At Raise the Future, we believe every young person deserves to go through life knowing they have a caring adult by their side. Unfortunately, each year in the United States, approximately 20,000 youth “age out” of foster care without a permanent connection. Elizabeth Sutherland is an author, advocate, and former foster youth who aged out of the system. This is her story.
When I was five years old, my brother, sister, and I were transported to the home of an elderly woman who called herself our grandmother but severely mistreated us. For eight years, we lived in a rusty single wide trailer. We were never once hugged, nor did we know the word love. The grandmother neglected us and emotionally and physically abused us from day one. She resented us being there and made us reimburse her for the price she paid with our flesh, blood, and tears.
One summer day when I was 13 years old, my brother, sister, and I were picking away at blackberry bushes by the road when the neat business lady arrived. She was there to take the three of us into DSS custody. At that point, my sister and I lost contact with my brother. I didn’t even get to hug him goodbye. Initially, my sister and I ended up at a group home, where we shared our own private bedroom. After a week, DSS placed us with a foster family that warehoused children, or so it seemed. From there on out, I really didn’t know what was going on. Children kept coming and going, I was moving from home to home, group home to group home, out of one school and into another – all while having numerous caseworkers. I had no sense of stability.
When I first entered foster care, I didn’t think about the future, or about what would happen when I aged out of the system.
“Aging out” sounds like I hit retirement or something, but all I had to do was turn eighteen, and I was on my own. Literally. In the foster care system, there’s an expiration date. When you hit it, the random strangers you’ve grown to rely on throw you to the wolves and the streets and tell you to try and survive. The closer I got to my eighteenth birthday, the more questions I had about the unknown that was to follow: Where will I go? Where will I stay? How will I pay my bills? What will happen to me if I don’t succeed out there in that big, aggressive world?
And then the day came. I was eighteen. I’d graduated high school, and I was officially an adult. I literally felt like I had to grow up so fast that my childhood years were just a delusion.
I was out of the system and no longer the responsibility of my foster parents, but luckily I wasn’t completely on my own—I had an assigned independent living counselor who gave me a monthly stipend from the state of less than $1,200. The counselor was there to help me navigate my confusing new world, but on a limited basis. Thankfully, I had the support of my former foster parents, too. They could have just said goodbye and shown me the door after my birthday, but the Millers were the kindest and sweetest foster parents I ever had. While I lived with them, they not only provided me with a place to stay, but they also restored my faith.
The Millers helped me with a few basic necessities: a bed, mismatched dishes, and a couple of towels and washcloths. I moved into a 400 square foot apartment that smelled like mothballs. It neighbored a shopping center, and it wasn’t much, but it was mine. I had almost nothing to fill those empty rooms, but what I did have was all my very own. This tiny apartment was my space to breathe and finally unpack my bags.
I thought I’d have my counselor and foster family to rely on indefinitely, but it only lasted for a short while. A few months later, my communication with that sweet foster family vanished without a trace.
Truly alone, I had plenty of room for being naïve. Anyone who offered to be my friend, I just assumed they were. “An idle brain is the devil’s workshop,” H.G. Bohn once said, and I filled my mind and my loneliness in those months with other people. I ended up hanging out with the wrong kind of people. People who would introduce me to a life that, for a moment, eased the emptiness running through my veins. It wasn’t long before I recognized this was not the life I wanted to live. I didn’t want to become one of those kids—the ones in foster care who escape their lives with drugs or alcohol or sex. I wanted more, and I didn’t want my past to define my existence.
The best part of that tiny little apartment was my name on the door. I would come home and look at the mail, or at the nametag by the doorbell, and realize that was my name. Mine. All those years spent in foster care, I had hardly seen my name on anything, other than the documents that were floating around with me as I transitioned from one home to another, or on prescription bottles approved by one of the many therapists that I had met along the way. When I was part of the system, I’d always felt like my name was unimportant. I was just another foster kid—to the government, to most of the families that took me in, to the new schools I started every few months.
When I was fifteen, I had gotten my first job. I remember the first time I swiped my nametag through that time clock at Hardee’s. Pride flooded me, and I almost wanted to swipe it, just to see my name slide through the machine again. To me, that moment was one of my greatest accomplishments.
I didn’t have a penny in my pocket, didn’t know a thing about customer service, but I did know how to push a button and fill a cup with ice and soda. Working there made me curious about how things functioned. I also started to have ambition for more. I wanted to move from being a cashier to cooking in the back, to working the drive-thru window, to cleaning the customer area; it didn’t matter what job I did—the sense of pride I felt doing the work was so satisfactory.
