On a recent Monday evening, a young man strummed a guitar as he performed an original song for his peers—physically scattered around Oregon but gathered virtually in a video conference room. Listening intently, the other youth waved their fingers in the “sparkle gesture” to show their appreciation for the powerful piece.

The youth on the call were all members of Our Children Oregon’s Oregon Foster Youth Connection (OFYC), an advocacy program led by former and current foster youth ages 14 through 25. After the shelter-in-place directive was instituted in their state in late March, many young people in the program shared with Lisa McMahon, OFYC program director, that they were struggling and felt the need for connection and support.

“They were talking about their mental health, and acknowledging their need for connection and support,” says McMahon. “They weren’t saying, ‘I really need to talk to a therapist,’ but all the things they typically do for self-care, like getting together with their peers, now weren’t possible, and that was creating a problem for their mental health.”

Describing their experience of the pandemic, more than one young person said “foster care prepared me for this,” referring to the way it prevented them from spending time with people they love and doing things they enjoy doing. Connections and self-care are particularly important for people healing from the traumatic experience of foster care and the events in their life that led to it. McMahon asked the youth if they’d like to form a support group with help from therapists. “And they thought it would be a great opportunity for connection,” she says.

So, McMahon contacted Laura Orgel, the local clinical director for A Home Within (AHW), a national organization providing free one-to-one therapy to current and former foster youth. Each AHW therapist commits to providing therapy at no cost—and for as long as it takes— to a young person who has experienced foster care. A Home Within has been providing therapy to OFYC members for years.

“Often young people who have experienced foster care have a negative impression of therapy because they were required to see a therapist when they were younger and did not have a positive experience,” says McMahon. “A support group, as opposed to ‘group therapy,’ seemed like the perfect opportunity for the OFYC youth to experience a positive interaction with a therapist. It normalizes it.”

Orgel was delighted to facilitate the group in partnership with McMahon and OFYC and contacted Judy Herzberg, a member of the local AHW team, who agreed to co-lead it.

Starting in early April, the group began meeting by video conference every Monday evening. Six young people showed up for the first session. In keeping with OFYC’s model of youth leadership, the young people decided how the group would run and what the group agreements would be.

For instance, the youth decided the group would be open—meaning participants could come and go as they liked, showing up one week and missing the next. It would be open not only to OFYC members but also to any former foster youth who expressed interest in joining.

Perhaps most importantly for the group, they could participate however they were comfortable: visible on the video or not; speaking directly to the group or through a private chat with McMahon; taking a break, doodling, and fidgeting as needed. The youth also wanted a place to share their creative work and other things important to them. They agreed to reserve time each week for a showcase. Youth have shared poetry, drawing, songs, paintings, constructions, and even a kitten!

“As the early weeks went along,” says Orgel, “the participants saw that they had the power to create the kind of group they could really benefit from. For young people who have not always had control over their environments, this has been a powerful experience.”

The youth let their peers know what kind of support they’d like to receive from those on the call, and their peers respond in kind, offering emotional and/or practical support, or whatever type of support each youth is looking for.

“It’s a place where I can go and speak about what is happening in my life and also hear others’ stories,” said one young participant. “Hearing others helps remind me that I’m not alone through all of this and there are others also struggling. It also shows me that there is hope on the other side when positive events get brought up.”

When a young person shares their struggles such as rent coming due while they’re not working, the other youth show empathy and understanding, echoing their experience and expressing appreciation to them for sharing. Sometimes, practical support is needed, as when one young woman shared that she was running out of diapers for her baby. She was connected to a source for free diapers via a link added to the chatbox on the video call.

When feelings of loss or even despair have surfaced, participants have offered words and gestures of understanding and caring. They’ve shared strategies for staying safe, taking care of themselves, and maintaining their connections.

“The group means a lot,” said one participant, “because I don’t have much access to counseling and support groups that are related to having experienced childhood in care. I was in foster care for 11 years and there’s not a lot of mental health professionals that have experience working with people like me. I definitely like that our input is valued because I feel like I can say when I am uncomfortable in session.”

