r/Ex_Foster

I aged out of foster care in 2015 as a Ward of the State. Was a foster youth from 13 to 18, the last few years I spent in a halfway house because I couldn't find placement or any willing adoptive options.

Since then it's been a rollercoaster, I went to college for a few years then I happened upon a pregnancy. At my own discretion I chose to keep my baby, even though my partner at the time has never been involved and will probably never acknowledge her existence. This was my choice, I stand by it. I wanted something different for her, a family, a community... Something I never got to experience much if at all.

Fast-forward to 2026, I am married, mother of 3 and bonus mom to one, we live in a beautiful house in a great neighborhood.. But I am so extremely lonely. My husband doesn't understand me. Seems like not many people do so I cannot blame him much. From everything I've been through I've developed C-PTSD, I'm medicated. Doing experimental treatments of TMS and just trying to deal and overcome it all. I know it's never going to completely leave me. It helps to have someone who understands things at the level that they've happened.

I have no family, no cousins or aunts etc... I had two best friends from when I was in foster care but they have both since passed away. Naturally I have a hard time keeping long term friendships afloat. Doesn't much help that I am a stay at home mom now in a city and state that I am not from.

I don't really know why I'm writing here. I guess I'm just extending a hand to anyone who will reach out, grab it and say I understand. It gets better. It WILL get better. I don't know, here's to hope and good things.

Hi I just randomly joined this group today.

I was in foster care at age 7 then went back home then went back in permanently at 14, along with my younger sister. She was 6 years younger than me, and she passed when she was 18.

I just want to vent about something particularly strange. I met my husband when I was 22, and that was when I cut ties with the foster care agency, they supported me passed age 19 with "independent living" which covered some living expenses to help with rent. When I met my now husband I didn't need the support anymore, I had a job and a license and was attending university and my husband began covering all my life expenses. I was sponsored for attending university as well, funded through my band. I'm first nations in Canada. So I was doing fairly well.

My husbands mom and dad had foster children when my husband was growing up. Presumably for financial reasons. Their foster children were first nations, and my now mother in law loves to recount over and over again the stories of their lives, the abuse they suffered, and how *Awesome* they were as foster parents.

They were in a lot of respects good responsible foster parents and gave their foster daughters love and attention, but the inner foster child in me still aches and feels a certain part of the injustice of it all in the larger picture.

In the larger picture the foster care system is a continuation of the residential school systems, taking indigenous kids away from their families, language and culture. And puts them through this ringer that many don't survive, including my sister.

I just wanted to vent a bit because I feel like my mother in law fetishizes me as an indigenous woman and views my family negatively even though I have been through a lot and my family isn't perfect it isn't because of their personal faults but it's because of the systemic racism and oppression that my family has faced and continues to face and I feel like that part doesn't get talked about or get attention.

Rant over for now.