I’m not really sure why all these things had me so thrilled when I was that age. Maybe it filled that void in me, that feeling of being wanted. Hardee’s needed me, the customers needed me, and I needed them. For once, I felt like this is where I belong.
As the years progressed, so did my collection of nametags. I began working at Popeye’s, then McDonald’s. It seemed like I had hit every fast-food restaurant in that small, quaint town. Each place was unique and brought out a different side of me. I was like a caterpillar in its different stages of formation. I was a bit shy, timid and ashamed at first, but over time, I started to find myself and come out of my chrysalis.
As soon as I was living on my own, I began to think about the future. About having one that went beyond fast food and into a real career. I didn’t want my education to end with a high school diploma. As soon as I started researching my options, I found Tri-County Community College, a small campus that was about a thirty-minute car ride from where I lived. I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay for it or how I was going to make it to classes and juggle a job.
I applied for any type of assistance I could find: Pell Grants, Perkins Loans, financial aid, etc. The application and approval process was intense and stressful. I kept checking my mailbox multiple times a day, both scared and nervous. I never wanted anything more in my life to happen than this.
The day that envelope arrived in my mailbox, I stopped and held my breath until I had the courage to open it. There on that sheet of paper, below my name, were the words I’d prayed for: Tri-County Community College would like to officially accept you into the Associate of Arts program.
I began to cry, filled with a sense of accomplishment. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to college!
My life was still far from perfect, but it was my own. My apartment didn’t have much furniture, but it was just enough for me. I was thankful to have my own space—a space no one could come and take me away from. My couch was a couple of jelly beach folding chairs that eventually made way for a used futon. I couldn’t afford cable but settled for the three channels I could pick up occasionally on a small Samsung TV with a built-in VHS player. Most of the time, I would make up a pallet of blankets on the living room floor and fall asleep to Trace Adkins or George Strait. I was too afraid to sleep in the bed in the back room. Maybe because this was officially the first time I was by myself and not surrounded by foster parents, foster children, or the grandmother. When the holidays approached and I had nowhere to go, I found security in sleeping under my Christmas tree and using its colorful lights to guide me through some of my darkest nights. Many times, I just lay there wondering where my sister and brother were. I would’ve given anything in those moments to hear their voices. The thought of seeing them one day gave me comfort and hope.
As I started to figure out my bills and what that entailed, I realized that I didn’t have a bank account, credit cards, or any place to save my hard-earned money. I had no basis of knowledge when it came to anything financial.
I opened a checking account, and like with everything else, I was amazed to see my name and address on those slips of paper. This was me—where I lived, who I was. For as long as I wanted it to be.
The problem? I didn’t know how to write a check. I knocked on my neighbor’s door. I was embarrassed and hesitated a second before asking her to help me. I expected her to think I was crazy or to laugh at me.
Instead, she smiled. “Absolutely, Elizabeth, I would be happy to help you.” Even today, when I see my checkbook, I think of her.
So many people helped me along the way in those first couple difficult years. When I needed to get a new car and didn’t have sufficient credit, I asked my hairdresser if she wouldn’t mind co-signing for me, and she did. When I needed advice about my car, health, or just day-to-day living, I asked people I worked with. Guidance and confidence that people normally would find in their parents or family, I learned to find in strangers. I was trying to do whatever it took to survive and find some sort of normalcy in my crazy world. I was putting together the pieces of who I was, one moment at a time.
I didn’t have a lot of tangible belongings to hang on to, but what I did have that I knew no one could take away from me, was my faith. I knew that as long as I believed, I would be able to challenge anything thrown my way. Including finding my true identity.
Growing up in the world of foster care, I was labeled, like most kids in the system are. Foster kid, orphan, worthless, dumb, etc. Society put labels on us, sorted us into folders and cases, and over the years, I started to feel like I wasn’t anything other than those labels.
Today, I truly enjoy any moment I get to speak about my past experience of growing up and out of foster care. Call it pride, but it’s so refreshing to know that I’m helping others in foster care become future leaders!
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Raise the Future is pleased to announce a free virtual event on Wednesday, March 17th: "A Discussion with Author, Advocate, and Former Foster Youth Elizabeth Sutherland." Click here to learn more and register for this online discussion.
