Kendra Norman-Bellamy Addresses Foster Care in her latest release, Fifteen Years
Listen to the Excerpt
Can children in foster care be affected their entire lives by their experiences even if they have obtained a level of success?
ABOUT THE BOOK
Josiah Tucker, the son of a substance dependent and neglectful mother, spent most of his childhood years in the custody of the State, living in foster homes throughout Atlanta, Georgia. At the age of fourteen, he was taken from the foster family that he had grown to love, the Smiths, and returned to his negligent birth mother. Enduring the hardships faced while living with his birth mother JT manages to make something of his life.
However, fifteen years after being taken from the Smiths and at the peak of success, he finds himself feeling empty and at his lowest. When he decides to reconnect with the Smiths, JT finds his faith in God renewed and discovers his attraction to his foster sister.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KENDRA NORMAN-BELLAMY is a national best-selling author and the founder of KNB Publications LLC. She is the organizer of Visions in Print, an Atlanta-based national organization for faith-based writers, and The Writer’s Hut, an online fellowship for African American Writers. She is the founder of Cruisin’ For Christ, a groundbreaking at-sea ministry that celebrates writing, gospel music and other God-glorifying arts, and also serves as a motivational speaker.
A native of West Palm Beach, Florida, Kendra currently resides in Stone Mountain, George with her family.
For more information, visit www.knb-publications.com.
View the blog tour schedule and read an excerpt at http://bit.ly/FifteenYearsBlogTour.
**A Tywebbin Blog Tour
Kendra, welcome welcome! I’m so glad you’re able to join us today and I look forward to chatting more about the book. Please introduce yourself to the readers who don’t know you and then we’ll jump into things with the book.
-Tee
Readers…thanks for joining us!!
After you’ve had an opportunity to watch the video and read more about Kendra and the book, please share your thoughts on the initial question posed: Can children in foster care be affected their entire lives by their experiences even if they have obtained a level of success?
Does foster care experience affect your life?
Answer – Definitely, I think the effects of negative foster care IF treated properly can minimize the overall affect, but without care I think recipeients adjust differently. Succes may mean that mentally you have conquered some demons but emotionally you may still be trapped. And as a result it sets the pace for how you envision and live your life
I could not hear the excerpt at work, but I will answer the question: I think that everything affects kids, regardless of their level of successful, I cannot tell you the numbers of uber successful people who are still plagued by feelings of abandonment for being in foster care or adopted. Also, so many are still bound by other issues that it would seem based on their success they are over. We are all a composite of our experiences and the messages we received, good, bad or indifferent. Me thinks~ no me knows, speaking from my own experiences with other issues~
angelia
I agree Angelia,
Everyone harbors ill-will towards things that happened in their past, big or little, no matter if we turn out to be a success or turn out to be somewhat of a failure. I think it’s human nature. These things that happen will either push you to be better or worse. In the meantime, you’ll still feel some way about it.
What Angelia Said
Hi Kendra…thank you for joining for RAW today. I’m looking forward to reading Fifteen Years. To answer the question….sure….I think they can be affected throughout their lives. As in Josiah case…..he loved his mother but she didn’t nurture him in any way….maybe that caused some trust issues with people.
Tee and RAW….thanks for featuring me. I’m loving the responses so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing what others have to say. It’s amazing how those things implanted in us in our most impressionable years can either haunt or bless us all the way into adulthood…
Hi Tee and Kendra!
Yes, I do think they can be affected their entire lives. It doesn’t necessarily have to be negative though. I have a family member who was raised in childcare. He’s a great dad to his children and I think part of that comes from him wanting his kids to have a better life than he did. Of course he has some feelings of emptiness from time to time, dealing with thoughts of his parents [who are both deceased]. However, his faith in God and the love and support of people around him has allowed him to become a strong man. He is a military veteran and currently working in the civilian sector.
This is great, sis. I always wondered if folks are either at one extreme or the other in regards to their adoption. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who fell in the middle. Either they accepted it and didn’t really seek out the whys or they threw it up whenever they thought about it and had the desire to find out more about the birth family.
Okay, I’m back and will ditto what has been said already. I was adopted at 8 (with my twin sister) and though most of my experiences with my adoptive family and in the foster care system wasn’t bad, I do know it all shapes you.
I think a lot of adopted kids feel some form of abandonment, but I can’t remember ever feeling any of that. Yes, sometimes when filling out medical history of my family, I wonder a bit, but I’ve just always accepted how things worked out. I was blessed and have always known it.
Tee, I never knew you were adopted. You are truly a living testament that it can all work out fine by the grace of God. I personally know of several adults who spent much of their childhood in the care of the State. I even have family members (cousins) who were placed in that situation. And from the examples that I have seen, I know that it can go either way. Children who are placed in situations like Josiah Tucker’s in “Fifteen Years” can come rise from the ashes with an extreme determination to succeed, or they can come through with an extreme determination to self-destruct. And I do believe that a personal relationship with Christ can be the deciding factor in which direction the scales tip.
I helped raise a young lady and even though we didn’t go through the adoption process she has issues. I agree that things we go thru in our youth defintely change our future. I know it is hard but we have to work to understand the circumstances around the adoption or alternative living arrangements.
Tee,
Thank you for hosting Kendra Norman-Bellamy on RAWSistaz today!
My oldest sister is adopted, when our parents were alive the quickest way to get on their bad side was for some one to say something negative about her or the fact she was adopted. I think we all have affected by our childhod adopted or not. How we deal with the situation is what makes us a strong or a weak adult.
In Josiah case it was about not being or feeling love, after he was tken from the Smiths, no matter who we are, whom we are raised by knowing you a re love makes a big ddifference.
Hi Kendra and the entire RAW family,
As an educator, I have witnessed a lot over the years. Children who are exposed to abuse whether physical, emotional or sexual often times carry that hurt and shame into their adult lives. If it is not dealt with, it tends to mainfest itself in their future relationships with others.
Children want and need to be loved and when that is missing, it doesn’t matter what level of achievement they reach in life, the void is oftentimes left unfilled.
I look forward to reading this book to learn more about Josiah’s story. I am also anxiously awaiting the sequel to 357.
Thanks Kendra for being here!!!! This is a great subject and close to my heart. Although, I was never in foster care, I was adopted at the age of 5 days old by parents who kept everyone’s relatives, foster children for the state and college students who couldn’t afford rooms in the dorms. I certainly feel foster children have issues because they are familiar with the family they are taken from and have to pretend, if only for a short while that everything is okay living with another family. They have feelings of abandonment. If the child is adoption eligible and the foster family doesn’t want to adopt them for whatever reason, they feel a second wave of abandonment. You have people who keep foster kids just for the money and the child has to deal with the effects of that issue. We are the sum of our experiences; good and bad. As an adoptee, I was mistreated by members of the family who claimed they could do what they wanted to me because I wasn’t their “relative”. I’ve had to overcompensate for the feelings of being adopted. I can imagine that a foster child would overcompensate as well to plug up the holes left by being removed from their parent(s)
Just wanted to stop in and thank you all again for hosting me and for participating in the discussion on the after-effects of foster care. The feedback was great and I thank everyone for posting your experiences and thoughts. I hope that you will enjoy reading Josiah Tucker’s story in “Fifteen Years.”
Continued blessings!
Kendra, thank YOU for joining us! I’ve added the book to my list and will let you know my thoughts.
-Tee