I was seven when my parents walked away.
I didn’t understand it then. I only remember sitting on a stiff plastic chair in an office that smelled like old coffee, my feet dangling above the floor, staring at a door I prayed would open again. It never did. After that, life became a chain of suitcases that never fully unpacked, names I learned too late, and homes that never felt like mine.
Foster care teaches you to shrink. To ask for nothing. To fold your feelings away like clothes you’re never allowed to wear. Some families were polite but distant. Others made it clear I was temporary. One foster dad even told me, “Don’t get too comfortable. You won’t be here long.”
Then came Margaret.
She baked when she was sad, hummed when she was happy. The first night I stayed with her, she knelt down and said, “You don’t have to be perfect here. Just be you.”
I didn’t know what to do with that kind of permission.
One afternoon, while helping her bake cookies, I spilled flour everywhere. I apologized over and over. She stopped me, wiped my hands, looked me straight in the eyes, and said words I carry with me to this day:
“You are not a burden. You are someone’s miracle.”
No one had ever said anything like that to me.
I stayed with her almost a year. Long enough to feel safe. Long enough to imagine hope. Then paperwork changed, and I was moved again. That night, I cried alone.
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