Seven Homes Before I Was Sixteen

I aged out of foster care with a trash bag of belongings and no forwarding address.

Seven homes in twelve years. Some were fine — decent people doing their best with too many kids and not enough support. Some were not fine. I learned early which homes were safe and which ones required a different kind of survival. I learned to read a room before I learned to read a book.

The hardest part of foster care isn't the big stuff, though the big stuff is real. The hardest part is the smallness of your life. You don't get to keep things. Every time you move, something gets left behind — a stuffed animal, a friend, a school you were starting to like. After a while, you stop attaching to anything because attachment is just a setup for loss.

I was angry for a long time. At my biological parents for the choices that put me in the system. At the system for being exactly as broken as everyone says it is. At the foster parents who took the check but not the responsibility. At the caseworkers who were overloaded and undertrained. At a world that looked at a kid sleeping in a different bed every year and called it "care."

The anger was useful for a while. It kept me sharp. It kept me moving. But it also kept me alone. You can't build relationships when you're bracing for everyone to leave.

What changed was a teacher in my last placement. She didn't try to fix me or save me. She just... stayed consistent. Same classroom, same expectations, same quiet belief that I was capable of more than surviving. She wrote my college recommendation letter. She showed up at my graduation. She's still in my life.

One consistent person. That's all it took to crack the armor. Not a program, not a policy. A person who showed up and didn't leave.

WHAT THEY BUILT AFTER

I'm a CASA volunteer — Court Appointed Special Advocate — for foster children. I'm the consistent adult I needed when I was in the system. I also started a nonprofit that provides "stability kits" for kids entering new placements: a quality backpack, toiletries, a journal, a book, and a handwritten note that says "You matter and this is yours." Because I remember what it's like to own nothing. We've distributed over 1,200 kits in three years. I'm also in my second year of law school, focusing on family law. The system that raised me is broken. I'm going to be one of the people who fixes it.