PBS Wisconsin Documentaries

My mother lost five kids. She lost all five kids. I spent my whole entire life in foster care. I was always raised in a system where I didn't really feel like I was valued much. I was just put in a place, because, because my mom was never able to take us back. Um. Because I didn't have any other relatives to stay with. I was a product of a system. Never did I ever go out. Go out to places with my mom and hold her hand. Go to the zoo and take souvenir pictures. Like even to to this day, like every time I see a family step in front of that green screen taking pictures and they're smiling. That's a family. Not saying that I'm envious but that coulda been me. You know if somebody woulda helped my mom. She coulda took me to the zoo. We coulda gone to the green screen. We coulda took pictures together. We coulda had a good time at the zoo. But that would never happen. But it took a couple of generations to get here. It took a couple of deaths. It took a couple of hurt and pain for me to be the generation of healing. I went through a lot of struggles and when I felt -- I saw myself struggling a lot after foster care because of all the adversity that I faced while I was in foster care. I experienced like a lot of episodes of depression and self-doubt and a lack of confidence with certain things. Feeling like I can't do it because that's what I've been told so many times throughout my life. I entered the foster care system due to neglect. My mother wasn't able to care for us anymore so we were sent to the foster care system because we didn't have a family member who could care for us at the time. I am a peer mentor in our Youth Transitioning to Adulthood Program, which is a program that I was once in. Um... and... uh... So I work with the foster youth who age out of the foster care system. We help with providing them with employment services, housing services, connections and support. Having to move so many times, it sort of creates a sense of instability in your life. So it's sorta like normalizes -- it normalizes instability so it becomes very, very hard for you to maintain stable housing and employment as you get older because you think it's OK to just move. If there's one thing that I really want people to know about young people who have been in foster care, especially those with high ACE scores, um... ACEs don't they don't... they don't create your future. They don't really um... they don't... they don't write your future in a way that says you can't do something. You know it might be a little harder for us to do it. We might struggle and have our barriers as we try and move forward in our futures while dealing with our past trauma. But it's not something that says we can't do it.