My Stolen Innocence: Growing Up In the Foster Care System - A Memoir - Paperback

by Ameerah Ali (Author), Charles Wartts (Editor), Elaine Young (Contribution by)

I ALWAYS KNEW SOMETHING was wrong with me. From the very beginning-starting with my conception and how I came into the world-something was definitely wrong. My mother was a teenager in the 1970s, but by the age of fifteen, word was that she was running around with her mother's boyfriend and that I share the same dad as my aunt and uncle. At sixteen, she became pregnant and delivered me into the world. Unmarried, poor, shamed, and shunned, my mother was told that under no circumstances could she bring me home to live with her. Instead, I was ushered into the foster care system.

For many years I wore my mother's shame like a badge of personal guilt. It shaped my world and defined me. I was embarrassed as a child and grew up to be an embarrassed adult with low self-esteem. Struggling to be heard in a world where I had no voice, I was quickly pronounced guilty of sins that were not my own. Though there was a brief time in my life when I was surrounded by unusual comfort, persecution seemed to be my natural inheritance. Growing up in and out of foster care homes, maturing as a motherless teenage girl sleeping on other people's couches and floors in lieu of a bed, I stumbled awkwardly into adulthood.

There were times when I found encouragement and comfort in the inspired words and instructions of the Bible. Every day I prayed for God's guidance, and daily I read His Word for a message. As I approached my thirties-still longing for direction-feeling like what was often pointed out as wrong in my character was actually right, I began to search for what God wanted me to do with my life. One day I opened the Bible and began praying for an answer to a question I didn't even know I had asked. I read a verse that said simply: "Tell the people." At that moment I knew that I had to share my story. The Bible says that God will make all wrongs right. Telling my story, sharing my life, has allowed me to find power in my pain-hopefully the power to inspire others!

For me, the singular act of being able to muster up enough courage to share my story has in itself proven to be personally cathartic and empowering. I can still recall a time in my life when I absolutely refused to talk about my childhood. Rather, I always tried to avoid the conversation if someone brought up my past. At the same time, I told myself that I didn't need anyone rehashing such painful episodes in my life. I learned early that I could regurgitate my own pain all by myself. In fact, as a child, everything around me accused me of being different. My biological family, my foster care family, television, and school all reinforced what I knew to be true: There was something wrong with me. These hurtful encounters with my immediate environment deposited feelings of inadequacy in my soul. However, I gradually began to understand and believe that the things I had endured were an integral part of my God-given path. Today I am convinced that my pain-scarred childhood uniquely qualifies me to use the gifts God has given me to share my story of healing with others.