Real Stories

Sometimes life gives you a bad hand. With your cards already dealt, there’s nothing else to do but take a seat and play the game. At the age of 6, I was brought into the foster care system after accidentally burning down mine and my mother’s room – prompting a thorough investigation. Fast forward about four years – I developed...

I entered foster care at age 12. I was in an abusive home and would act out so that I could get in trouble and hopefully get recognized so that I could get help. Life in foster care as an LGBTQ youth was far from easy. When I went into my first group home I was young and scared so...

When I was 8, I would find myself in a peculiar but fateful point in my life when I would enter into the Arkansas Foster Care system through child endangerment and neglect. Fortunately, my mother complied with the requirements in order to end our case in a reunification before my 10th birthday. Unfortunately, the reunification was unsuccessful as my mother...

Often the world we live in is something that no one would expect for it to be. When we are born we do not get a choice as to who are parents are or the class we're born into. While some explain family to be happy, cheerful and constantly giving reassurance, I didn’t know what that was like. Many people...

I like to tell myself, that not everyone gets their traditional story. My parents weren’t fit to be parents or even to be part of the public eye at that point. When I was in 5th and 6th grade, I just had my first boyfriend and saw what his family was like. I sort of understood what was missing in...

Veda's Story At a very young age, about six months old, I was removed from my parents care and placed in the foster care system. It took months for my caseworker to get in contact with my maternal grandmother. By the age of two, my grandmother was able to gain full custody of me. I was in kinship care until...