A survivor of the failing foster care system.

[onceuponafosterkid]

It’s been a while :)

I have some updates.

I quit one toxic job and moved to another, that’s life for you. I graduated EMT school and passed the NREMT exam, making me a nationally registered EMT. I moved to a new apartment and it’s really nice. I adopted a cat named Mozzarella (Mozzy) and she’s very shy still but absolutely perfect. I have increased my antidepressants twice, was dumped for about a month but now am working things out again, and met some really cool people in school. Things have calmed down now, and I’m processing everything. Just in time for the holiday chaos. Which if you’ve been here for a while, you know how well I do with holidays :|I spent Thanksgiving alone because I was depressed and didn’t feel I like pretending to be okay, but I’ll probably spend Christmas with my foster family to make up for it. I hate how lonely I feel especially on holidays when I’m surrounded by people. My foster parents family is great, but they don’t really treat us (the foster kids) like normal kids. They’re a little standoffish with us even if they’ve known us for years, which kind of sucks. So I’m not looking forward to the awkwardness of them attempting to be nice and include us, but from a distance. There’s certain things you learn to pick up on in foster care, and that’s one of them. They don’t realize we see it, maybe they don’t mean it, but it still hurts. Anyway. No Christmas tree again this year. I still don’t have the energy for it. I have managed to successfully avoid listening to Christmas music and the flashbacks that come with it. I’ll talk a little more about what’s been going on recently later, but I wanted to say I’m still alive, I’m still here. Slowly but surely.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Some good things have started happening, and I’m finally settled in enough to talk about them. I swallowed my pride and reached out to my old Chafee worker. Chafee is a program that helps foster youth 15-23 with resources, information, and other things to help them be successful on their own. I had a falling out with them when I turned 18, but I couldn’t carry everything by myself anymore and I needed help. They were able to get me a housing voucher for a new apartment closer to work, I moved in last week. The move was stressful, I still have a lot of anxiety with picking up and going somewhere new and I think that is a result of foster care. I am starting EMT classes in two weeks, and I am both really excited and terrified. I’ve been talking with my therapist about a lot things, and she signed up for some classes so she can better understand what it’s like to have ADHD as an adult and how it impacts someone’s life. I have an appointment to get back on ADHD meds now that my heart issues are being managed. I took a whole week off of work to adjust to the move and to be honest, I really needed a break. Things at work have been really hard because I stood up for myself when I was being mistreated and as a result about half the people at my job now hate me and do everything they can to make my life miserable. Management knows and they won’t do anything no matter how people quit due to the bullying that’s going on. I’m trying to apply for new jobs but things kind of suck right now. I, for the first time in my life, have a boyfriend. We’ve been kind of sort of together for 3 years, and it’s really complicated but we love each other and now it’s official. I’m excited and terrified again, because in my experience, people rarely stay and I don’t want to get hurt again. Younger me would be horrified to hear current me admit that I think this man is worth the risk of being hurt. I’m in a really interesting point in my life, completely unprepared but also ready for new things. There’s still highs and lows but in this moment I’m okay, and that’s enough.

[onceuponafosterkid]

