At nine in a foster home, I didn’t speak a word of English and cried every night. Everything was foreign—the language, the food, the rules, the people. I was alone in ways that nine-year-olds shouldn’t have to understand. Displaced. Frightened. Wondering if anyone would ever see me as more than just another foster kid passing through.
The foster mother was cold, but our neighbor noticed.
That’s the sentence that changes everything. Because it means someone was paying attention. Someone saw past the closed doors and the foster system bureaucracy and recognized that a child was struggling. That I was more than just a case number or a temporary placement. That I needed something the system wasn’t providing.
She brought me a backpack of new clothes, including the blue outfit in my only photo of her. Not hand-me-downs. Not charity shop finds. New clothes. Chosen specifically for me. Including that blue outfit that became the only tangible evidence I have of her existence. The only proof, captured in a single photograph, that someone cared enough to spend money on a foster kid who might not be there next month.
She shared snacks, drove me in her silver minivan, and made me feel safe for the first time in months. Small things. Simple things. But they were everything. Snacks meant someone thought about me between meals. Rides in the minivan meant someone was willing to take me places, to spend time with me, to incorporate me into her day. Safety meant someone saw how scared I was and actively worked to ease that fear.
Then I was moved—no goodbye, no address.
That’s how the foster system works sometimes. Kids disappear overnight. Get transferred to new placements without warning, without time to say goodbye, without any way for the people who cared about them to stay in contact. The neighbor probably woke up one day, looked for me, and found out I was gone. No forwarding address. No way to reach me. Just… gone.
Decades later, I still search for the woman who saw me when no one else did—who gave me warmth, care, and hope.
Decades. Not years. Decades of wondering. Of hoping to find her. Of wanting to say thank you to the person who made a few months of childhood bearable when everything else was cold and frightening and lonely. Of needing her to know that what she did mattered. That the backpack of clothes and the snacks and the rides in the silver minivan weren’t small gestures—they were lifelines.
She saw me when no one else did. The foster mother was cold—going through the motions, meeting legal requirements, but not providing warmth or care or the emotional support that children need. But the neighbor saw. Noticed. Understood that something was wrong and decided to intervene in whatever small ways she could.
She gave me warmth, care, and hope. Those three things. Warmth in a situation that was cold. Care in a system that often treats children as logistics rather than people. Hope that not everyone would overlook me, that I mattered to someone, that kindness still existed even when everything else suggested otherwise.
The photograph shows them together—a woman and a child in a blue outfit. Smiling. Connected. Proof that for a brief time, someone saw this nine-year-old foster kid and chose to care. Chose to buy clothes and share snacks and drive her places and make her feel safe.
And then the system moved me. No goodbye. No address. No way for this woman who’d been showing up, day after day, to continue showing up. Just an empty foster home and no information about where I’d gone or whether she’d ever see me again.
Decades later, I still search. Because how do you find someone when you were nine and didn’t know her last name? When you don’t remember the exact address? When all you have is a photograph of a woman in a setting you can’t quite place and memories of a silver minivan and snacks and feeling safe for the first time in months?
You search anyway. You post the photograph online hoping someone will recognize her. You tell the story hoping it will reach the right person. You keep looking because the alternative—never finding her, never saying thank you, never letting her know that what she did mattered—is unbearable.
She gave me warmth, care, and hope. At nine years old in a foster home, crying every night, unable to speak the language, feeling completely alone—she saw me. Really saw me. Not as a foster kid or a problem or a temporary situation, but as a child who needed someone to care.
And she did care. Showed up with a backpack of new clothes. Shared snacks like I was her own kid. Drove me around in her silver minivan. Made me feel safe for the first time in months. Gave me hope that even though my foster mother was cold, not everyone would be. That somewhere in the world there were people who would see me and decide I was worth caring about.
Then I was moved. And she never got to know what her kindness meant. Never got to hear that decades later, I’m still searching for her. Still hoping to find her and tell her: you mattered. You changed something. You gave a nine-year-old foster kid warmth and care and hope, and that nine-year-old never forgot.
The woman who saw me when no one else did. Who gave me those three things when I had none of them. Who proved that even in the coldest situations, someone might notice and care enough to act.
I still search for her. Decades later. Because some debts can never be repaid, but they can at least be acknowledged. Because she deserves to know that the backpack of clothes and the snacks and the silver minivan rides weren’t small acts of kindness—they were transformation. They were proof that I mattered. They were hope when hope was scarce.
And because maybe, just maybe, this time the story will reach her. And she’ll recognize herself in that photograph. And she’ll know that the nine-year-old she cared for never forgot. Never stopped being grateful. Never stopped searching for the woman who saw her when no one else did.