This article is published in partnership with the Fostering AfterCare Podcast.
Listen to the writer dive deeper in this Fostering AfterCare podcast episode:
For as long as I can remember, I was trying to figure out what I was missing. I could feel it every time life shifted under me. Somehow, when things fell apart, I would end up with nothing — zero dollars, no stability, and no soft place to land. Mistakes that other young adults without a past experience of abuse and neglect seemed to rebound from easily would wipe me out completely. It left me wondering why even small missteps felt like they carried life-altering consequences for me.
What I didn’t know then — and what many adults with foster care experience understand deeply — is that the feeling of being “behind” isn’t imagined. Most of us didn’t start with a foundation at all. When you grow up without stable caregivers, consistent love, and relational safety, the ground beneath you is already shaking before adulthood even begins. And so, like many of us who aged out, I did what I could with what I had. I gathered. I tried. I survived. I built.
But in hindsight, my journey looked a lot like the story of the Three Little Pigs. After foster care, I built my life with straw, not because I didn’t want something stronger. I built with straw because it was all I had. Survival instincts were my straw. Hyper-independence was straw. Intuition I treated like gospel was straw. Advice from people who weren’t trustworthy or weren’t emotionally safe was straw. I didn’t know it was fragile. I didn’t know any other material existed. Every time I built something with the little I had, the Big Bad Wolf of life — trauma, instability, grief, conflict, the realities of adulthood — came roaring in and blew it down.
Eventually, I thought the answer was to find “stronger” materials. I gravitated to various attempts to create something that looked stable or at least felt stable. I was genuinely searching for something that would hold. I tried everything I could to be aligned, protected, centered, or guided. From aligning my chakras to taking pieces of wisdom, gathering rituals and methods from various self-help books, attending conferences and studying doctrine from enlightened scholars in history, they gave me wins here and there. I believed I was finally figuring something out. It turns out they were just sticks that the wolf blew down too.
Eventually, I realized:
The problem wasn’t just the materials.
The problem was the ground underneath.
It wasn’t one moment but a collection of them that revealed my foundation was sand. College was one of those moments. I was in scholars programs, mentorship programs, and leadership groups. At the time, every adult who supported me was tied to a role: a therapist, a professor, a program coordinator. No one was connected to me outside of a professional role.
When a painful trauma happened in college, I had no one to call. My parents were unavailable. My mentors were far away. On top of that, I started getting heavily bullied. My mental health collapsed. Soon, my grades followed, which, of course, was tied to my housing. With everything at risk, I decided to withdraw from university. It was clear that I had no foundation to stand on while trying to survive this storm.
That moment, among several others, showed me:
The wolf didn’t just blow down the house.
The wolf also exposed the ground beneath it.
I wasn’t behind.
I was building with what I had… on sand.
Years later, as an adult, when I returned to the faith of my childhood — not the misrepresentation, not the cultural version, but the God of the Bible — everything shifted. Studying Scripture didn’t erase the wisdom or survival instincts I had before. It added clarity to both.
It helped me see that:
• I had wisdom, but not a foundation.
• I had instincts, but not structure.
• I had strength, but not soil to root it in.
What I called spirituality back then was me doing my best to make sense of my story with the only tools I had. They worked temporarily, but they couldn’t hold the weight of what needed healing — my identity, my trauma, my future.
Scripture revealed that the issue wasn’t only straw and stick materials, but also the sand vs. rock. It is showing me exactly how to build a home that could endure the wolves of life.
Today, my life is being built differently. I am married. My husband brings a sense of safety and steadiness that feels like the warmth my grandmother wrapped around me in early childhood — the closest thing I ever had to “home” before I knew the meaning of the word. Becoming a mama added another layer entirely. Our son gave me a renewed sense of purpose, further softening of my heart, and a depth of joy that is reshaping everything in me. Now I’m building a home that will be a solid, generational blueprint. I am building a lineage that begins with stability, love, peace, and joy rather than pain and survival.
Scripture gives me the materials. Healing gives me the tools. Community helps furnish the home with love, safety, and belonging. And for the first time in my life, I am learning to accept that I belong in the home I’m building — a home steady enough to hold me, safe enough to grow in, and strong enough to pass on.
If the foundation you started with was unstable, what could your life become if you rebuilt it on something strong enough, steady enough, and loving enough to finally hold you?
