IFCA Resilience Mural Project

IFCA Resilience Mural Project

◎ Artist Tomoyuki Washio completed his second mural at his studio in Nagoya City in time for the March 8 IFCA Youth Summit.

The “Resilience Mural Project” began in 2023 as a collaboration between IFCA and Mr. Washio to create a large painting of stories written by our foster youth members. 
Based on the resilience stories of four IFCA Japanese youth who traveled to the U.S. in the summer of 2023, Mr. Washio spent over two weeks in Seattle designing and creating a mural measuring 2 meters in height and 5 meters in width. The mural is now on permanent display in the student hall of the University of Washington’s School of Social Work building.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvrEIcduX9b/?img_index=1

The second mural was an attempt by Mr. Washio to create a mural based on the “stories of resilience in overcoming difficulties” written by Veronica and Leyda, who had visited Japan for the most recent Youth Summit in Tokyo.

Tomoyuki WASHIO Bio　　Born in Aichi Prefecture. Based on his perception of art as a free human act, 　Tomoyuki Washio, a self-taught artist, engages with people and events centered on their relationship with the city to create works spanning illustration, design, animation and various other media irrespective of genre. He also develops music projects in shopping streets and other urban sites together with collaborators working in hybrid fields. His activities are multidisciplinary, including exhibitions at museums and international venues featuring Tekun, an original character with eyes and nose painted onto a hand. Major exhibitions include Aichi Triennale 2019. 　 Instagram ▷ Website: http://thisworld.jp/

Recently, I made one of the bravest decisions of my life – returning home to the Hopi Reservation of Arizona (I am an Indigenous Person and member of a Tribal Nation in the United States). I finally felt strong enough to open a door to my past, and return to my family of origin, my birthplace, and the land my people have known since time immemorial. It was a surreal experience, re-introducing myself to a family my heart had always known, but my mind was catching up with.

I had equally dreamed and held reservations about this moment growing up, mostly due to the fear that I had been or would be forgotten. There is so much complexity attached to the foster care experience, most central is the message we carry about love – negative or positive. For me, my relationship with love was damaged, but there was still space for healing.

Walking into my family’s home, a home that has been passed down from generation to generation, I was flooded with waves of warmth, grief, happiness, loss, joy, and pain. I was held lovingly in the arms of my family, characters I had replayed repeatedly in my childhood memories, as I allowed myself to cry and simply release. It was nearly 25 years of separation that I was simultaneously grieving and releasing, because I was now home, and the hard part was over. My birth family were no longer strangers of the past, but now active parts of my present and future.

I spent 6 days with my family of origin, listening to family stories and history – learning about myself and where I came from. One of the greatest pieces of myself that I felt was returned to me was my role as the eldest daughter, elder granddaughter, and the eldest matriarch of my generation in each of my families. I learned that the leader that I am today was a story that had begun long before my time here on this earth. My resilience was never an accident, but a prayer filled intention set by my ancestors. I am where I am meant to be, and every part of my story lead me to this return home.

Savage Liberation

By Leyda M. Garcia-Greenawalt

I am my mother’s savage daughter,
the one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones.
I am my mother’s savage daughter,
I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice[1]

From as early as I could remember my mom pushed the value of education on us. While other kids spent their summers in camps and sports, we spent most of our summer in the library. The last thing an elementary student wants to do on their break from school is play school while their mom plays out her dream of being a teacher. It wasn’t all bad, though. I vividly remember one summer when we took Around the World in Eighty Days to task. My sister and I took turns picking different countries to learn about. We’d check out up to ten books and then go home to immerse ourselves in various cultures. When the food stamps allowed, we even tried out a few cultural recipes to make the project come to life.

There’s a certain lifestyle that comes with being born to a teen mom. You quickly learn how to navigate stereotypes and equally support your mom in her efforts as much as she supported you in yours. Five (out of six) kids and eleven years later, my mom graduated with a bachelor’s in business administration. As a first-generation student who moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago at the age of 15, having to learn English as a teenager, this was no small feat.

Yet, I found myself in high school questioning whether or not I wanted to pursue a postsecondary degree. You see, at this point, I had attended twelve schools through my ninth-grade year, and I had been in foster care since seventh grade. Growing up in care, you sit and wait for your 18^th birthday – the day your caseworkers care a little less, the day you can terminate your “relationship” with the state as a ward of the court. You spend so much time trying to get to 18, you forget that there’s a whole lot of life to be lived after that.

I made it. I made it to my 18^th birthday, months away from graduating high school from one of the top high schools in the country. I was 18 and not pregnant. Seven out of ten girls who age out of foster care became pregnant by age 21.[2] Moreover, teen mothers in foster care are 11 times more likely to lose custody of their baby in the first week of life than other teen moms.[3] Admittedly, I didn’t know much at 18, but I knew that was not going to be me.

