Reply #25: My daughter was in foster care for almost 5 years.

[wellstone dem]

I adopted her when she was 9. She was abused and neglected by her straight parents and/or the caretakers they left her with. At the time she was placed with me she might have cared about being adopted by a gay parent or couple, but that would only have been because she hadn't lived in that kind of family before. She was scared to be adopted by anyone. Now she wouldn't care.

As to wanting to be out of foster care? At the time she probably would have said no. Just as she didn't want to leave her foster parents or her birth parents because "at least I knew what life with them was like." Now she tells me she would have wanted to leave them if she had known how different her life could be.

And just so folks know there can be a good ending. My daughter is 17, she is working, she just got a 43 out of 42 on her first math test in her senior year (math is her hardest subject, and she answered the extra credit questions), and she is planning on going to college next year. She is kind, compassionate, and progressive. Oh, and she's opinionated too. (She once thanked me for not hitting her when she disagreed with me. :-( I told her that was the way life was supposed to be, but that it would be ok if she disagreed with me a little less. :-) ) She has had unbelievable struggles as she has faced what happened to her as a child, and as she has had to learn with the emotional scars that come from abuse. But she beat the odds.

I am SO PROUD of her.