I don’t know what it feels like to have parents. My childhood was a constant shuffle — a revolving door of foster homes and strangers trying to play the role of “Mom” or “Dad,” but never quite filling it. There were no bedtime stories, no warm dinners, and no arms to run into when the world got too loud. Still, I knew those things were supposed to exist. I knew love had a shape, even if I never got to hold it.
Former foster youth who become parents often carry the weight of two childhoods — the one they lived and the one they’re trying to create for their child. We parent forward while healing backwards. We raise children while still grieving the child inside us who never got what they needed. There’s no roadmap for this kind of parenting. Many of us never witnessed what healthy love looked like — what it meant to be hugged without fear, to be told “You’re safe here,” or to be guided gently instead of punished harshly.
We weren’t given lullabies. We were handed silence and expected to grow up fast. Now we’re expected to raise whole, loved, and secure children without ever having experienced that ourselves. But we do it, not perfectly, but intentionally, because we know what harm looks like. We know how it feels to be overlooked. We don’t want our kids to inherit those same ghosts.
I often ask myself: How do I grow into a version of myself I’ve never seen? The answer is as painful as it is powerful: I give my daughter what I always longed for. I learn to be gentle even though no one was gentle with me. I become the father I once dreamed of belonging to.
I wish I could say my story is rare. But in America, it’s tragically common. Each year, an average of 22,500 young people age out of foster care without finding a permanent home. Within a few years, roughly 20-25% experience homelessness, and about 21% become homeless within the first two years of leaving care. Only one-third to about half of aged-out youth secure steady employment by age 24, and fewer than 4% earn a four-year college degree by age 25. By their early twenties, seven out of 10 young women from foster care will become pregnant, and up to 20% of young men from foster care are fathers. These aren’t just numbers. They’re road signs pointing to a system that abandons youth just as they’re being asked to build lives of their own. It’s like being handed a baby while you’re still learning how to hold yourself upright.
It’s hard to give what you’ve never received. Expressing love can feel like speaking a language you were never taught. When love wasn’t modeled through gentle hugs or someone saying, “I’m proud of you,” it’s easy to feel lost. As an example of fatherhood, what I had was trauma passed down like splintered furniture, always in the way. So now, when my 8-year-old daughter runs to me, I hold her with everything I never had. I kiss her forehead, just like I used to wish someone would do for me. I know not to use my past as is, but rather in a backward motion, like compost — something nauseating that can still nourish.
To heal backwards means confronting the pain of my childhood, not to live in it, but to learn from it. It means grieving the birthdays I spent alone and the times I had to parent myself. It means digging into what I was denied, so I don’t unknowingly pass it on.
To parent forward is to choose to give what was once missing—to show up with patience, softness, and care even when those qualities were never modeled. This reflects the theological concept of via negativa, articulated by Pseudo-Dionysius, which understands truth through absence by defining what something is not. I apply it here simply: I learned how to parent by knowing what parenting should not feel like. The lack of safety, tenderness, and stability became its own instruction, guiding me to move deliberately toward presence, warmth, and repair. I parent not by imitation, but by refusal — by consciously rejecting the way I was raised: through systemic neglect, absent parents, and a presence that, when it existed, was defined not by care but by abuse. I know what harm looks like, so I work to give its opposite. I learn how to love by remembering what it felt like to go without.
This kind of parenting — healing while parenting — is one of the most sacred acts I can imagine. It requires strength, reflection, and deep emotional labor. Society expects former foster youth to “figure it out” without giving us the tools, but we do it anyway. We heal while giving, grow while guiding, and build while bleeding. It’s survival wrapped in love.
When my daughter asks about grandparents or traditions, I walk a tightrope between honesty and protection. I want her to have roots, even if mine were torn out. I mess up. I apologize. I try again. I tell her the truth, softened with love. I build new rituals, create new family stories, and plant seeds of safety where once there was only fear.
Each day, I learn more about what I’m capable of. I feel like a magician, and loving my daughter feels like casting a healing spell that echoes through generations. Being there for her is also being there for the child I used to be.
I’m building the kind of love I never had. And every time I show up as a dad, I break the cycle that tried to break me.
