You can grieve people you had to leave. You can love people whose choices devastated you. You can be grateful for the family you came from and also grateful that you're not still in it. Those things can coexist. There's no shame in choosing yourself. There's no shame in protecting your peace. Sometimes love looks like distance

Two weeks of silence since she moved to her foster home. I'm grieving a relationship that ended the right way, with her finally getting what we fought for. But nobody warns former foster youth who do this work about this grief: when you pour from your wounds into theirs, letting go makes you bleed. This is about loving kids in care when you've been one, and the heartbreak we carry so they can heal.