TedxTalk (Speech), 2017.

“Hi Everyone, 

My name is Athena and I'm a former foster youth. Today I am here to talk about foster care “success”, what it means to be a success story, what that really looks like. 

My journey is one of loss, of a dysfunctional family, of trauma and pain, all of which I experienced in a constant state of survival and instability. My story begins with the loss of my mother. I was seven years old when she died during childbirth.

When we lost her, we lost a lot of other thing,  a lot of very important things…like our culture, our religion, our history -she was the anchor to our family.

She was our core, but when we lost her, we also lost our father to his depression.  He became so consumed in mourning that he turned to drug dealing and coped through alcoholism and addiction. In his struggle, he neglected us completely.

We were forgotten.

He was so consumed, so angry with the world. Like the world owed him something - that I think he took it out on us. Emotionally we were abandoned, and physically we became a nuisance. An obstacle between him and his addiction. We were an inconvenience to his struggle, we became collateral damage, essentially. This exposed us to a world of trauma, a world of hurt, a world of pain and hunger, because he was always high and “gone” 

When I was nine years old, I was raped. My rapists were two neighbors, they were brothers. They were 17 18 years old at the time. They took care of my little brother and my dad trusted them. He was so neglectful that it happened all under his nose. 

This wasn't a one-time incident. This was a rape relationship of sorts because they were very present in our lives. In many ways I blame my father. There's no way not to, there are many back to back traumas in our childhood. We essentially raised ourselves. We didn't know to stop and breathe and heal and digest. So we swallowed the pain of trauma and kept going. But after that first incident things really changed for me -it was no longer this sloppy life we were living through. This mourning. It was this life of threat.  We were unsafe and alone.

I tried to run away. I realized I wouldn't get that fa.  I realized I couldn't leave without my brother and my sister. I realized where would I go? Before I had to turn back?

 I had grown tired of this life of struggling. Of being hungry. Of men eyeing me -like I was dinner. Of parenting my own father, and babysitting him when he was too high. I dropped out of school to raise my siblings because I obviously became a mother to them. I'm the oldest and in raising them, I actually ended up just begging for food and doing errands for neighbors in exchange for tips that I'd put toothpaste and toilet paper. 

My father was really good at covering his tracks. He knew there was people putting abuse reports like neighbors and relatives, so we would move so often. We were very physically unstable and I was very emotionally unstable. 

It took a lot to get into the system. I had finally hit this point where I was like “We're gonna die” “We're gonna end up sold” “We're gonna end up married off”. So I strategized a way into the system by photographing our daily lives. 

The cocaine lines, the drug habits, collecting receipts, making abuse reports, making phone calls. It took 15 or so abuse reports. It shouldn’t have taken 15. It should have taken one or two. There must be a lack of disorganization or technology that did not allow them to see a seven-year pattern that neighbors and relatives and myself had been putting in.

I entered the system riddled with PTSD, with anxiety, with depression, desensitized to touch. I had been wearing this mask of dissociation for so long. You see in order to cope with the life that I had before my father, before care with my father, I had to dissociate completely. And was very technical and strategic about everything because I was in survival mode. But when I entered care and my basic needs were made met and I was no longer hungry. I was able to focus on things like being a kid. Then suddenly all the stress of everything that I had ever been through weighing on my shoulders - I could finally feel it. And I became this emotional wreck. I didn't know there was that much on my plate.  I was in a total of eight foster homes over the course of six years, that is more than one a year. That is a lot of instability. I was accustomed to instability. But nobody really tells you about the mental abuse that the foster care system will put you through. How they bring you in with this premise of “we know better” and “we will take care of you”.  And how you become more unstable than you probably were before, how you become a “liability” and you're bound by all these regulations for your well-being and your safety, how you really are treated like you are disposable. You really are given a trashbag -that's not just a story they tell. You are made to feel like you are temporary and to not get too comfortable because you are not family. 
I hated the system. But it was so much better than what I had before. My trauma was always present - jingle of keys, a slammed door, unexpected pat in the back and unfamiliar voice -they would set me off. I was heightened -ready to run, ready to protect myself however I could.

It didn't get any better when my foster mother found my rape diary and this is exactly what it sounds like: a diary where I kept details of all the rapes that I have experienced. All the assaults, and my midnight molesters.  I was picked up by two officers at school who made me reread the entire diary and made me retell everything an isolated incidences and ask the goriest of questions. And then I was just left there. To kind of deal with it. It opened up a three-year case. It's interesting how in an attempt to help you, the system actually further traumatizes you. Foster care was a struggle to juggle my mental health, to make executive decisions, over our case to reenter society cuz I had dropped out of school that long to catch up academically. It was a struggle to feel whole, to feel normal, a struggle to adapt, to cope, to forget. Mental health was never really addressed. It was this vague loose conversation to mark off on a box. This lack of regard for your mental core emotional well-being is what I think makes or breaks a lot of foster youth. Because foster care is so unstable and foster care really does perpetuate all the troubles you came in with and then gives you more while you're in there. This disregard, this instability, doesn't allow you to build a core foundation.  The same foundation that later influences your sense of direction, your sense of self, that influences how you succeed as a foster youth. 

I had graduated from high school I was 17..  And I had reached this boiling point in my PTSD and in my trauma. Someone tried to give me a hug. And it was this intense fear to be that vulnerable, that close, that comfortable, with someone. I would fall apart into a puddle of tears and I was inaudible. I would forget to eat,  I'd wake up every night feeling, like I was gonna be murdered.  My PTSD was horrific and I realized I needed to heal. I needed to get this crap out of the way or I would not be able to move forward, so I turned to therapy. I found a therapist that was willing to work with me. 

Through therapy I learned how to cope with my anxiety, how to handle my stress, how to deconstruct my demons and trauma, how to understand my own pain. I even learned how to say I love you and I went and told my siblings the next day. 

So when I look back to my past and that many times I've had to transform who I am just to survive, just to heal, all I've had to give up -parts of me along the way… I realized success comes at a very high cost and it is completely relative. 

I still live with PTSD. I still have my daily triggers. I still hurt even though I've done a lot of healing or I would not be able to be here today. It is exhausting to be alert all the time and it's interesting because I know many former foster youth who are success stories who look great on paper, who hold amazing jobs and made it and they can't get up in the morning and they lead a secret life constantly wondering when will I feel whole and stable and normal and happy. 

And there's this internal battle of “who am I after all of this?” “what is my culture?” “ what is my religion?” “what do I believe ?” “Can I actually heal? “Can I actually move on?” 

It is difficult to be here today and boast “success” when success is far from it. 

Because I may not be homeless - and according to the system if you're not homeless you're successful. But how do you move forward from all of this? How do you pretend that your whole life didn't just happen to you? In the face of all of this success, it can be very relative, very simple. It can be independence or home or stability. It can be health, sanity, a family. 

For me success began with healing. It was choosing to build a life in the face of a past that screamed I'd never make it to 18. It was transferring to Cal Poly and having my siblings in my lifeand not having them ripped away from me. I didn't survive foster care. I survived my past. Today for me isn't about this one concrete solution on success or how to survive the system because there isn't one. It's about putting into question how we justify success for former foster youth because many former foster youth walk out of the system without that core. And then they're expected to succeed and be self-sufficient. I know 50 year-olds that to this day still identify as foster youth because the trauma of foster care is that bad. Why haven't we done better? Because this core isn't quantifiable in numbers? I think success is taking the hand you've been dealt and choosing to move forward anyway. It is this pursuit of happiness -it is doing whatever it is that makes you happy. 

Thank You.”