Vol. 19, No. 1 • November 2014

Life Books: Sources of Healing and Strength Long Past Age 18

by Donna Foster

Recently my 38-year-old daughter, Shannon, and her 8-year-old, Cheyenne, sat with me to look through Shannon's baby book. Then I grabbed albums crammed with photos, school report cards, birth certificates, and other mementos. With each photo, floods of memories surfaced. We laughed and cried. Cheyenne would say things like, "I like to do that too, mom!" and "We're a lot alike."

It was wonderful. Not only did I share what I remembered from those earlier days, but I learned more about my daughter and the memories she held close to her heart. Cheyenne learned about her mom and her grandmother. In just a few hours, our bond grew stronger.

Life Books: Tools for Survival
This experience deepened my belief that life books are critically important for young people who are in foster care or who have been adopted. Life books are more than photo albums. They provide physical evidence for things many of us take for granted. They help prove the child was and is loved. By including the people who were and are in their lives, life books help young people make sense of why they are living in their present family.

Many children in foster care have been traumatized. Their self-concept is low. They don't feel lovable, capable, or safe. Yes, they need food, shelter, clothing, education, and safety. But to survive, grow, and build a future they need more than that.

I loved every child who came to live with us for the 17 years we fostered. I still love them. One youth challenged me by asking, "How can you love me if you don't know me?"

His question made me realize that helping a child reconnect to his past and understand his value in his present life is as important to his survival as food and shelter. Without this, we can't prepare a child for his future.

Laying a Foundation
Years ago I was a counselor in a residential center (group home) for kids in foster care. As we were doing life books, some of the older youth resisted the idea of telling their life stories for their life books. They were comfortable talking about what they liked to do and who their present best friends were, but they didn't want to talk about the past.

I didn't push them. Instead, I started taking photos of them with the other youth and adults around them. We logged pages and pages with trips to the mountains, camping, and squirting water on each other while washing cars. This felt safe for them.

Eventually I learned that as soon as a youth came to live at the residential home or with my family, I needed to connect with their parents and siblings. I listened as their birth family shared life experiences. Some were happy. Many were painful.

But it was so helpful. Connecting with families helped me to know the youth better. My compassion and understanding for the youth's parents made life easier for the youth.

We must let the youth know their parents are more than what happened that led to foster care. The older the child becomes, the more they see the needs of their parents.

Whenever possible, I wanted them to feel their parents parenting them, even if it was in a simple way. Photos of them cooking together or talking on a park bench can give the youth a lifetime of fond memories. Photos like these--and the memories that go with them--can help them through tough times as an adult.

Making Meaningful Connections
As trust developed between me and a youth, they started telling me about people they missed in their lives. I felt my job was to talk to the youth's case worker and search out these people who meant a lot to the youth.

With the agency's approval, I found teachers, old neighbors, school bus drivers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and many more people excited to be in the youth's life again. A youth can become more whole if people from his past reenter his life.

Jared's Story

Jared (not his real name) was abandoned as an 18-month-old. He had no photos of his past. He didn't have his birth certificate or any information about his birth family. He and his birth sister were adopted, but he was sent away at age seven and never saw her again. I met Jared after his second adoption ended. In situations like this, when there are many gaps in the child's story, you can build a life book by asking the young person to use their imagination to fill in the gaps by answering the question "What would you like this part of your life (the part with the gap) to look like?" Later, if new information emerges, it can replace the imagined version. So, at age twelve, Jared and I recreated his past. He made up his first words, when he crawled and walked. He picked out of a magazine what he would have liked to be his first toy. It was a stuffed bear. Then I went out and bought his first toy bear. Using magazines, I helped him find a photo of a baby that looked like him. This became his baby picture. We guessed his birth weight and length. He picked out magazine pictures of girls that looked like his sister. He found magazine pictures of a woman that had his color eyes and hair. She became his mother. He did the same for his father. Around those pictures in his life book, he wrote what he knew and what his case worker and I told him. Never did we speak negatively about his birth parents. Instead we said, "Some adults have a lot of troubles. Some can't take care of their children. They love their children, but are not able to take care of them." The one message we kept giving Jared was that children don't cause placement in foster care or disruptions. Adults do. It is never the child's fault. This took years of guilt off his shoulders. As Jared's life book continued I learned why he didn't know how to ride a bicycle. He never rode a child's big wheel, bicycle with training wheels, or a two wheeler bicycle. He was interested in younger children's big wheels, so I bought him big wheels and let him be four years old again. His memories started coming back. Step by step Jared made up for all of the times he missed being a child. He soon proudly started riding his own bicycle. Jared is in his 40s now, and has two daughters--one grown, the other a high school sophomore. His wife of 20 years recently passed away. His eldest daughter keeps her daddy's first toy bear in her bedroom. Jared remembers those years we worked to find out who he was and why he felt the way he did. Many times, Jared used his life books to help new people in his life understand who he was. He used his life books as maps of his life. He took them to the children's home he lived in for two years and shared stories. He showed them his schools, where he played, his churches, his neighbors, and our home. He kept in touch with some of his past friends and became a permanent part of our family. Today he is looking for his birth family again. I am taking that journey with him.

Conclusion
I think the box above, which shares the story of one of the young men I fostered, vividly illustrates the way life books can be a source of healing and strength for children long past age 18.

How we engage youth has a huge bearing on who they will become as adults. What we say or do, and the connections we try to make or continue, affect them deeply. It is our job as foster parents, adoptive parents, and social workers to help children and youth feel lovable, capable, worthwhile, and responsible. This is love in action.

Donna Foster is an author, national trainer, and consultant. She lives in Marshville, NC.

Read More about Life Books from Donna Foster Check out Donna's article "Life Books: Keeping it Together" in the May 2013 issue of Fostering Perspectives. http://www.fosteringperspectives.org/fpv17n2/lifebooks.html

~ Family and Children's Resource Program, UNC-CH School of Social Work ~