This piece is published in partnership with Foster Advocates.
Imagine having a very traumatic experience with abusive biological parents who were alcoholics and feeling so trapped and scared. At first, I was only 9 years old and didn’t understand why I felt like this. I got bullied for being disabled. I walk with a limp, and my hand and arm aren’t as straight as my “regular” arm and hand. I was tired of being the one who was the scapegoat of the family. I stood up for my siblings whenever they did something bad. I would say I did it so they didn’t have to get hurt. It got so bad that I developed mental health issues. That sparked the beginning of 10 years of self-harm, hospitalizations for attempts, and getting sent to horrible residential facilities.
Imagine getting your first social worker at 11. Imagine they start you out with weekend respite with your sister. You have no say in anything that happens to you since you are a “child.” They make foster care seem like you will be in a safer place. But my experience in foster care was anything but that. I was naive and thought that my social worker and foster parents cared about me. What people don’t understand or see with foster care is most foster parents do it just for the money, and your social worker will barely ever check up on you and go on a vacation very frequently.
They use big words and terms you don’t understand, and sadly, you have to find out the hard way. For instance, they used big words and terms that I did not understand at court, but at the time, I trusted my social worker. I later found out those terms meant my parents no longer had rights to me. This meant whenever I was put somewhere unsafe, my parents couldn’t come get me out of the program. My social worker had to go through her boss, and her answer every single time was no.
My first foster mom would let me drink alcohol. Her adult daughter would buy me packs of cigarettes at 12 years old. Of course, when you are young and naive, you think it’s cool at first until it’s not. That started a nicotine addiction for me. One day, I dropped a vape I had. My foster mom got physically abusive with me and her adult daughter. They both ripped me out of my bed and sat on me. They put me into a very traumatic pose where they were sitting on my chest and pinning my arms and legs. I couldn’t breathe. Since I have cerebral palsy, I couldn’t move or escape and felt so helpless.
After that, my social worker had nowhere to put me, so I went back to my biological family. Luckily, they got sober, but everyone treated me very differently, especially my sister who I always looked up to and considered to be a best friend. Imagine trying to just be in your home and instead, you are constantly being physically, emotionally, and mentally attacked. They would constantly tell me to leave and say, “This isn’t your home anymore.”
So I would leave, and they would report me as a runaway. Each time, I left and couch-hopped at friends’ houses. Then one day, my father got physical and choked me. My school counselor got CPS involved. This is when my life really took a turn for the worse. I spent over two and a half years in juvenile detention, and not one time did I ever have a criminal charge or record. Every little hiccup, my social worker would send me to detention. She did it because she knew I hated it.
When I was 15, I became government property, or a ward of the state. I was then sent to live with my second foster mom at 16. My second foster mom was so much worse than the first foster mom I had. She told me I could call her “mom” but she was anything but that. She verbally and physically assaulted my foster siblings. She was only in it for the money. My biological parents bought my new clothes, shampoo, and makeup. The only thing my foster mom bought for me was food, but she didn’t even need to pay because she got EBT because of me and my foster siblings.
She never gave me the $3,000 child tax credit when I was so close to 18. She didn’t use any of it on me. She was definitely a gaslighter and a narcissist. She would call my social worker on me for the tiniest things, so I spent so much time in juvenile detention. She didn’t care about me. By 17, I had this hate for the system because everyone around me was supposed to be safe and supportive people. Most of the time, they weren’t. I felt alone. The only people I could trust were my friends to keep me safe and happy. A lot of people don’t know that a lot of fosters go through this. I got treated like I did something wrong when in reality, I was just trying to escape the abuse. It felt like nobody understood how it affected me. It slowly changed me and made me become very angry and sad.
What upsets me the most is that nobody prepared me for adulthood. Instead, I became homeless two weeks after I turned 18. I was living in my old Ford Escape and lived at hotels for a while through the Link program. Nobody helped me buy my first car, I did. Nobody showed me how to do taxes. I learned how to do them myself. It’s crazy to be surrounded by all these workers who don’t teach you life skills. The system has failed many youth, and I hope that by telling my story and through Foster Advocates, we can change the system and protect the youth.