TW: SI, SH

I’m going to tell you a secret, because we’re strangers and I will never know you, nor will you know me. I think about death a lot. I’m actually convinced permanent suicidality is a symptom is of CPTSD. Just another fee in the life long price I’ll have to pay for having grown up the way I did. It’s funny because I spent my entire childhood craving love, which makes sense right? I think most foster kids do. What they don’t tell you is that the desire to be loved never goes away. It shape shifts into a quieter monster that waits to suffocate you until you’re alone in your apartment at 12pm on a Wednesday, or 3pm on Sunday, just when the light at the end of the tunnel starts to feel closer. Instead of mourning the absence of parents, you grieve the absence of romance, friendships, family, connection. The feeling that you have to perform for love but you don’t know the requirements, so you always end up falling short. I’m 22 now, but I’m still 16, and 12, and 9, and every version of myself that has held herself together while praying for death because I’ll never understand why. You’d think by now I’d be immune to the pain I’ve felt my entire life but it still hurts like it did the first time I ever felt unloved. For the first time in 6 years a blade kisses my skin, and as I sit and pack all my belongings to move to a new place, I can’t help but notice that if I ever wanted to leave now would be the time. My lease ends at the end of month and everything will be neat and tidy for them to load up and dispose of. It’ll be like I was never really here. I won’t do it, but I think about it sometimes.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Every time I think I have escaped the claws of foster care, I am brutally reminded that there is no escaping. There is no forgetting and moving on. I went to buy a new car this weekend because the one I bought off Facebook marketplace four years ago is barely hanging on these days. I’m looking at doing an EMT program 50 miles from home, so I need a safe car to get me there and home every Saturday from August to December. This is my first “big girl purchase” although my first car was bought for $8,000 cash at the age of 18. I was going to finance this car, because unfortunately, I don’t have $8,000 cash this time. Apparently for your first loan, the banks want a co-signer to make sure they’re going to get paid. Who am I supposed to ask to co-sign? My parents??? Once again, I am stuck because I don’t have anyone. I’m doing this alone in a world that isn’t designed for lonely people. I don’t even know what to do. I can’t dissociate my way through this one folks.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Here’s your reminder that avoidance does not equal healing. This entire month has been difficult for me, and I thought it was just the anxiety of my birthday, because that happens. I am in the middle of a week long depressive episode that has not ceased. It’s 4am and I’ve been awake for 3 hours because I can’t go back to sleep. My mind is loud and I’m having feelings I couldn’t explain. This is the one year anniversary of the second time I was assaulted by a coworker twice my age at Wendy’s. I confronted him, and he threatened to hurt me. So a year ago today I was trying to plan my escape from him and his daughter while battling the shame and self hatred that comes being assaulted. It was too painful to talk about, so I didn’t. With everything going on in my life the last year, I built a little wall around that pain and hid it. The thing about trauma is, it doesn’t like to be ignored, and it comes back and makes you deal with it. Hence why I am wide awake when I should be sleeping. I have therapy tonight so I’ll be okay, I don’t feel unsafe with myself. I’m in the process of making some changes in my life and I think it’s time to sit with myself and feel what I couldn’t a year ago. I have my music, I will be getting some ice cream for extra support. I have my people I can go to. This isn’t going to be easy but it is necessary. I owe it to myself.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Hello,

It’s been a minute.

The last three months have held a lot of ups and downs for me. I’ve been thinking a lot, which as you know, I’m good at. I talk about trauma a lot, and I will continue to talk about it because I am surviving as I am writing these. I am still healing, still feeling, still thinking. Turn 22 this May, which is a big deal because I’ve lived ten years longer than I thought I would. It’s exciting, but it’s also terrifying. I’ve never been 22 before, but these past three months I’ve been torturing myself because I don’t know how to be 22. I have fought with SI since I was eight years old. As an adult it’s been more passive than active, but it’s still there. When you struggle with depression and PTSD you think a good day is any day that you didn’t actively want to end your life. But that’s not really a good day, surviving is not living no matter how long you do it for. As a foster kid, they don’t teach you how to survive on your own, much less how to live. There comes a point where you no longer have to survive every day, and instead you get to start living. The problem is, surviving is all I’ve ever known, it’s all I’ve ever done. When I didn’t have to do it anymore, I lost my sense of self. I’d been fighting for so long, surviving my entire life. I wouldn’t know what gentle was if she knelt down and kissed me. I didn’t know how to live with peace when I was born into a war. I know the remedies for heart ache and disappointment, I didn’t know what to do with freedom or opportunity. Nobody warned me that the light at the end of the tunnel would be blinding. I’ve been learning how to see again these last few months. And God, it’s beautiful. I’m glad to be back, I missed you all. We’ll learn together what happens next.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Just a reminder that 20-30% of youth in the foster care system identify as LGBTQ+, and 56% are POC. So yes, I support human rights, LGTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and everything else that’s being threatened right now. That being said, kids are smart. They’ve probably heard about what’s going on right now, and they’re going to have feelings and opinions about it. Hold space for them to have those feelings, share their thoughts, and ask questions. This is their future at stake too, and they are our future.