One thing these young people can count on during this unsettling time is that every Monday evening, they can click a link to be virtually transported to a roomful of peers and supportive adults— a place where they can share their feelings and concerns, and openly discuss whatever is on their mind without fear of judgment.

As the pandemic continues, so does the group, evolving to meet the shifting challenges, and providing, in the midst of much struggle, a creative, collaborative, and supportive haven.

Identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the support group participants.

By David Brooks

This article was originally published by The New York Times.

Being a kid can be hard. Being a foster kid can be even harder. Being an LGBTQ foster kid can sometimes be so hard that kids end up on the streets instead of protected by the agency that is responsible for their care. The child welfare system is charged—first and foremost—with providing for the physical safety of children whose parents are unable to care for them. This means that they need a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Those are the basics; the rest follows.

Sadly, when the system is unable to meet even these basic needs vulnerable young people have little choice other than to join the ranks of the homeless and learn to fend for themselves on the streets. Unfortunately, those who work in and around the foster care system are seldom surprised to learn that LBGTQ youth are over represented in the homeless population and are likely to be on the streets longer than their peers. They are also likely to have more serious physical and emotional health problems. True Colors Fund Study

Of course, a tragic story accompanies all homeless young people—regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Trauma doesn’t discriminate, but the lives of homeless LBGTQ youth often have a particular poignancy. Frequently, they have suffered quietly in their families and communities, struggling to come to terms with feeling different from those around them who so easily fit into the straight world. Despite decreases in homophobia in some communities, fear, distrust, and dislike of anyone who is not straight or whose gender brings into question the validity of a world that admits of only two genders remains rampant in many quarters of this country.

When these young people do eventually find the courage to tell family and friends about the ways in which their sexual orientation or gender expression sets them apart, too often their families feel threatened, turn against them, and send them into foster care or onto the street. Regrettably, for many, foster care is merely a detour on the way to homelessness—a space where homophobia and lack of appreciation for gender non-conformity continue to a much greater degree than they should.

Although the picture is grim and young people continue to suffer while harmful attitudes and behavior toward those who are different from the norm change far too slowly, there are some bright spots in and around the foster care system. Through the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the Get R.E.A.L. campaign www.cssp.org has brought together over eighty individuals, organizations, and government agencies to address the issues facing LGBTQ foster youth. The group has created powerful materials to help caseworkers, foster parents, other staff, and volunteers recognize both blatant and subtle forms of mistreatment of the LGBTQ community. On another front, RaiseAChild actively recruits and supports gay and lesbian couples through the foster and adoption process.

We need more efforts like these so that our gay and transgender family members and friends will feel loved, and respected throughout the year. They must be honored, not just during the days of PRIDE month, but every day of every year.

By Toni Heineman

Valentine’s Day: Beyond Romance

Particularly this year, it is important to reach beyond flowers, chocolates, and heart-shaped gifts to the love that binds us to family, friends, and community. Too many among us now live in fear of losing those they hold most dear. Parents worry that they will be sent back to a country that they left for the promise of safety and freedom. Children worry that they will come home to an empty house, with no clue about how to even begin looking for the parents or siblings they hugged when they left for school.

College students, brought to the United States as infants, fear that they will be torn away from the only country they have ever known. They want to stay and learn so that they can work, pay their taxes, and raise their children to do the same.

Today, as we celebrate romance, whether the excited joy of new love or the contentment of love smoothed by years, we also remember that the capacity to love fully begins in the safety of home and family. We learn to love from being loved. We learn how to care by being well cared for. We learn to listen by being heard, to look after by being watched over. Strong families build strong communities with the capacity, interest, and skills to care for their citizens. We protect and strengthen our country by protecting and strengthening families. This means not only honoring individual families, but also attending to the institutions promoting the well-being of children. We at A Home Within are particularly concerned about the foster care community. We worry that an influx of children left behind in the wake of wide-spread deportations will swell the already growing child welfare rolls, beyond the system’s capacity to provide even minimally adequate care. We need to remind those in power that refugee and immigrant children must be able to count on their community and country for protection, safety, and security.

Children do not have a voice in the policies that govern their lives, so we need to speak for them. In return, they will develop their voices as they grow. We will benefit every day from the fierceness of their love for community and their loyalty to country.

