This article is published in partnership with the Fostering AfterCare Podcast.
Listen to the writer dive deeper in this Fostering AfterCare podcast episode:
The challenge of acquiring, maintaining, or even desiring healthy relationships is that many of us who have experienced foster care are neurobiologically inclined to accept, create, and cultivate unhealthy or unsafe relationships simply because they feel familiar. And layered on top of the reality that relationships often feel fragile, they are always one moment away from being lost.
As I’ve spoken across the states to hundreds of adults with foster care experience over the years, and read our books, I’ve learned that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Many of us step into adulthood without ever witnessing repair, emotional safety, or healthy attachment. These are what I see as clear systemic gaps in how we prepare young people for relational life while in foster care and as they age out into the real world. In order to be a healthy, successful adult is to be relationally rich.
As I began diving deeper into why this is, I found myself returning again and again to What Happened to You? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey — a book that names the science behind this perception of relational fragility and traces it back to a long record of broken trust. Each rupture in trust teaches the body that connection can be unsafe, shaping our worldview from a very young age.
The fragility of trust is a way I’ve experienced most of my relationships where I have this deep desire to have intimacy and connection, and yet I’m so fearful of the loss of that relationship. And it all started with my primary caregiver abandoning me over and over again, not just in childhood but also in adulthood, and even now. And the aftermath of perpetually grief lingers.
So, as adults, trust can feel terrifying to extend — let alone experience — because another person’s free will has, in our histories, been used to abandon, withdraw, or wound us. And even though we now have autonomy, even though we can make choices for ourselves, there is still a fear tucked beneath the surface: the fear that others’ autonomy could hurt us again. There is fear that someone we love will choose to leave, weaponize closeness, or use our vulnerability against us.
I greatly struggle with this today in relationships. I have come so far since aging out of foster care, but my heart and body still remembers what my mind tries to rationalize, intellectualize and move past. When I was a teenager, I interpreted almost every interaction as a potential threat. Every pause in conversation, every shift in tone, and every misunderstanding felt more so dangerous than just a misunderstanding. And in hindsight, I can see how quickly I would create distance or cut people off entirely, not because I didn’t care, but because I cared so deeply that any misstep felt like confirmation that I wasn’t safe with them and that the relationship was at risk. Sometimes, that fear was justified; other times, I lost people who didn’t deserve to be lumped into old patterns.
The grief that followed those decisions was heavy. I felt the deep ache of losing people I genuinely wanted connection with, even if it was me who blocked them but I couldn’t accept or tolerate even a minor rupture. My nervous system was still living in the past, trying to protect me at all costs.
Today, my thought process is different. I am still healing and learning how to live a life, and have deep personal relationships to do life with without a mask. I know these patterns won’t shift overnight, but I now have a clearer sense of what a safe relationship looks like. That clarity matters even more now that I’m a wife and mama. I think of relationships as circles of connection points with my nuclear family.
Part of healing has been realizing my fear isn’t only internal; it came from the people I once allowed close. Many relationships mirrored the instability I grew up in. Some fear was valid because the relationships themselves weren’t safe. Now the work is twofold: soothing my nervous system while choosing relationships that are consistent, gentle, and nurturing enough to help me internalize a new truth that I am worthy of safety and that I get to protect my right to be safe. This means creating distance from people who can’t honor my wellbeing and intentionally drawing close to those who help cultivate a more stable inner world. It goes against what my conditioning taught me to accept, but with time, choosing healthy connection is becoming more instinctual.
My personal experience leads me to believe that, on a larger scale within the child welfare ecosystem, we need far more than mentors and coaches if we want adults with foster care experience to truly heal and improve the outcomes we struggle with. Mentorship, life skills coaching, and professional development all matter, but they are not enough. The missing link is personal relational spaces where we can show up unmasked.
A room where truth can exhale,
where scars aren’t shame, and strength isn’t a show.
No mask required.
A place where no one is asked to shrink
or to sparkle for approval — no pedestal waiting,
no performance owed.
Only to be real, only to be loved —
and slowly… finally…
whole.
And this is where the fragility of trust shows up most clearly: in our simple human desire to be fully ourselves without fearing we’ll lose the relationship for it. So I ask this of the communities reading: If so many adults with foster care experience enter your spaces with nervous systems wired for danger, what would it look like for you — as friends, churches, and communities — to create environments where their trust can grow slowly, safely, and without pressure?
