I am a forty-three year old alumna of kinship care. When I was young, I always felt like an outcast as my grandparents stood among the parents of my peers. The fact that I lived with my grandparents always seemed like the big white elephant in the room between my friends and I; their subversive questions attempting to uncover the cause. Foster care was an unspoken phenomenon in my world; something of Dicken’s tales and cartoon worlds.
As a foster care professional of 16 years and a doctoral student, presently writing a dissertation on foster care issues, I have read a large amount of literature on foster care. None provide the information in such a grounded and realistic format by alumni for alumni as FLUX.
As a foster care professional of 16 years and a doctoral student, presently writing a dissertation on foster care issues, I have read a large amount of literature on foster care. None provide the information in such a grounded and realistic format by alumni for alumni as FLUX.
FLUX provides the first guidebook to foster care; a manual of sorts…something I only wish I had when I was younger. The individual accounts of the various foster care experiences written by different alumni really spoke to me personally. Each provided me, the opportunity to reach into the recesses of my mind, pull out the little girl that felt as if she were an outcast so long ago, and show her that she was not alone after all.
I thank the authors for providing such an immensely helpful resource and ultimate source of healing.
I totally know what you mean. I lived with my grandparents on and off for the first 15 years of my life. My firends thought it was weird. My grandpa always told me I didnt belong living there that I should be with my mom (he was not being curel he was simply stating how he believe parents should raise their own kids). My grandparents were good to me, but it was hard on them and knowing that made it hard on me. I felt like I didnt belong eaither. I love the way the book FLUX opens up a new world of experence letting us know that even though we felt out of place then, there are so many who live through it. I really did think I was the only kid on earth living with thier grandparent. All of my friends lived with the mom or dad or both. Reading about others experences does not change the past but it gives me peace knowing that i was not the only one.
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