I hope that today will find you celebrating with those you love. Perhaps you will enjoy a romantic evening, a meal around the family table, or an outing with friends. If you are fortunate to have any of these special moments in your life, I hope that you will also remember to hold those who are separated from friends and family in your hearts and minds.

Warmly,

By Toni Heineman

What’s So Hard about Hope?

Our sense of optimism and the capacity to hope are rooted in the first months of life. When infants are fed when they are hungry, comforted when they are distressed, changed when they are wet or soiled, gently rocked to sleep when they are tired, and greeted with a smile when they awaken, they learn that the world is a pretty good place. Fortunately, the world just needs to be “good enough,” because, of course, not every day or night is smooth, there are no perfect parents, and babies are not equally responsive.

When babies’ needs are met day after day, month after month, they get progressively better at letting people know what they want or need. In turn, their parents and other caregivers become better at reading their increasingly subtle signals.

Optimistic children have a sense of confidence about the future. Because they trust that the world will treat them well, they are not afraid to hope and dream. They are also not afraid to work hard to get what they want. When their plans fail—when their hopes are dashed—they have the confidence to pick themselves up and try again.
When life does not begin so well, babies do not learn to hope. If their needs and wants are ignored or their care is misguided, they do not develop a sense of confidence that the world will care well for them. They become pessimistic about the future. They have no reason to hope that things will improve or that tomorrow or next week will be brighter. Without the expectation that their efforts will be rewarded, children do not learn to plan for ways to get their needs met and to work hard for what they want and need.

Sadly, life often does not begin well for children in the foster care system. For many complicated reasons—some stemming from the environment, such as poverty, or homelessness; some arising from the individual, such as mental and physical illness, or addiction—their parents are unable to care for them. Some infants are placed with a family who will eventually adopt them and give them the kind of consistent loving care that allows them to build confidence and learn to hope. Others are not so lucky; they are moved from one home to another, often with periodic stays with their biological parents, in the futile hope that the family can be permanently reunited.

When children’s earliest lives are filled with uncertainty and inconsistent care, they shut down, withdrawing into themselves rather than exploring the world or reaching out for help. They become emotionally numb and fearful of relationships. After all, what is the point of hoping if you are certain that you will be disappointed?

So many of the foster youth who are referred to A Home Within for psychotherapy enter their therapists’ offices too scared to hope that this relationship might be different. Some children approach therapy angrily, actually or virtually challenging their therapists to leave them alone. This anger usually masks fear—better to push someone away than to hope for help and be left behind once again. Others don’t engage because they are convinced that this therapist will leave just like all the rest; others are silent because they are afraid to believe that this therapist might really listen.

Human beings are fundamentally social animals who, at the deepest level, crave relationships, even if it takes a very long time to transform fear into hope. One of our therapists told us about her beginning work with “Rosa,” who came regularly to her weekly sessions, even though it took nearly ten months before she found the courage to make steady eye contact and begin meaningful conversations. Fortunately for Rosa, her therapist ignored a colleague who suggested that she should end treatment after a few weeks because Rosa wasn’t making progress. Instead she followed the original mission statement of A Home Within, determined to be available “for as long as it takes.”

The therapists who volunteer their time through A Home Within are wonderful and generous people who offer many things to foster youth—patience, thoughtful listening, caring, stability, and kindness, just to begin the list. They also know how very, very frightening it can be to trust enough to begin to hope. They keep hope alive for children who are too scared to hold hope for themselves.

I hope that you will help the therapists who offer so much to our most vulnerable children.

By Toni Heineman

by Toni Heineman

Monday morning brought news of another mass shooting. I was startled when I realized that I had silently sighed, “Well, only two dead this time.” Only two real people—teenagers with families, friends, neighbors, teachers, coaches, and scores of people who will never have a chance to know them—gone forever, for reasons that are apparently yet unknown. My reaction made me feel ashamed that I had allowed myself to become hardened to the premature and senseless loss of any life.

