Today’s families come in many different shapes and forms. And if you are lucky enough, no matter the arrangement, you grow up nurtured and loved in a secure and stable home.
Every year, while most Americans go about their daily lives, thousands of children do not have this luxury. While typical families are sharing the dinner table and reading bed-time
stories to their toddlers, somewhere else behind closed doors, there are thousands of children who desperately need rescue from their unhealthy and sometimes unsafe environment.
America’s foster care system attempts to remedy this problem, however. Each year, America continues to fail these children miserably.
The system is designed for children in need; with the hope to find a temporary safe shelter for them until they can be reunited with their biological family; or sometimes, to find these
children a new permanent home.
When neither of these options, reach fruition, there are a handful of transitional living programs offered to assist our youth with guidance; arranged to support their future endeavors to
successfully move on into society and live as independent adults.
With a major shortage of these programs available, each year, over 30,000 children in foster care, whom have never returned home or found another to call their own, are released from
their current group home on their 18th birthday to make it out in the world - alone.
This is what we call aging-out.
JUST ONE OF 30,000
Heather Harris’s childhood began in Baker, Louisiana, and for the next 20 years, she has bounced from place to place. Heather; determined to survive all of life’s challenges she had to
face, struggled to survive. Heather’s childhood memories consist of mostly emotional and physical abuse by the hands of her parents; and abandonment from almost every person in her
life.
She says she was teased and tortured, by her step-father, and will never forget the cold day he even locked her out of the house for over four hours. She was just 10-years-old. At the
hands of her mother, she was burned, pinched, and ignored.
And just when she thought her world had finally changed for the good, finally feeling wanted, loved and protected, she only came to discover, disappointment - once again.
Heather has traveled and resided in many towns, trying and failing to find a place to call home many times.
For Heather, giving up was never an option. This is her story.
Heather says when she was just a small child, she remembers horrific abuse. Her memories are not of being of love and feeling safe but are saturated with disappointment and
abandonment.
She says her mother and step-father were often high on drugs and constantly mistreated her on a daily basis. And if her mother wasn’t participating in the abuse, she was ignoring it.
When her parents divorced when she was 11-months-old, her step-father left their home forever, and it wasn’t long before her mother would also begin disappearing; not returning for
long periods of time.
She says on these occasions, she was “dumped” on her grandmother. “She was a wonderful lady,” says Heather.
Her mother eventually did return to town, but this time, with a new boyfriend. And she was pregnant with Heather’s sister.
She realized her life would now be different, but certainly not in the ways she had imagined.
With her new step-dad and baby sister in the picture, family life for Heather continued to be a living hell. She says she was subjected to the couple also being violent with each other, but
says “They never ever hurt my sister.”
“He said he didn't have to love me because I wasn't his,” says Heather.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski