One day, when I was almost fifteen, a therapist handed me an envelope.
“No return address,” she said, frowning. “But it passed all the checks.”
Inside was a card. On the front, a cartoon teddy bear holding a balloon. On the back, six words in handwriting I would know anywhere:
I never stopped fighting for you.
– Sarah
I stared at it so long the letters went blurry.
My therapist, to her credit, didn’t rush me.
She just sat there with a box of tissues between us like a peace offering.
“Why… why didn’t they let me go back to her?” I asked.
She took a breath. Exhaled. Chose her words like she was defusing a bomb.
“Sometimes,” she said slowly, “the system gets attached to its own decisions. Admitting a mistake feels dangerous to the people in charge. So instead of fixing it, they… defend it.”
“Even if a kid gets hurt?”
Her eyes filled with tears she tried to blink away.
“Even then,” she whispered.
That’s why I’m writing this now.
I’m older. I know the big words now—recidivism, systemic failure, liability. I understand how forms and funds and policies twist around each other until everybody forgets there’s a child in the middle, clutching a trash bag and praying for someone to see him as more than a case number.
But I also know this: people like Sarah exist.
People like Jenna exist.
People who are willing to be labeled “difficult” if it means telling the truth.
If you are one of those people—a foster parent, a teacher, a neighbor who hears the yelling through the walls—please don’t go quiet just because the system tries to shame you into silence.
Your “difficult” might be the only shield a child has.
And if you’re someone with power in this system—caseworker, judge, administrator—please hear this from the kid you once ignored:
When we say, “Please don’t send me back,” that is not us being manipulative. That is us doing risk assessment with a seven-year-old brain and a body full of memories you’ve never had to survive.
Listen to the kids holding the trash bags.
Listen to the foster parents who are willing to lose their comfort to protect us.
Listen to the alarms before the sirens show up in the driveway.
Because we don’t need another “Reunification Success Story” on paper.
We need real success stories—ones where the child grows up safe, loved, and whole enough to write the truth down one day and say, “This time, they listened.”
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This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment and inspirational purposes. While it may draw on real-world themes, all characters, names, and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidenta
