Make it Worth it, By Making it Different
This reflection is shared with permission and represents one youth’s lived experience. Virtue Visionary exists to protect spaces where youth can speak honestly, be seen fully, and engage in advocacy without fear of being minimized or tokenized.
“I got sent to the mental hospital when I was fifteen. For years, I was very hard on myself and internalized many of the bad things that happened next as "my fault". Now I understand there are certain things that should simply never happen to a child—regardless of their behavior.
The hospital staff insisted that I be removed from my home and entered into the child welfare system. Instead of letting me stay in the hospital to wait for the bed to open, or allowing me to return home, I experienced something called ‘shelter care.’ Shelter care is a type of emergency custody within the foster care system that is utilized when the state decides that there is nowhere better or safer for a child to go.
During intake, I was treated like a criminal. Every source of comfort was taken from me and locked away. There was no school and no visitation. It was an eye opening experience that made me contemplate things I had the privilege to have never considered before. Where do foster children go when there is no home ready? It broke my heart that children were subject to these conditions by no fault of their own. The strange solidarity of survival I built with the other girls there has stuck with me.
Although I was only in shelter care for about two and a half weeks, it would be over a year until I got to go home and stay home. But let’s be real, it’s not like the systemic issues affecting my family were solved. Nor was the experience of removal a break from trauma, instead it was just a different kind.
My social worker helped me enroll in college. She found a program called Scholar Network at Columbus State Community College. Scholar Network is a program designed by and for former foster youth in higher education. The basic principle is peer support from people who ‘get it’. I had social phobia and feared interacting with people, as I had been conditioned to think I would do something wrong. I didn't want to be seen, let alone in the spotlight.
But once I had established a sense of safety with the Scholar Network community, I was hanging out in their office all the time. It was a safe place on campus I could go to pass the time where I could show up as I was, and be welcomed warmly.
With rapport built, I was informed about issues and opportunities that affected our specific population: those with lived experience in foster care. In December 2019, I learned that there was a statewide campaign for Ohio to implement a foster care ombudsman… Immediately, I expressed enthusiasm. I wanted in on this campaign.
Social phobia be damned, I was going to testify. I knew what I had experienced and knew that I never wanted anyone to go through what I went through. Just a few months before, I wouldn’t talk to anyone and then I was talking to legislators.
The testimony is immortalized on the Ohio Channel, and I’m still amused to notice how my voice shook but I did not falter.
After facing this fear and getting to witness other advocates share their stories...I was inspired by their courage and motivated to continue. The power of coalition, community building, peer support...of simply having someone believe in you and tell you with certainty in their voice that your story is worth telling--can change not only your life, but the lives of those who come after you.
By May 2022, I was attending the gala to celebrate the passage of the bill to implement a youth ombudsman in the state of Ohio. In August 2025, I started interning for the Ohio Youth Ombudsman office—the very office I testified in favor of the creation of. It is truly surreal to be where I am today.
After years of feeling like a burden, of feeling like "the problem", and doubting my worth... today, I know that my work matters.
Not all of the work comes with such clear successes, but that's all the more reason to keep trying, fighting, and learning. Showing up in uncertainty is the only way to truly show up. Hope cannot be conditional. When we internalize these truths, we can build each other up enough to have the courage to keep showing up.
We will lose some battles in an oppressive system, but with continuous effort, organization, and persistence—we will win some too. And those wins will always be worth it”.
