She Went Into Foster Care And Thinks It’s Her Caseworker’s Fault For Turning Out So Messed Up
From the moment she landed in foster care at the age of four, this girl was shuffled between homes that broke more than they fixed.
When she finally asked why nobody in her family had ever stepped up, her caseworker didn’t offer compassion. Instead, she handed her a file full of rejection and told her to grow up, and now she can’t move past knowing the truth.
Fourteen years ago, this 18-year-old girl landed in foster care after her mom passed away, and nobody could locate her biological father (since nobody knew his identity).
By the time she got out of the system, the damage was done, and she was incredibly messed up. She lacked a stable life, and she kept getting bounced around to abusive families.
“I never felt like I had a home, and I don’t even strongly remember being with my mom. There’s also stuff I never got therapy for that I should have (the kinds of abuse I went through),” she explained.
Then, when she turned 14, her caseworker sat her down and said it was time for her to grow up, consider her future, and stop seeking out a loving family.
Her caseworker then showed her the file with all of her details inside. She discovered that she had two half-siblings in their 20s who refused to take her when she landed in foster care.
She had an aunt and grandparents also, but none of them wanted her (and all of these family members are on her mom’s side, by the way).
“All of them were asked about taking me or keeping in touch, and none of them did. The caseworker was like, this is your reality, and deal with it, and stop looking to find a family,” she added.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
“She did it because I asked her why they never found a good family for me to live with and why they all [were terrible] in different ways.”
“Her first reply was about my first two foster families being great, but I was removed both times. That was another thing that kinda [messed] me up because it was so hard to get removed from the awful ones.”
Seeing what was in that file wrecked her, and she had such a hard time in school afterwards that she came close to not even graduating.
She couldn’t concentrate on studying, knowing that she was abandoned and all alone in the world. She looked up the names of her family members in the file, and she actually contacted one half-sister and her aunt via social media.
They did not respond to her, and her half-sister actually blocked her from being able to reach out to her again.
“I struggled and then I got mad at my former caseworker because she left me to deal with that with zero help, and IDK what I’m supposed to do,” she continued.
“But when I told her this, she was like, you can’t blame me, and how I was supposed to wise up, not fall apart, and I needed to stop wanting things I couldn’t have.”
That only served to make her feel worse, not better.
There’s nothing weak about wanting love, and there’s nothing immature about needing answers. She has every right to feel devastated by the silence of people who could have shown up but didn’t.
Her anger is valid. Her grief is real. The only failure here was the system that told her to shut it down and move on. What would you say to someone still trying to make peace with being left behind?
What advice do you have for her?
You can read the original post below.
More About:Relationships
