Foster Progress has had the honor of hearing many stories of grown up foster kids, and these stories deeply effect our understanding of our youth and therefore effect the work we do. We began this blog in order to share their Stories of Resilience and hope they help you to understand the experiences of youth from foster care.
“These years will be the best years of your life,” said my study hall teacher on my first day of high school. But the “best years” of my life consisted of sleeping at airports or 24-hour restaurants, trying to get comfortable in five different stranger’s homes, attending five different high schools, and being forced to grow up at just 13. My first night in my college dorm was the first night in years that I was not in a homeless shelter or foster home.
Read MoreIt’s been six years since the day that changed my life. Before the age of sixteen, all I knew was darkness, fear, and the harsh cold that shadowed every winter that passed with no utilities to keep us warm. Today I stand strong and proud to say that I not only survived those unfortunate times, but I thrived and created a life for myself that will never feel such pain again.
Read MoreMy mother’s foster brother’s girlfriend’s sister dropped me off at college. I’ll repeat – my mother’s foster brother’s girlfriend’s sister dropped me off at college. It was 2008 when she packed her 1997 red Ford Taurus with a large tote of my clothes and a pillow. I sat in the back seat and watched Detroit fade to highway and the highway fade to Chicago. I gripped a laminated page I had torn out of a old photo album, which contained the sole three photographs I have of my biological mother. There is one of her holding one year old me in her arms - there’s birthday cake all over my face and fingers. Another shows she and I standing next to the shiny new Taurus when I was 7. And in the last photograph, my mother is sleeping in a shimmery white dress in a blue casket.
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