[onceuponafosterkid]

This last month with my therapist we have been working on trauma. The older I get, the more I realize how much I am still affected by my childhood abuse. I get frustrated with myself for not being able to be “normal”. Little things like getting overstimulated at work because of noise, or people touching me. Having really intense episodes of depression on a weekly basis. It feels like my brain is broken, like there’s something chemically and physically wrong with my brain. My therapist has brought up some really good points that I hope will help me be kinder to myself. First is that when people go through years of trauma, and have complex post traumatic stress disorder, there a chemical shift in the brain. Nobody goes through trauma and comes out the same as they were before or as people who haven’t been through that trauma. So it makes sense that I struggle with things, my brain is different, and instead of being angry with myself for something that wasn’t my fault, I’m learning how to adapt my life to my needs, which is difficult. The second thing is that I was 12 when I left that house. I’m 21 now. I tell myself that it’s been almost 10 years, I should be fine by now, I should’ve healed and learned how to let go of that pain. She said that those twelve years make up 57% of my life right now. The trauma didn’t end when I ended up I foster care. I’ve been on my own as an adult for 3% of my life, meaning I’ve only spent 3% of my life working towards healing from that 57% percent. It sounds silly to say that I should be fine when I hear the numbers. I know that healing doesn’t have an end, there is no maximum amount of healing you can do in your life because to heal is to grow, and to grow is to be alive. I will be healing for the rest of my life which sounds both exhausting and reassuring. I have the rest of my life to heal, I don’t have to, and I can’t do it all right now. I’ve been putting unrealistic expectations on myself and it’s been exhausting. So now I have to learn how to slow down and go at a pace that feels okay because that’s what it takes to truly heal. I can’t bully myself into feeling okay. It sounds stupid but I have to be gentle with myself and love myself while I do this. Maybe you needed that reminder too. Healing takes time and it takes patience. There’s no timeline or due date, it’s just a process and sometimes the process looks different at various points in your life and that’s okay. It’s supposed to. We’re going to get there one day.

[onceuponafosterkid]

