Lanie Heuser

Dr. Haslam

P. 5

She grew up in a house at the base of the mountain. They always had the most lucky

view. Looking out of their front porch you could see the entire valley and at night the city lights

glowed in the distance. In the summer, the streets were filled with kids, laughter and fun, and

when winter came that stayed the same. She, her dad, and her older brother. That's all she had

ever known her whole life. Her mom died when she gave birth to her, so she never knew her.

The loss of her mom was pretty hard for her family but it became very hard on her dad. He began

to drink to take away the pain. At first, it wasn’t too bad, it started with a drink or two at dinner.

It then escalated to four at dinner, and some throughout the day. This formed a habit of drinking

throughout the day. This behavior went on for a couple of years. Nothing bad ever happened, but

it soon became unsafe for her and her older brother, because their dad could not function enough

to keep taking care of them. When she was about 7 or 8 and her brother was about 11, someone

finally came. Taking them out of his custody was not very hard. After they had gotten taken out

of their dad's custody, the court made a rule that they could only have minimal contact with their

dad. This really could only happen through an email or a text message every once and a while.

The person who came to take them out of custody from their dad was a worker from

Child Protective Services. The main reason a caseworker from CPS had to come was because

they had no other family to take care of them so they had to be put into the foster care system.

The thought of this made her brother extremely anxious because more than 70% of siblings are
separated from each other when they are taken by CPS and put into the foster care system. Luck

was on her side because her and her brother got to stay together the whole time.

Being in and out of foster homes was never super hard on her until she was about 10 or

11. This is when she started to grasp what happened, and it made her upset to never really have a

real mom or dad in her life. These feelings only grew stronger as she got older. As she got older,

she started to act out in many different ways. She shut people out, the first person she shut out

was her brother. She would stay out late, sneak out, sneak people in, and lie about a lot of things.

This new behavior caused her and her brother to move around different homes a lot more

because it was kind of difficult to take care of them.

She was starting to lose hope. Thinking that she and her brother would move around until

they were too old and that they wouldn't ever find a forever family. In America, 118,000 children

are waiting to be adopted. These thoughts were constant, until one foster family. She and her

brother were fostered by two young parents who were longing to have children in their house.

She and her brother were fostered for 2 years, and then their foster parents chose to adopt them.

This did not fix all the problems right away. Adopting children was hard on her parents. But it

was also hard on her and her brother. She had a hard time adjusting to this new family. As

excited as she was about her and her brother being adopted and having a family, it was still very

hard for her to think that she was taken away from her biological dad and probably wouldn't ever

be able to see him again.