“Brycen didn’t know about us until two days before our first visit, to protect him from having high hopes ripped away again. He’d experienced many adults not keeping promises, so he kept questioning if we were really going to adopt him.”
‘In a year and a half, our family of 2 grew to 6.’: Couple share foster care adoption story, premature triplet birth after infertility
‘My adoptive mother told me she no longer wanted me when she had her own children. They abandoned me on the streets.’: Gay adoptee becomes advocate after enduring abuse in foster care, transracial adoption
“After my adoptive parents left me, I bounced from couch to couch with friends and ultimately ended up homeless, where I became the victim of sex trafficking. Life felt completely hopeless, but I persevered.”
‘The evaluation read, ‘Keri’s past can best be characterized as chaotic, emotionally inadequate, and abusive.’: Woman details traumatic foster care and adoption, shares healing journey
“In 4 short years, I’d been removed at birth from my mother, placed into foster care, reunified with my birth father, and then placed back into foster care. I’d experienced family separation, failed reunification, abuse, neglect, and had already been named, renamed, and named again.”
‘The pastor’s wife gifted me the book ‘Redeeming Love.’ I read it and wept. I had no idea it was so controversial. It felt healing.’: Sexual abuse survivor shares perspective, ‘your experience is not mine’
“The abuse I endured is not a distant memory, it affects me to this day.”
‘What a ‘blended family’ would look like never crossed my mind. The beginning was TOUGH, and before it got better, it got worse.’: Mom shares journey to ‘beautifully blended family’
“We just expected things to work out because we were friends, good people, and good parents. All that matters is now, we are one.”
‘My abuser is a free man. Free to prey on more innocents, free to destroy more lives. I’m not willing to be silent anymore.’: Abuse survivor candidly shares journey of pain and resilience
“They say when people drown, it’s silent. Nobody around them can see them, hear them, or help them. The person drowning is slipping further and further beneath the surface, slowly suffocating. That’s what it felt like. I was drowning every day, suffocating, desperate for a breath, watching to the world around me carry on, with no idea that I was dying. But no matter how hard, I always choose to keep going.”
To My Abusive Parents: Because Of You, I Will Live Life With An Abundance Of Love
“I was the little girl whose story no one knew. The little girl who hid in closets. My screams for help were never heard outside the four walls of my home. And yet, I am living proof you can heal.”
‘I am finally living.’: Child abuse survivor shares tumultuous mental health journey
“My emotions do not control me or what I choose to do. I can smell roses and see color.”
‘I’m no longer that angry little girl who was hurt. With my mom, it’s like it never happened.’: Abuse survivor adopted as adult finally has loving mother relationship
“In my mind, I accepted I was born to grow up as an adult without parents. But in my heart, I was broken holiday after holiday needing them. I was torn on my children’s birthdays, when they had no grandparents there. I cried for years trying to fill the void.”
‘You’re not in a morgue. Girls get raped and murdered every day, you’re not dying!’ I had to get out.’: Adoptee opens up about mishandling of her child sex abuse case, escaping home at 18
“‘What happens in this house STAYS in this house.’ I lived in a world where not only my adoptive mother would cover this up, but my own biological sisters AND our assistant pastor. The minute I turned 18, I was escaping.”