In this blog, I am going to be talking about how being in foster care has helped me find somewhere that I belong and where I am welcomed. For some, being in the fostering system can affect and damage their personality and make them feel like they cannot become who they want to be because of being an outsider and not being the same as their peers and friends, but this is never the case.
Everyone is able to become the person that they want to become, and I hope this blog will encourage and help other care leavers and care experienced people to gain the courage to be the person that they want to be.
It took me a long time to find somewhere that I belonged, somewhere to feel at home and somewhere to feel that I could stay…. It was not with my family, or my friends or even my partners throughout my life so far…. It was when a first walked into a creative studio and saw the potential that I have within me to become the person that I wanted to be… I knew then from the moment that I walked into the studio, I found what I was meant to be… somewhere that I belonged, but most importantly somewhere that I was welcomed…
This is what being in the fostering system has done for me, it has pushed me to realised and become the person I was meant to be by allowing me to turn my bad experiences of growing up and being placed into the system, into something amazing and something that I enjoy doing.
However, this is not the same for everyone else. Sometimes people who are in the fostering system can feel that there is no point of being able to get a career or have a future, but this is never true. For me being in the fostering system has opened a lot of new doors for me since finding the career that I wanted to go into regarding photography and creative media.
Being in foster care is just one part of the journey but the rest is determined by you… when I was trying to find out what I wanted to do with my life while I was in care, I was thinking all the time that I was never going to have a life or career or job, and it got to the point that I nearly dropped out of everything and wanted to give up, but when I stepped into the studio for the first time, that is when I realised it was where I belonged and that I needed to be there to be the person that I felt I was able to become.
I will not stand here and say that being in foster care was the easiest time of my life because it was not, there was time that I felt that everything was going to get worse and that I felt that I was not going to have a better life, but to be able to feel that I belonged somewhere and that people in my foster home were trying their best to look after me, helped me to find what I wanted to do, and most of all become the person I was meant to be.
So, some advice and a message for care experienced people who are out there and reading this blog…. being in foster care is hard and you can feel that everything Is never going to get better, but if you keep hold of things that you like doing whether this is a sport, or a hobby, but things will get better and who knows you might have the same experience as me… you might find the path and career that you would like to do or even meant to do…
By Anonymous Care Experienced Blogger
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