It’s abundantly obvious that for people with trauma, the holidays can be difficult, whether they are former/ current foster youth or not. When you’re both, it can be overwhelming to try to process or even just survive the emotions that come up this time of year. Our brains remind us of the bad things that have happened before, and holidays feel more like a place than a time. A place where no matter how hard you try to escape, once a year you are thrown back into somewhere you thought you’d never survive. On top of that, is the pressure of the presence or lack of presence of family. The feeling of not quite fitting in where you’re at, and longing for the place they call home but not knowing where that is. The uncertainty of where you’ll be living the next time you’re faced with fighting this battle. When you live in a foster home you know that no matter how great they are to you, that there is an undeniable truth that they are not your family, they are not yours to stay with, and at any point in time something could change and you could lose them and never be able to see them again. The other kids at school talk about their family traditions and what they’re most excited for, and you’ve either moved around so much there are no traditions, or the traditions you have are painful to remember because they weren’t good ones. They’re not stories you can share with your classmates and friends and teachers because they’re not what holidays are supposed to look like. The holidays you know aren’t like the ones they show on TV, or the ones everyone talks about. So where do you fit in? What do the holidays even mean? What do they look like when you don’t have a traditional home or family? So if you are a foster parent, you work with foster youth, or you know someone who is or was in foster care, please just be gentle with them these next couple of months. Remember that whether they talk about it or not, they’re probably struggling right now and will be for the rest of the holiday season. We all know that the world doesn’t care that they are hurting or confused, but you can. You can be the difference between them feeling safe enough to struggle with their emotions or them believing that they are broken for having those feelings. You can’t take away their pain, they’re going to feel what they feel either way, but you can provide a safe space for them as they navigate and process what’s in their hearts and on their minds.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Every now and then I am reminded how hard it is being an adult foster youth. I’m only 21, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. This week was really hard. I got sick on Monday while I was at work, but I have this fear of letting people down so I toughed it out. I got home and I had a fever of 103. I took some Tylenol but I can’t afford groceries right now so I don’t have any cold medicine or anything. I took Tuesday off of work thinking I needed a day to just recover. I mean, I’m working full time, taking three classes one of which is a two and half hour in person class twice a week after work so I thought maybe I was overdoing it right? But I’m pushing myself physically to avoid what’s going on mentally and yes I’m in therapy I know that’s not good but it’s what’s keeping me alive for right now. Anyway I go back to work on Wednesday but I have a cough and a headache and I just don’t feel great but I already took a day off I don’t want to make my boss mad. After work I take an at home Covid test my foster mom gave me and it’s negative, so I go to urgent care because day three of having a fever that’s now reached 103.5 and I don’t know what’s wrong. Urgent care does a Covid test that I know is going to be negative because I just took one, and they send me home. So if they sent me home I must just be overthinking this right? Maybe it’s not that bad. But I can’t work until the fever is gone and nothing is making the fever come down the cough is triggering my asthma so on Friday my foster mom takes me to the ER and there I find out I have pneumonia. They rehydrate me because I have been unable to keep anything down and sweating so much that water does nothing for me, and they give some antibiotics and I’m able to go home while they send meds to the pharmacy and finally I’m feeling like it’ll be okay. But the Walgreens they sent the meds to is closed on weekends, and I’m not supposed to wait until Monday so I call and ask them to send it to a different location which I find out halfway through Saturday the pharmacy is actually closed. So I call back again and ask them to send it down the street to Walmart but then they never call in the meds. So I ask my foster mom to call them for me and ask them to send the meds because it’s almost Sunday and I’m starting to feel like crap again and the fever is gone but I can’t breathe and my inhaler is expired and they were supposed to send a new one. She called and they said they would send them and she said she’d pick them up so I spent today cleaning in preparation for feeling better once I get my meds and once I’m done cleaning I sit on my floor and I start crying because I feel so freaking alone. Which is stupid because my foster mom has been taking care of me this whole time, sending me food and taking me to the ER but I can’t help but feel guilty because it’s not her job anymore to take care of me and she’s got a family at home, six kids counting on her but I don’t have anyone else to go to for help. I’m 21, I’m single, my bio family has left me again and it’s just been a really long week you know? It’s not like I have friends I can’t talk to, I lost them all when the assault at Wendy’s happened so I’m just sitting here fucking crying because I’m tired and it sounds very stupid but I’ve realized that it’s nobody’s job to help me. I’m in this alone and usually I can pretend that doesn’t hurt but not this week, not right now. But that’s just what happens when you age out. You’re alone unless you can find people and apparently I’m not very good at finding other people and I don’t know why. Anyway, I just needed a moment I guess. I feel like 12 year old me sitting outside my cottage at residential wondering if I’ll always be alone. I wish I could tell her the answer is no, but at this point in time I don’t have the answer she needs so for now I’m just crying with her.

[onceuponafosterkid]

