Graduation Speech: My First Foster Home

The three of us are in the back seat of my DCF workers silver Honda on our way to our first foster home in Topsfield, Ma, over 10 miles away from home. With every sad song I ask her to change the station because I don’t want to get upset in front of my little brother and sister. This is the first time in our lives that we have been away from our mother, and if I start crying I know that they will too. My siblings and I have just found ourselves in the midst of my mothers mental breakdown.

After having my brother taken from her by his father, my mother lost her sanity. I remember how my mother used to take us out to the park with our neighbors and cook our meals everyday, but then she gradually became less vigilant of us children and more distracted by the custody battle that she was intent on winning. My mother did everything in her power to sabotage my brothers’ father, and with her endless police reports and relentless arguments, a visit from the …show more content…
It made the transition of going from our childhood home into a new intimidating environment less stressful, especially for me. The absence of our mother was the worst part, for me and for them. There was no way to fill the emotional void of not being with her, and I worried about the happiness of my siblings. Our solution to keeping each other happy was to stick together and make each other laugh. All throughout dinner, Ethan and Amber would look at me and we would secretly giggle and smirk behind spaghetti at our foster parents’ cheesy jokes, and at night all three of us would curl up on the futon and I would stay awake at night until they all fell asleep. Even though we were in a foster home I still felt obligated to keep my brother and sister safe. The responsibility that I took for my family before getting taken away also remained with me during that time. Even now, I am unable to relinquish my motherly