How My Story Sparked a Lifetime of Advocacy for Foster Youth
Personal Perspective: Even if placed in a "good home," the trauma of separation doesn’t go away.
Updated September 1, 2025 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina
When I was just 15 months old, my mother, an Argentinian immigrant living in Lower Manhattan, was struggling with severe mental health challenges and the crushing weight of raising a child in a foreign country. In her desperation, she sought help. She believed she was walking into a city-run child welfare center where she could temporarily place me in safe hands until she got the support she needed.
But what she didn’t understand was that she had entered a privately run adoption services agency. That day, she unintentionally signed away her parental rights. And in a single moment, my mother and father lost their daughter, and I was swept into the foster care system.
My father had been out of town, and when he returned a few days later, the depths of my mother’s mental illness, the language barrier, and what she had done made it nearly impossible for him to move forward with the marriage . The spell of romantic chemistry had faded, and the reality of having to raise not just one, but two children (my mother was also pregnant at the time) was too much.
I would not see my mother again for 30 years. I would not see my father again for over 40 years.
From that moment, my life was shaped by foster care, adoption policy, caseworkers, and courtrooms. I was sent to live with a foster family in Long Island, New York. At age 6, I was told I would go live with relatives in Buenos Aires and was given a passport. A year later, I was told that wasn’t happening, and I remained in my foster home. At age 7, I was adopted by a family just one town over. While I was fortunate to receive love and care in both homes, the emotional wounds from my abrupt separation and early years of uncertainty ran deep.
What nobody told me about foster care is that even when you’re placed in a "good home," the trauma of the separation doesn’t go away. You carry the rupture in your body, a feeling of anxiety like the rug had been pulled out from under you, and could be pulled out again at any time.
You may be surrounded by people who care, but more often than not, there remains a feeling of being “genetically alone” and a confusion about who you are and where you belong. You wonder why the people who gave you life are no longer in it. And as with most early trauma, a child will believe they are at fault, or “there must be something wrong with me,” because “why would any parent give away their baby?” This is the deep-rooted grief that has haunted me for years.
Throughout my young adult life, I realized I wasn’t alone. So many foster and adopted children and adults were carrying the same pain, the same unanswered questions, the same need to feel seen and heard. That realization lit a fire within me.
In 2002, I decided to become a psychotherapist specializing in foster care and adoption and opened a mental health practice in Los Angeles.
My mission: re-imagining how we counsel and care for people in all aspects of the foster and adoption constellation by removing the secrecy, shame , and negative stigma associated with the process. I wanted to take all the pain, confusion, and hurt I experienced and create a pathway to healing for others.
I began working with children, many of whom were just like me: trying to survive the chaos of separation, abandonment, and loss. Through our sessions, I developed age-appropriate tools they could use to express their emotions, i.e., The Anger Bag, The Sad Bag, My Question Box, Grief Mailbox, and The Shamewich. These simple, hands-on tools became lifelines for children who didn’t yet have the words to explain what they were feeling. I self-published a guidebook based on these tools. It circulated through mental health and social worker communities, schools, and foster family networks. Most recently, I turned it into a professional manual: The Traumatized and At-Risk Youth Toolbox .
This work led to a position training social workers at the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), helping them understand the emotional world of foster children from an insider’s perspective. Today, I continue that mission as a trainer for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.
But I didn’t stop there.
I founded a nonprofit named in honor of my birth mother, Celia Barbosa. Our mission is to support the entire constellation of foster care and adoption, including birth families, adoptees, foster youth, adoptive parents, and professionals. We offer community programs, therapeutic conferences, and parent training, and provide continuing education training for adoption and foster care competency.
All of this is fueled by one truth: Every child needs to know they are wanted, loved, and supported. Today, as per the Adoption Council (2025), there were 343,077 children in foster care on the last day of Fiscal Year 2023.
So, if I can help even one child feel understood... if I can empower one parent to better support their child’s healing... if I can educate a psychotherapist in foster care-informed care… and advocate for one policy change that prevents another mother from losing her child because of a language barrier...
Then the pain I endured was not in vain.
Adoption Council. (2025). Foster care and adoption statistics . National Council for Adoption.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2025). How many kids are in foster care?
USAFacts. How Many Kids Are in Foster Care?
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Jeanette Yoffe, M.A., LMFT, is a trauma therapist, former foster youth, author, and advocate who blends clinical expertise with lived experience to help children and families heal from the wounds of foster care and adoption.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.