some financial trouble. She saw no
reason why he shouldn’t. She’d wit-
nessed stranger family reunions.CINDY STIRLING is rigidly egalitarian.
When she begins a story by saying “One
of my kids,” she might mean one of the
three she gave birth to or one of the 200
she gave a home to. The dining room
table is round so that none of the kids sits
at the head. On a recent Family Day, she
invited a diverse throng of her children
to a Chinese buffet restaurant. When
the waiter asked what the occasion
was, she replied, “This is my family.”Each kid arrives with unique chal-
lenges. One of the first, back in the ’90s,
was a teenage boy who asked Ross why
he stopped drinking after just three bot-
tles of beer; his biological dad always
finished the whole case. Another boy
gained several pounds in his first week
with the Stirlings because he ate non-
stop. He wasn’t used to knowing when
he’d get his next meal. Then there was
the girl who needed protection fromher pimp. When Stirling drove her to
court to testify against him, she used
a rental car so he couldn’t track their
licence plate.
Stirling has been known to help fos-
ter kids connect with their biological
families, even asking parents to apolo-
gize to their kids—for hitting them, for
neglecting them, for showing up late to
meetings—and vice versa. In 1995, she
let one child’s biological mother stay at
the family home while she visited and
repaired her relationship with her child.
Stirling has become expert at caring
for kids who’ve endured abuse, neglect,
poverty. But she had no idea how to
cope when one of her kids was diag-
nosed with cancer. In 2006, a nine-year-
old named Natasha arrived at her house,
crying as she walked up the family
driveway. Natasha was extremely shy—
she’d shut down when they asked her
too many questions. Slowly, though, she
bonded with her new siblings, and once
she got more comfortable, she was sassy
and mischievous. She hid her siblings’
things around the house and laughed
as she gave them clues to find them.
For seven years, Natasha thrived.
Then, when she was 16, she started
losing weight and feeling pain in her
ribs. After some X-rays, she was sent to
SickKids hospital in Toronto. Natasha
had Ewing sarcoma—there was a
tumour lodged between her fourth rib
and lung. Her doctors predicted she
could beat it. For two years, Stirling
accompanied Natasha to every singleSHE'S BECOME AN
EXPERT AT CARING
FOR KIDS WHO'VE
ENDURED ABUSE,
NEGLECT, POVERTY.reader’s digest
56 may 2020