I looked forward to my college journey as many teenagers do. I looked forward to getting away from home, meeting new friends, and experimenting with newfound independence. Unlike most teenagers, however, I had an unusual off-to-college experience. The fact of the matter was that I wasn’t like most teenagers. I was eighteen years old and still in foster care. Illinois being one of the states that allow youth to remain in care until the age of 21. All things considered, I had a better support network than most. I had a great relationship with my biological family – my mom, my five younger siblings, and their father. Everyone seemed to get along and welcomed the idea that I also had a great relationship with my foster family.

Weeks leading up to my moving into my college dorm at the University of Illinois, I received a call that my mother was in the hospital. I knew that my mom had some mental health concerns and underlying health conditions, so I thought nothing of her being in the hospital. However, this was much different. I was told that my mom suffered from a cardiac arrest and needed someone to sign off on some procedural paperwork for her in the intensive care unit. I remember rushing home to meet with my caseworker (who conducted visits three times a month at the time). I told her nothing of the incident and hurried to the hospital with my foster mom right after. As my mother’s oldest, non-minor child, I was tasked with signing papers and making life-altering decisions as her medical power of attorney. Within three hours, my mom suffered five cardiac arrests and was placed on life support. Looking back, everything seemed to happen so fast, although I remember spending every day for weeks at the hospital surrounded by my biological family, foster family, mentors, and friends waiting for my mother to wake up from her medically induced coma.

What Grey’s Anatomy or Chicago Med fails to tell you is that it is only recommended that someone stays on life support for no more than ten days, otherwise their organs begin to deteriorate. The nurses waited until day six to share this with me. I made the decision to have the plug pulled on day eight – after contacting my out-of-town family members (my mother’s sisters in Texas and Indiana, and my grandmother in Nevada). I signed the paperwork to allow my mother’s organs to be donated, as she would have wished, and said my final goodbyes. To my surprise, not only would my mother not pass that evening, but she had awakened nearly a week later. I went from filling out Medicaid paperwork for my uninsured mother on life support to planning her funeral arrangements to looking for a rehabilitation home for her. The doctors and nurses were convinced she’d never speak or walk again. When my mother woke up and only spoke in Spanish, I convinced myself this would be our new normal. A normal that would require some extra studying on my part as it had been years since I lived in a Spanish-speaking home and I was a little rusty, to say the least. A day later, she started speaking in English again and a few days after that she was sitting up and walking on her own. Nobody could believe it.

I moved onto campus two days before my mother was released from the hospital and placed in a rehab facility. I remember running back and forth to the library to print, sign, and scan back release papers and intake papers. By Labor Day, my mother was eating solid foods on her own and ready to go home. Still, she suffered significant brain damage. She’d call me twelve times a day… while I was in class. Although my professors were more than understanding, I mourned the loss of what should have been a “traditional” college experience. Unlike most students, I took the three-hour trip from campus to my home every weekend to visit my mother and make sure she was comfortable and cared for. I quickly learned how to apply for Social Security and became the designated payee for my mom’s benefits. Just as she had cared for me for the twelve years leading up to my placement in foster care, I had learned how to care for her.

I wish I could say I gained some normalcy and had a typical college experience after that. Unfortunately, life caught up with my mother and she passed away at 37 years old… three weeks into my sophomore year of college. Undoubtedly, the call everybody dreads. Even worse when it’s at 4 o’clock in the morning and you’re hours away from home. I went to the only other place I thought felt like home – my tiny college building at my much larger university. This is where I had taken all my classes, where I made my first friends, and where I worked as an IT assistant. I practically lived in the building. I was welcomed and embraced by several professors. They encouraged me to share memories of my mother, shared their own stories, and made sure I had food in my stomach.

Not all of my professors were as kind, however. The university allows “Up to five days of bereavement leave in the event of the death of an immediate family member including: parent, legal guardian, spouse/life partner, child, sibling, or grandparent.”[4] Five days. Five days to mourn, plan a funeral, gather family, and then return to my studies as if nothing happened? At the time, I was pursuing a minor in Leadership Studies. I reached out to my professor, as I did with all of my professors, explaining my unfortunate circumstances. It was a Tuesday morning. I acknowledged that we had a quiz in class that morning and asked if I could make it up upon my return. She explained that I could make it up, but it had to be before Thursday’s class as that was when she’d go over the answers. I again explained my circumstances, with more detail, explaining that I was the one tasked with ensuring my mom got a proper send-off. She reaffirmed her class policy. The last thing I needed was to have some lady, the director of this minor program, inadvertently tell me to get over it so I could take a quiz. I dropped the class, forfeiting the minor, and never looked back.

I’m blessed to say that I otherwise had the necessary support to get me through my emotional healing and academics. Finding humor in tough situations, I joked that at least I had all of my mother’s arrangements already planned from the first go around. I was given an extra year with my mom, and for that, I will always be grateful.

