When I was taken into care, I was overwhelmed by the extreme range of emotions I felt at once. There was a mix of positive and negative ones, and a whole load I couldn’t describe or understand, never mind label them. I felt as though I was the only person to feel these feelings, and I’m sure others have felt that too, so I want to show you that that isn’t the case.
The overarching feeling was sadness. Going into the care system is one of the biggest disruptions that any child can experience. Everything changes quickly, there is no sense of control of any aspect of your life and the feelings of isolation and loneliness can be crippling. I was sad for what I’d lost and what I’d now miss out on.
My first placement was quite a distance from where my family and friends lived, I was upset about how my life had been flipped on its head in such a short space of time. This reinforced the feeling of fear, I was in an unfamiliar environment with strangers, and I worried about how my family felt without me at ‘home’.
I also felt massively angry at the world. I didn’t understand why this was happening to me, I wanted it to stop and none of it felt fair. I was angry at my family because they couldn’t meet my needs and that is why I was in this situation. I was completely baffled as to how they could do this to me. I had an internal battle with this anger for years, it took a very long time for me to rationalize this. However, it is perfectly natural and completely okay to feel anger at the situation, after all, life as you know it has been ripped away, any body has the right to be angry about that.
Looking back and knowing what I know now, and how the rest of my journey through the system panned out, I do wish I could tell myself not to feel this, but in part I was happy. Being moved away gave me a sense of hope for the future that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope that it would all be different, hope that I could change the path I was on and create a more positive life for myself, hope that I could be genuinely happy again.
But from the happiness, stemmed the guilt. Why should I feel happy, relieved even, to be away from my family? I also felt incredible guilt over the fact it had come to this; that my family life had fallen to pieces to the point I became a looked after child. I felt guilt because I blamed myself for what happened. If I’d just been better behaved, listened more, helped more at home, could this have been avoided? The feeling of guilt over the situation stuck with me for a long time even after I left local authority care, it was like a weight that always held me back, a shadow cast over everything I did or anything positive in my life.
The anger and the guilt impacted my life for the entirety of my time as a looked after child. I blamed myself for what had happened. I felt guilty for the anger and angry for feeling guilty. It was confusing for my already overloaded young brain and made it harder to deal with everything else that was happening in my life.
As I left care, moved on and began creating a life of my own on my own, I was able to deal with these feelings and I came to the personal conclusion that whilst the anger is understandable, you can feel as angry as you want for as long as you want, but there comes a time where portioning blame, whether that be towards yourself or someone else, becomes so exhausting that it can stop you from healing and moving on. That is why I had to forgive what I felt, let it go and leave it behind me to enable myself to enjoy my life now.
The guilt was the hardest to overcome. The blame I placed on myself was so heavy I couldn’t enjoy my life in the way a young girl should be doing. It took me a long time and more heartache than most people could cope with but eventually I was able to deal with this too.
From this I learnt something that I wish every child in care and care leaver could be reminded of and understand. It is not your fault you went into care, and it never ever will be. No matter what you think you did to cause it or could have done to prevent it , you were a child who needed to be protected and nothing you did has led to the situation you find yourself in. The blame doesn’t have to lie with anyone, but it unquestionably does not lie with you.
At the time I was confused about everything I was feeling, after all, this was completely alien to me, as it is to us all. I didn’t know if I was feeling the ‘right’ way. But there is no right way to feel, all experiences of the care system are relative, and whether you’re happy, sad, scared or angry, your feelings are entirely valid and worth listening to.
Thank you for reading,
Rhianna x
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