I was just a normal kid with my mom and siblings living the best life… or so I thought.
I was too young to realize that anything was wrong with wearing the same clothes and shoes to school every day, being left home alone with my siblings, not always having enough to eat and being physically abused daily.
I still remember the day CPS took us away from our mom like it was yesterday. It was one of the worst experiences that I had as a child.
The only light in the dark was that I was with my siblings and I knew that we were going be together no matter what. Or so I thought … until we got separated into different foster homes.
The longer I was in foster care a hatred grew in me towards social workers, foster parents, my parents and everyone who had come and gone out of my life.
I felt like everyone was there just to make my life worse not better.
By the time I was a teenager I had already been in foster care for a few years, my parents rights had been terminated, I had almost gotten adopted twice, was separated from my siblings and I hated CPS for taking my life from me.
Middle School, 4 moves, 4 different schools. It was challenging because no matter how normal I was and tried to be, I never really fit in and always felt like I had a target on my back as the “foster kid”.
High School, 4 moves, 3 different schools. This was one of the hardest times in foster care for me because I knew what was going on in my life and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life after foster care.
Moving so much affected me in all aspects of my life. Playing school sports year around helped me build my confidence and self-esteem.
By my older teen years, I had figured out that I was the only person that I could rely on, everyone else had either been taken away or had left me.
After graduating high school I went to college to major in social work. I wanted to make things better for all the kids in foster care behind me, to be a positive role model for them and to make their time growing up in foster care better than my childhood in foster care had been.
At college, I was completely on my own for the first time, but I was not prepared and quickly became depressed. Then my phone broke and I lost all communication with everyone who had been my small support system.
In just three short months, I had lost everything and decided to drop out of college to focus on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, to fulfil l my childhood dream of becoming a social media influencer.
Unfortunately, CPS was not supportive and did not believe my dream was viable. The agency that raised me laughed in my face but I was determined to prove them wrong to make my dream become reality without their help.
After a year of living by myself and facing many challenges, I finally met this amazing family.
They believed in me, they helped me to see that my dream of being a social media influencer was actually worth believing in and could also be combined with my passion to advocate and make things better for all the kids in foster care behind me.
They showed me love and affection. They love me for who I am. They completely changed my life.
They push me to become the man I want to be. They completely changed my life.
After 4,416 days in foster care I made it, I aged out and I got adopted by my forever family!
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