…

My earliest memory of encountering the child welfare system occurred when I was about five years old. My family had social workers in and out of our lives for over a decade for a myriad of reasons – suspected drug use, mental health concerns, neglect, poverty, and several other social ills. I was twelve years old when my five younger siblings and I were separated and sent to different foster homes. During my nearly eight years in the Illinois foster care system, I was shuffled between foster homes, shelters, and hospitals. These experiences caused me to hate social workers, law enforcement, lawyers, and judges to say the least – that’s what I was conditioned to do. However, life has a sense of humor and thus here I am – a social worker turned lawyer.

It wasn’t until high school that I realized what a social worker should be and what qualities they should have to make them effective. It was a social worker in high school that told me to consider the field. He told me that I have every quality that makes a good social worker; my junior year he nicknamed me “counselor”. Just as I came to him with my day-to-day “teen in foster care problems”, he came to me asking for my advice on how to maintain a relationship with his adult daughter. After two years of meeting and working with my high school counselor, I accepted my offer to an undergraduate social work program. I am living proof that given the proper resources and tools, a child from any circumstance can thrive. Nationally, about 50% of foster youth graduate high school, while less than 5% go on to complete a four-year degree.[5] I have broken statistic after statistic and, I promised, if given the chance, I’d help others do the same.

While an undergraduate student, I became involved with the Foster Care Alumni of America – Illinois Chapter (“FCAA-IL”) as their Policy Chair.  At first, I was hesitant to join because weeks prior, my biological mother had passed away.  I was also reluctant to join because I had no experience with legislation on the state level.  However, I am not unfamiliar with what it means to be resilient, and I knew that I had no choice but to continue my studies and continue the legacy that my mother had left me. Through my experience with FCAA-IL, I have fallen in love with legislation and policy after realizing the power of having someone with lived experience assist with the lawmaking process. I have helped to pass several pieces of legislation on the federal and state levels, including the Family First Act on the federal level (prioritizing supportive services for families before removing children from their parents’ care) and foster youth tuition waiver on the state level (which allows youth in care and alumni to attend an in-state, public institution with their tuition and associated fees waived). In each of these accomplishments, I have my mother to thank for giving me something to fight for.

My life experiences thus far have led me to pursue a law degree with a concentration in child welfare law. My time at Loyola University Chicago has taught me how to better advocate for current and former youth in care and equipped me to give back to marginalized communities on a broader scale. While in law school, I continued my legislative advocacy, drafting and passing legislation to eliminate juvenile fines and fees in the juvenile legal system for youth across Illinois (SB 1463). Additionally, I have assisted in drafting legislation to codify a right to counsel for every youth in the Illinois foster care system (SB 1478). This bill continues to be a legislative battle, but I am determined to see it through.

True to my promise, I became involved with Court Appointed Special Advocates in Champaign County. Although my legal studies brought me back to Chicago, I continue to serve as a Guardian ad Litem for youth in care. Even more incredible, I am trusted with a caseload of my own through the Civitas ChildLaw Clinic. I represent youth in foster care in Cook County – serving as their counsel on record and arguing on their behalf in court.

My experience in the foster care system has helped me to identify some of the shortcomings of the system and potential remedies. I can say that I am almost grateful for being in foster care – it drew me to my career and my passions. Individuals with lived experience must be at the forefront of this work – advocating for youth, making practice recommendations, and setting the standard of representation. To that end, I have published several papers while in law school highlighting the unique challenges youth with lived experience face.[6] It is my goal to not only serve youth with similar backgrounds but also empower them to pursue their own careers, much as I was as a young adult. It is not lost on me that I am where I am today because of the leaders before me.

I always viewed my mom as a hero – she did what she needed to do to support her children and still managed to achieve her own educational successes. School was always of utmost importance to her – a value she surely passed on to me. As I continue to learn and grow, I have developed a great disdain for the child welfare system. Being my mother’s daughter, a true hell-raiser, I have found myself to align with abolitionist values. But how can that be? Two things can be true at once – I can feel thankful for my time in foster care while also acknowledging the harms this system commits. I lost my Spanish language skills, family recipes, and most importantly, a connection to my siblings. But in true Wanda fashion, my work has just begun. We are our mother’s savage daughters, We will not cut our hair, We will not lower our voice.[7]

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[1] My Mother’s Savage Daughter by k. l. kahan as Wyndreth (2017).

[2] https://nfyi.org/51-useful-aging-out-of-foster-care-statistics-social-race-media/

[3] https://www.yahoo.com/news/teen-mothers-foster-care-high-risk-losing-custody-041021245.html

[4] https://odos.illinois.edu/resources/students/bereavement

[5] https://nfyi.org/issues/higher-education/

[6] See “’We Can’t Hear You’: A Call for Right to Counsel for Youth in Care,” Children’s Legal Rights Journal, May 2023; “Moral Injury: The Undiagnosed Epidemic Spread Throughout the Family Policing System and a Call for Abolition,” Children’s Legal Rights Journal, May 2023.

[7] My Mother’s Savage Daughter by k. l. kahan as Wyndreth (2017).