Susumu Yamanouchi
I was bullied for being a foster child in my later elementary school years. I got hit and kicked by my classmates. I got an email that said to die. I hated it and told my mother that I wanted to take the junior high school exam […]
Janice Cole
Joseph Campbell, a renowned philosopher and mythologist, is famous for the following challenge: “Follow Your Bliss”. He nests this challenge within what he calls the Hero’s Journey – Separation, Initiation, and Return. Joseph Campbell’s life work was to demonstrate that the Hero’s Journey is present in every […]
Timothy Bell
Kodomo No Hi is national children’s day in Japan. It’s a bit like Mother’s or Father’s Day in America but to honor the place of children in society and, I like to think, to celebrate the child within your self. Coincidentally, serendipitously even, May is also National […]
David Inglish
On February 5, I aged out of Washington State’s Foster Care to 21 Program. Ten years of foster care, and on this day I was finally leaving for good. Now that I was 21, exiting seemed uneventful, not like when I was poised to age out at […]
Janell Braxton
When I hear the words Mental Health, I automatically think that it’s for people with severe problems, don’t you? Then I started contemplating and researching what mental health is, and according to the Center for Disease Control it’s defined as “a state of well-being in which the […]
Janice Cole
“Aging out” is a popular term in the foster care world. For US foster youth, it’s something everyone goes through when they either turn 18 or graduate from high school. The term refers to when a foster youth becomes old enough to no longer be in the […]
David Inglish
Time.com says that “In 2009, only 10% of the 37,600-plus children under 18 living in welfare institutions were adopted or taken in by foster families.” The Japan Times states, “39,000 children are in child care institutions in Japan as of 2013. Of such children, Japan placed 12% […]
Yoshie
When I heard the word “aging-out”, I immediately thought of “freedom”.
There were no paved roads for young people who are aging out. They would have to create their own roads to be independent adults.
It is true that your own decisions and actions determine the course of your transition […]
Timothy Bell
I often refer to this moment in my life around my 18th birthday where the family I thought would love and support me throughout my life rejected me… or so I thought. In actuality, what had happened was that we had two different ideas about what our […]
Rei Hatayama
1) For me, “aging out” meant a new beginning and was a period in which I had to face challenges associated with being a foster care alumni.
I had a choice of leaving the institutionalized care when I entered college. However, it would have been too difficult for […]
