I grew up in foster care. Fourteen homes in twelve years. That’s not a metaphor—it’s the actual number. I learned early how to pack my life into a trash bag, how not to get attached, how to read adults’ moods the way other kids read comic books.
Some homes were kind but overwhelmed. Some were strict. Some barely noticed I was there. A few were places I learned to stay quiet just to survive. I never stayed long enough anywhere to feel like I belonged. Just long enough to learn the rules. Then I’d be moved again.
By the time I was ten, I stopped asking questions. I stopped hoping. Hope hurts when it keeps getting taken away.
When I turned eighteen, there was no party. No cake. No family gathering. Just paperwork, signatures, and a social worker walking me through what “aging out” meant—housing lists, job programs, a thin pamphlet about independence.
As we finished, she hesitated. Then she reached under her desk and pulled out a small cardboard box. It was taped shut, the corners worn soft with time.
“This was dropped off years ago,” she said. “A woman asked that you receive it when you turned eighteen.”
I asked who the woman was.
She shook her head. “She didn’t leave a return address. Just this.”
I took the box to my tiny studio apartment that night. I didn’t open it right away. Something about it felt heavy, like whatever was inside might ask something of me that I wasn’t sure I could give.
Eventually, I did.
Inside were letters.
Not one or two. A stack. Neatly bundled with a ribbon that had faded from red to something closer to pink. On each envelope was my name, written in the same careful handwriting. Underneath, a year.
Age 8.
Age 9.
Age 10.
My hands started to shake when I realized what I was holding.
There was a letter for every birthday—from eight to eighteen.
They were from my third foster mom.
I’d only lived with her for four months. Four months out of twelve years. Long enough for me to remember the smell of her kitchen in the mornings, the way she hummed while folding laundry, the fact that she always knocked before entering my room—even though it was her house.