This is one of the very troubling consequences of our being inundated with horrific stories and images of trauma and death. Even if we are not in immediate danger, we can become numb as a way of protecting ourselves from being emotionally overwhelmed. Sometimes we defend ourselves by not watching the news and sometimes we watch or listen without feeling.

Some of us have the luxury of turning away from violence by simply ignoring the multiple media channels ready to bring us news of the world. But many are not so fortunate. The Associated Press reported that the Florida shooting, following an event that was supposed to bring some summer fun to teenagers, happened in a neighborhood where gunfire is not uncommon. See LA Times article here.

We know that community violence has profound and lasting negative consequences on children’s emotional well-being, physical health, social relationships, and ability to learn. See more here. Not only are they subjected to continual and unpredictable dangers, the adults who are supposed to care for them are also traumatized by the lack of safety, making it difficult for them to attend and respond to the needs of children, who as a means of self-protection, may not be able to ask for, or even know, what they feel or need.

Many of our most vulnerable children live in impoverished neighborhoods beset with community violence. Already the story of the tragic deaths of Sean Archilles and Stef’an Strawder is fading from the news. Sadly, because we know that another incident will again make headlines for a short time, we are tempted not to attend fully to the story of each loss. Perhaps we cannot help the grieving families and friends directly, but we can hold ourselves accountable for knowing. We can refuse to pretend that turning away or learning not to care is a solution to the problem of human suffering.

People have some strange ideas about sex and gender. Let’s take the current contention over who gets to use what bathroom. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I’m referring to, here’s a quick recap.

In March of 2015, North Carolina passed House Bill 2 (HB2), which requires anyone using a public bathroom to use only the bathroom that matched the sex listed on their birth certificates. This part of the law clearly targets transgendered individuals, preventing them from using the bathrooms in which they would feel most comfortable. The bill also goes further, removing any laws that protect against discrimination — not just discrimination against LGBT folk, but any discrimination, and preventing cities and local governments from passing any new anti-discrimination laws in the future.

It’s a wide-reaching move against civil rights, and it all began when the city of Charlotte passed a law that put in place some protections for the LGBT community, including allowing a transgendered person to use the bathroom of their choice, without having to go through a lot of legal hoops to change their birth certificate.

Proponents of HB2 are very preoccupied with the idea that laws like the one Charlotte passed would allow men to enter women’s bathrooms for malicious purposes. Supporters hold signs with slogans such as “Keep Women and Kids Safe.” The underlying worry seems to be that a range of dangerous men – from Peeping Toms to pedophiles and potential assailants — will claim to be transgendered women in order to sneak into bathrooms for malicious purposes.

This panic seems to overshadow a much more important, private gender panic that might exist inside each of us. The concept of gender as separate from biology can be a difficult one. I admit to some confusion myself. It was surprising to me — though it should not have been — that my identity as a gay man did not somehow automatically make me a trans-ally. I had to really grapple with my own discomfort with a male body that did not match my cis-gendered one. That discomfort could be labeled as a form of gender panic, the welter of confusion and even anxiety that is provoked by considering that a man might have breasts, or a woman might have a penis.

In American culture, men can be viewed as unable to control their sexual impulses. It’s related to a “boys will be boys” attitude, which is often used to excuse bullying or fighting. For some, it’s even taken farther, such as the father of a former Stanford student who described his son raping a woman as “20 minutes of action.” People who are afraid of men’s sexuality, such as the supporters of HB2, and people who valorize it, such as the father quoted above, are all promoting a certain kind of masculinity, rooted in violence and predation. There is a message being conveyed that men are inherently violent, and I don’t believe that is true.

Can you be manly without being aggressive? Yes, of course. Can you be aggressive without being violent? Yes, of course. But in order to do so, we have to teach boys and men how to manage their impulses, instead of saying they are defined by them. This is an issue of a certain kind of masculinity, and by expanding our personal notions of gender it allows for us to be more than the examples we see around us and on the news. There are comparable problems in portrayals of women and feminine identity — such as the idealization and objectification of a certain kind of femininity — but I won’t comment on it at this time.