My foster mom has a sibling set of three right now, ages 6, 9, and 11. They have been with her for almost a year now, and there are some things that make me both very sad and very angry. As someone who grew up in the system, I learned as much as I could about how the system works, what my diagnosis was, what it meant, etc. I also have an interest in psychology that is my current major. I am not an expert by any means, but I do know certain things based on first hand experience or watching the people I grew up with who had different experiences. The girls have had behavior problems the entire time they have lived with my foster mom. My foster mom has talked to their therapist, caseworker, and GAL about these behaviors to try to get them to help her. The behaviors that they are having are all signs that something is either going on at the visits with mom, or that some stuff has happened when they lived at home that was not okay. Nobody on their team has done anything about it. They leave my foster mom to try to navigate and help these girls on her own. My foster parents have been foster parents for 40 years, and they amazing at what they do, but they are not therapists. They do what they can to help us, but there are some things that they can’t help with because they aren’t trained to. You know who is trained in these behaviors? Their therapist, who is not working with them on what is going on, and their caseworker who thinks everything is fine. The things the 6 year old says and does and not age appropriate for a 6 year old. There are a million red flags right now and their team is turning a blind eye. These girls are hurting, they’re confused, and they’re scared. They need a level of support that they are not getting, and it not fair to them, to my foster parents, or to the other children living in the home with them. These behaviors are the kind that I saw everyday in residential treatment facilities, but Colorado closed all therapeutic facilities like that. I’ve talked about it before and I’m bring it up again, we need residential treatment facilities because we don’t have the resources not to. If there were support systems in place to replace facilities, it would be a different story, but instead they have removed a huge piece of treatment for youth with trauma and failed to offer another solution. While I firmly stand against keeping youth in facilities long term to the point where they become institutionalized like I did, I also believe that when used correctly those facilities can dramatically help youth with the fact that their lives have been flipped upside and backwards. The system is so broken that are no words to even explain it unless you know, it’s a feeling not something you can explain. A broken system hurts people more than it helps them. The system is failing three innocent girls right now and I am watching it happen. It’s like watching myself be failed from the perspective of an adult, and it sucks. Those girls are going to grow up and feel as lost and angry and hurt and confused as I do, and I hate that. I understand the limited resources, funds, and personnel within the foster care system, but as some point we have to do better. It’s toxic for everyone involved from the youth to foster parents. It shouldn’t be like this.

[onceuponafosterkid]

I’m navigating a rough patch right now. I left my job at Wendy’s because I was assaulted by a coworker and I didn’t tell anyone for six months. I was scared that nobody would believe me, out they would blame me. For six months I struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts as a result of my assault. Nobody knew about it or about the damage it caused. When the man who assaulted me started threatening me, I left. I did what I supposed to and reported it to both my manager and the police. I spoke with a detective who was going to transfer the case to the right people. A month later, I still haven’t heard anything. There were lies and rumors spread about me from my attacker, that most of my “friends” believed. I lost pretty much everyone. This new job was supposed to be a fresh start. I was excited and ready for it. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing, I’m taking my meds, I’m going to therapy, but I still feel depressed and I still have suicidal thoughts. I’m struggling at work because I’m supposed to be happy and friendly, but lately the darkness in my head has become too much and I can’t put on that front. I feel so lost and overwhelmed and angry because I don’t know what to do. Nothing is working. I’m trying to be there for my brother while he’s fighting the same demons but I can’t even be there for myself. I’m drowning in who I’m supposed to be, what I’m supposed to feel, what I actually feel, what my brother feels, what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know to save my brother and save myself and be everything that everyone else wants me to be and who I want myself to be. It feels like I am permanently broken and depressed even when there’s no reason to be. I just want someone to look at me in all this chaos and darkness inside my head and tell me that it’s okay, or just sit with me but I’m alone right now. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this. It feels like I’m failing at everything right now. I know that this is supposed to pass at some point but when? My brain is trying to kill me right now and I don’t know how to stop it because the things that are supposed to work aren’t working. I don’t know if this is just what’s it like to live with trauma or if it’s just a season that will get better. It feels permanent right now. I don’t want to lose everything because I can’t get my brain to shut up and leave me alone. I got sent home early from work because what should’ve been something small resulted in me breaking and crying when I’ve tried so hard to leave that part of me at home because I know in the real world people don’t care what’s going on inside your head even if it’s killing you. I don’t understand why I can’t just be happy, just be okay.

[onceuponafosterkid]

There’s been a lot of changes in my life recently. Growing up a foster kid teaches you to fear change. You move around a lot, and sometimes your new environment is worse than your previous one. You become numb, as a way to protect yourself from the disappointment and pain that comes with change. The longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere uninterrupted is a year. As an adult, it has impacted me more than I first realized. I tend to switch jobs every nine months without realizing it, like my body has this internal clock that thinks after a certain amount of time I HAVE to move on. I renewed my lease this year, making this apartment the longest home I’ve ever had. I switched jobs again, but this is my first job in an environment where I can see myself staying for a longer time period. I allowed myself to feel nervous about this change, but also excited for the first time. I’m learning that I can be both nervous and excited at the same time, there can be good in change. I’m teaching myself that as an adult I am in control of these changes, it is my decision, and not being decided for me. This is also both very exciting, and slightly terrifying. I’ve been talking about some really difficult things not just with my therapist, but with the people who care about me as well. I used to think that I could only tell my therapist these things because she was qualified to handle my pain, and that the people who care about me shouldn’t be burdened with my feelings and struggles, but I’m getting to a place where I can recognize that it’s okay to allow others to show up for me the same way I show up for them. I don’t feel guilty about asking for help anymore. The last few months have felt stagnant for me, but these past few weeks I’ve started to see all of the progress I’ve been making and it’s sort of beautiful.

[onceuponafosterkid]

I want to talk about the relationship between adoptive families, adoptees, and biological families. Sometimes when a child is adopted, the adoptive parents will change the child’s name from their original birth name. This in itself is not a bad thing, however there is a right way and a wrong way to do. My parents changed my entire name in order to hide me from my biological family. I didn’t know my name was changed until three years after I was placed back into foster and I met my biological mom at 15. I wasn’t allowed to know my birth parent’s names, and I had never seen a picture of them either. The other thing that happens way too often is that some, not all, adoptive families will talk bad about their child’s biological family and make them out to be horrible people. As you can imagine this is not only problematic, but harmful for adoptees. I spent the majority of my life believing that my biological parents were bad people because that is what I was told. I was also told that I was unwanted and that’s why my parents lost me. Some biological parents do awful things, and make bad decisions, but that does not automatically mean that they are bad people. It is not within an adoptive parents right to make the decision whether or not their child’s birth parents were bad people, and it is unacceptable to push your opinions about them onto your adoptive child. It is your job to support your child, not to judge their parents. A child who has been adopted is going to have questions about why they were adopted, and where they come from. They have every right to ask these questions and have age appropriate answers to those questions. If you don’t have the answer, it’s okay to tell them that you don’t know. It is not okay to make up stories and lie about who their parents are or what they have done. Adopting a child does not give you the right to destroy a current or future relationship with their birth family. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you personally think or feel about their biological family, it matters what your kid thinks and feels. Give them as much information as you can or as is appropriate, and allow them to decide what they feel. It is your job as the adoptive parent to be there for them as they figure out those thoughts and feelings, not to influence, persuade, or manipulate them either negatively or positively. If you can not be a neutral safe space for your adoptive child, then you have no business adopting them.

[onceuponafosterkid]

Addiction kills. If not physically, mentally and emotionally. It ruins families, relationships, individuals. We heard stories about our biological family growing up. We knew the reason our mom lost us was because of her addiction. They warned us that we were genetically predisposed to become addicts to both drugs and alcohol. I promised myself that I would never walk down that path no matter how hard my life got. My brother and I were supposed to break those generational curses together. It was supposed to be me and him against the world. Somewhere along the line, he got lost. He found comfort in the pills and the bottles, and he fell in so deep I’m scared he’ll never get out. His addiction caused a car crash that almost took him from me, and now it’s keeping him in a dark corner that I can’t get through. I am the only person in my family who has never struggled with addiction. There is only one other person who is sober and clean right now. He lives in a different state so I can’t talk to him often. It’s incredibly lonely watching the person you love the most kill themself with an addiction. I know I can’t save him, I know there is nothing I can do to stop him. So I show up, I drive him around to keep him from behind a wheel, I help his girlfriend clean their house while we pretend he’s not passed out drunk on the bathroom floor. We hug him and tell him we love him when he tells us he wants to die. We give him everything we can, knowing it’s not enough. Addiction kills. It’s killing me to sit here and pretend everything is fine when I know if something doesn’t change, I will lose my brother. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Abuse changes everything about you. The drinking started when he was 14, and it’s just spiraled out of control since. I wasn’t there then, but I’m here now. What if I’m too late? What if this is it for him? I try to talk him out of suicide at the same time my foster mom is talking me out of it. Our lives are so fucked. The worst part is, I can’t even talk to anyone about it. I don’t have anyone to tell. I feel everything and nothing. I am exhausted and I am scared.

[onceuponafosterkid]

I was talking to my foster sister the other day about something I had forgotten about. She is 16, and she is at the age where non foster kids would be able to start learning how to drive and getting their permits. Driving in foster care is pretty much nonexistent. When I was 16, I told my GAL how isolating it felt to not be able to have the same experiences my peers were having. She pulled over into the empty parking lot of my high school, and she let me drive her car for a little while. The feeling was exhilarating, as it is for every teenager I’m sure. But it also was the first normal teenage experience I had ever had. I told her that day that it was the first time I had ever felt normal. She got in trouble when other people found out she let me drive, but she never regretted giving me that moment of normalcy. When we left court the other day, she let me drive the hour back home, because now I have my license. Foster youth can’t get their permits and licenses while in the system because we don’t have anyone to sign for us. Nobody wants to add us to their insurance because we’re not their kids. they also don’t want us driving their personal cars. Most of the time, it has to be a parent who signs for you. Three years ago Colorado signed a new law saying that foster youth could get their permits without a parent signature, and that anyone over the age of 21 with a license can sign for them and legally teach them. I got my permit and my license at 18, and I had to teach myself how to drive in college. My foster mom took me for drives every now and then, but it was still difficult. Now that I am almost 21, I can now sign for my foster sister and teach her how to drive if she wants. I have my own car, and it’s already beat up, so I’m not worried about her scratching it a little. It’s just kind of cool that I’m in the other side of it now. I remember how frustrating it was when I her age. I had to put myself through drivers Ed because my team wouldn’t help me pay for it, and I had to find my car on my own with some guidance from my foster parents. I get to be for my sister who I needed and wanted when I was her age, and I think that’s ultimately my goal with everything. Where I want to work in the future, with my foster siblings, some day when I foster or adopt kids. I’m extremely humbled and grateful that I have this ability now.

[onceuponafosterkid]

I decided to keep my case open a little longer just so that I would have that extra financial support from the department. However, in three weeks I will be 21, and it is time to move forward. Today was a big day. After 2,792 days, 6 caseworkers, 7 placements, 8 schools, and 8 birthdays, I am no longer a ward of the state. I am free. The longest and most difficult chapter of my life, has come to a close. I thought I would feel indifferent, and that I would be closed off and unemotional. Maybe even angry, but instead I am at peace. I know that it is time to let go of all the pain I have carried for 8 long years. What happened before I was placed in the system, and what happened during, doesn’t go away. I will keep a small piece of my experience with me for the rest of my life. From now on, I don’t have to answer to anyone. I can be who I was meant to be. No more court sessions, monthly meetings where I bang my head against the wall, caseworkers, GALS, logistics and rules. Now I am just me. This is the day I have spent every minute of the last 8 years waiting for, living for, dreading. This random Wednesday afternoon is the day my life changes for good. Case number 27J529 Dependency and Neglect has been closed. My life starts over today. I am both terrified and excited. I will leave the world of foster care and enter the rest of the world. I am leaving my life as an unwanted youth, and begin my life as a young woman. The possibilities are endless. My judge cried, I cried, we all know that this is huge. I’m not the same little girl I was years ago. I am stronger now, and I’m ready. As scary as this is, I know I will be okay.