DCFYI

Summer family vacations are the best. It is a time to have fun, bond with family, and enjoy the beach / outdoors. Unfortunately, I didn't get to experience many family vacations growing up as a foster care youth. My foster parents did not take me, the foster child, along for family vacations. Instead I was placed in another foster home to wait for their return. It certainly sent a horrible message to me as a child that in many ways I was not a part of the family. Otherwise, I'd be at the beach too.

Family & Youth Initiative will be on Twitter for a chat:

“Those poor kids don’t stand a chance.”

The words – spoken between two police officers – weren’t intended for my 10-year-old ears. But I heard them anyway.

As I sat in the front seat of a police car, I glanced into the backseat at my sobbing younger sisters, thinking about his words. My memories of childhood are hazy, perhaps my brain’s way of protecting me from things I’m better off forgetting, but a few memories stand out clearly.

Sitting in the backseat of my parent’s car while they heated heroin in a spoon and injected in the front seat.