How Do You Rate Your Life?
The famous jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald said: “It isn't where you came from; it’s where you're going that counts.” These words of wisdom are Ella’s message to kids in foster and residential care. She speaks from experience. When her mother died, Ella was placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum and later moved to the New York Training School for Girls. Ella could have given up hope of becoming a famous jazz singer, but she didn’t. She put her past behind her and focused on making her life better. Ella went on to be the most famous woman jazz singer in the world. She’s been called the “First Lady of Song” and “Queen of Jazz.” That’s why Ella Fitzgerald is a hero and role-model.
What does your mind focus on the most? ( ) Past ( ) Future
What word describes your future? ( ) Hopeless ( ) Hopeful
The teenage me would have answered these two questions Past and Hopeless. The past ruled my mind and the future didn’t exist because I had no hope. I still remember some of the problems my mind wrestled with back then. The first one I recall is wishing that I lived in a family where everyone was happy and loved, like my childish mind believed was true for every other kid on the planet. After my father divorced us, I was sure I’d die. When he married another woman with a son, I blamed myself for not being good enough. When my mother washed me in Lysol and Clorox, I wished for a normal mom who didn’t see germs everywhere. She put me in the Lutheran children’s home and I focused on why even my own mommy didn’t want me. After spending most of 8th grade in special education and failing 9th grade, I couldn’t figure out why I was so stupid. As pimples and blackheads popped out of every pore of my skin from forehead to butt cheeks, I thought about how other students teased me and what it would be like to be good-looking like kids with clear skin. Following my mind-bending summer in the insane asylum, I questioned my own sanity and what it would be like to be normal. By the time the court placed me at the Pennsylvania George Junior Republic, I saw myself as the dumbest, ugliest, most worthless and unlovable loser on the planet and cursed being born. I hated me!
I was a mixed-up and out-of-control teenager who allowed the past to decide my future. It was one problem on top of another problem on top of another problem. My life only seemed to get worse, so I came to expect more of the same. My confused brain focused on the negative, because I had no hope for the future. I was giving up on me, like I thought everybody else had.
My worthless life finally started to turn around when the court sent me to the Republic. I had turned sixteen and my next stop was likely the insane asylum or prison. That’s when luck finally came my way. It was like a space ship beamed me out of my Hell on Earth and took me to a better planet. Over the next 18 months, I was molded into a better boy. Most of all, I was taken from the family problems that screwed up my mind in the first place and put in a youth residential care program where I was taught to think, behave and succeed.
Looking backward – instead of forward – is a main reason why foster youth have problems during and after they leave the child welfare system. They cannot grow beyond the problems that got them into the system in the first place and have given up all hope for a better life. Do you know that over 50% of male former fosters are arrested and over 20% of alumni end up in jail or prison by their 25th birthday? There’s even a term for it: “The foster care-to-prison pipeline.” That doesn’t have to be you!
You have to let go to get going. That’s what Ella Fitzgerald did. She made up her mind to be a famous jazz singer. That was her way of letting go and putting the past behind her. Ella was not an overnight star. She spent years getting her life together, but she never quit, no matter how hard things got. Ella refused to be the victim of her past life. Instead, she imagined what she wanted her life to look like and then put her brain to work figuring out how to make her dream life come true. She focused on where she was going; where she came from no longer controlled Ella’s mind and future. That was the secret sauce to her success.
You have your own secret sauce to a successful life inside you, even if you don’t know what it is right now. That’s probably because you haven’t given it much thought, especially if you already think “life sucks, so what’s the f’ing use?” That’s the mental trap you must avoid.
You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it and refuse to give up. That was my secret sauce to success and it made all the difference in my life after I left the child welfare system. It’s the hardest thing I ever did, but it made all the difference in my outcome. I wish you an adult life as wonderful as mine has been. Even though you may not believe it is possible right now, it can be, if you put your mind to it! *
*Adapted from our book, Beating the Odds In and After Foster and Residential Care
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