As for the issue of bathrooms for transgender men and women, it might be helpful for all of us to remember that they were once boys and girls, and that increasing numbers of “boys” openly consider themselves to be girls, and vice versa. Picture a biological girl who is a transgender boy, who has to be at school for eight hours, during which time he needs to go to the bathroom. In the boys’ bathroom– urinals, and one stall without a door — there’s no way to avoid exposing his anatomically female body to lots of boys he doesn’t even know.  How safe will he be?  In the girls’ bathroom, several of his friends know he considers himself a boy. How safe will they feel if he’s there?

It turns out that gender-neutral bathrooms might help keep all of us safe when we have to use public bathrooms.  As for keeping any of us safe from our own panic or society’s, that’s another story.

By Toni Heineman

This Sunday at 2 a.m., a man walked into a packed nightclub carrying a rifle and a pistol. He killed 49 people and injured 53 others. His victims were primarily gay Latino men; it was “Latin Night” at the gay club, Pulse. It is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, and it was targeted at the LGBT community.

The Orlando shooting is a terrible example of how far someone can go in their hatred of difference, and the people who represent that difference. Hatred of the not-me, of them, or their kind, is rooted in a worldview that says that what separates me and them, us and them, is a fundamental difference. On one side is good and right; on the other wrong and immoral. Differences are not signs of individuality. They are indications of where one stands on a moral issue.

The LGBT community has long been viewed as representatives of the “wrong.” The reasons vary from the religious to the aesthetic. Any couple beyond one man and one woman looks wrong to those who are on the other side of the issue.

This division of the world into acceptable and unacceptable is a painful one. It denies the truth that we are all different from one another, and that we are all alike in that difference. Everyone has parts that are vulnerable to being judged wrong or shameful. It is that shared vulnerability that draws us to each other, and create communities.

It is why attacks on any community makes victims out of all of us. Because if one group can be judged worthy of such terrible violence, then any group can be. We must remember that what makes us different from each other is what makes us unique, a distinct person.

In the wake of this tragedy in Orlando, people across the country have spoken out in support, have offered their prayers, and kept the LGBT community in their thoughts. Some of these people have opposed gay marriage or other issues that place them on the other side from the LGBT community. Their support at this time might be hypocrisy, or it might be that we are all united in our common experience as human beings.

Our hearts go out to the loved ones lost in the Orlando shooting and their families.  Our hearts also go out to the LGBT community and anyone who has felt different – which is all of us.

By Toni Heineman

Last month, settling into my seat for the flight home from a conference, the young man seated next to me briefly recounted the many delays he’d endured in trying to escape the cold of the lingering Midwest winter for a week on the beach with friends. When he asked about my travels I said that I had attended a conference on adoption.

“I’m adopted,” he said immediately. Even though he had offered an opening, I wasn’t quite sure how to respond without being intrusive. I asked, “From infancy?” “Yes,” he replied and continued, “Was there a particular theme for the conference?”

I explained that it was a group of people who strongly believed in open adoption. He told me that at the time he had been adopted all records in his state were sealed. Although his mother had had his records opened when he was about a year old, it wasn’t until he was an adult that he initiated contact with her, and later with his biological father and their families. I asked, “And now there are grandparents and cousins?”  He smiled, and said, “And a slew of half-brothers and sisters in that family; and I’m an only child in my family!”

After a while I said that he seemed pleased that he had reunited with his biological parents. He agreed that he was, although it was “complicated.” He offered that he thought that most adoptions should be open and that it probably would have been easier for everyone if he had reached out to his birth mother earlier. His primary concern was his sense of how much she had suffered from not having contact or knowledge about him as he was growing up. He thought that it just would have been “more natural” if he had seen his biological relatives periodically throughout his childhood.

It’s not often that I have such a thought-provoking airline conversation and enjoy the coincidence of being offered two lenses on the same topic. The presentations at the conference made abundantly clear the far-reaches of adoption—birth and adoptive families are not confined to parents or siblings, but affect grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. In many cases, the same is true for “reunification.” The young man who shared a bit of his life story with me was not leaving one family or the other behind, but working with both to find a way of having a unified family. Happily, at least at the time we talked, this seemed to be a cause for celebration for all concerned. There are many reasons to celebrate families and many different kinds of families to celebrate!

By Toni Heineman