A Review: From Foster Care to Fabulous - The Self Improvement Blog

By Irene Conlan -

In Arizona we can choose a specialty license plate that says , ?It shouldn?t hurt to be a child.? I?ve always liked it because I believe childhood should be a time of laughter, learning and love ?but I didn?t realize the significance of the words. I was not aware of the problems that confront foster children in this country (and probably anywhere foster children are found). Those words take on new meaning for me since reading about Capri Cruz in her new book, ?From Foster Care to Fabulous.

This book is her story ??? a story of abandonment, abuse, instability and all the confusion and pain that goes with being taken from your parents and being moved from one abusive foster home to another. But Cruz doesn?t throw a gigantic pity party ??? she writes about both personal and professional triumph as she moves, as she says ?from foster care to fabulous.?

And she IS fabulous.

I see her book as a love letter to those children who are still struggling in the foster care system. She puts her hand out to them and that hand is filled with gifts? ?? the gifts of love, hope, information, advice, wisdom and so much more.? She metaphorically? puts her arms around them and holds them close as she tells them those things that she wishes she had known through her dark years. She encourages them not to despair, not to? quit. She knows them. She understands them. She loves them.

She has included wonderful exercises to help foster children survive and, perhaps thrive. And she has given all of us wonderful lists of affirmations, encouragements, and meaningful sayings that help anyone who reads them ratchet up their thinking to a more positive level. She has tried to tell them what no one bothered to tell her.

She has been transparent in this book and let the world see the rawness of her abuse, her own destructive behavior in trying to cope, her mistakes and poor judgment and her intense suffering at the hands of foster parents and her own family. She has shown a side of foster care that most of us have never seen or heard about other than from a rare ?expos?? on the evening news that lets you believe the incident is an anomaly in the foster care system.

This is an important book with an important purpose? ?? helping foster children in a broken system survive and become productive, healthy adults.

Who should read it? Every child in the foster care system who is old enough? to read should be given this book. And then it should be made available to every case worker in every state?s child protective services, ?every foster parent, teachers? ?? especially those in elementary school but certainly teachers at all levels ??? law enforcement agencies, pediatricians, ?state legislators, child advocates, talk show hosts and anybody who ?gives a damn? about children. It should be put in the hands of everyone who wants to adopt a child for all the right reasons and it should be talked about on all the talk shows to help inspire loving, caring people to become foster parents.

There are loving, caring responsible foster parents out there who truly love their foster children. They should read this book and understand how valuable and how needed they are.

This is a book that needs to be read, discussed and then used as a call to action.? If you are blessed with money, buy as many copies as you can and hand them out to those who can make a difference in a broken system.

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Source: http://theselfimprovementblog.com/self-improvement/self-improvement-tips/a-review-from-foster-care-to-fabulous/

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