More than a survival story.

I learned early how quickly a child’s world can change.

I entered foster care at four years and ten months old with my sister. At seven, I was adopted by my grandmother while my sister was not. That separation became one of the many losses I carried before I had words for grief.

At twelve, I returned to foster care. I moved through group homes and potential adoptive placements, trying to understand what “home” was supposed to mean. I was labeled “hard to adopt”—three words that said far more about the system’s expectations than they ever said about my worth.

I was adopted again at thirteen. Adoption changed my legal story, but it did not erase what came before it. Like many young people, I still needed patience, safety, honesty, and adults who understood that survival responses do not simply disappear when circumstances change.

Healing became an active choice.

As an adult and a mother, I began to see my story differently. Breaking cycles did not mean pretending the past never happened. It meant facing it, learning from it, and choosing something safer for my children and for myself.

Today I speak as the person I once needed: someone willing to tell the whole truth about foster care and adoption while still making room for hope.