Foster Care Separation

A Letter From a Mom Whose Children Were in Foster Care

Dear Mama,

I can still hear the sound of the car door shutting the day they took my children. I stood on the porch, frozen, as strangers drove away with the most important pieces of my life. The silence afterward was unbearable. Nights were the hardest. I would sit in their empty room, holding onto their blankets, wondering if they were safe, if they were crying for me, if they thought I had abandoned them.

The foster care system made me feel like a ghost. I was there in meetings, in courtrooms, on paper, but I wasn’t there when it mattered. Every report, every visitation, every reminder of what I had lost felt like proof that I wasn’t good enough. For a long time, I almost believed it.

But I kept showing up. Even when my legs shook, even when the world told me it was pointless, I kept showing up. And slowly, I began to change. I started learning new ways to parent. I started healing parts of myself I didn’t even know were broken. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight, but one day I was able to hold my children again without a caseworker watching, and in that moment, I knew it had all been worth it.

If you are walking through that pain now, please don’t give up. Your children still need you. Even if it takes years, even if it’s hard, every step you take matters. Love can survive the system. You can survive too.

With faith,

A mom who refused to disappear