Sandra N. / Put the anger, resentment, and pain aside.

My most challenging experience was accepting the fact that people do care even though my biological mom didn’t and that there were still good people in this world who were willing to open their doors to me to provide a safe space for me and my son to grow. The defining experience was me accepting that my foster family did indeed love me and wanted what was best for me and my son. They didn’t walk out on me and they weren’t a “for now” family. They turned into my forever family and I am forever grateful for that.

My piece of advice is to take advantage of the resources given to you, put the anger, resentment, and pain aside and seek therapy to help you heal along this process. Use what is available to you because it will help you in the long run. It will change the course of where life decides to take you when you become an adult. We tend to have trust issues based on how many homes we’ve been placed in, based on our past with our own families but not everyone is like that, there are people that have our best interest and we have to be open to that. Not everyone will be that mom that abandoned us, not everyone will be the father that abused us, not everyone will be the aunt/uncle/brother/person that took advantage of us... Ask questions, find resources, do not rush out of the system if you do not feel ready.

The foster care system taught me acceptance and how to be hopeful. I’ve heard so many horror stories about people in the system. But I can say that I was truly blessed in the end. A loving family opened their doors to me and my son, a family that I still keep in contact with daily. It taught me to accept the fact that just because my biological family did not love me and open their doors for me it did not mean that EVERYONE was like that. They gave me hope that I did deserve to be loved and that I did deserve a family, hope that I would be the one to break that cycle that made me think that all people were as unloving as my bio family.

What I needed most when emancipating from the system was support and guidance. I felt so lost because for four years I was in a home where my foster mom would help me with everything. Still having to face reality was hard, doing things on my own, figuring out how to maintain a household was overwhelming.