Episode 1: Introduction

In this episode, Joe shares a recent event that demonstrates the long term impact foster care has had on his life.  Renee and Joe speak with Guillermo Meixueiro, youth advisor and Foster Care Alum, and discuss the challenges and emotional complexities faced by children in the foster care system. They reflect on the discomfort of navigating life without proper guidance, emphasizing how the lack of support exacerbates feelings of isolation and unworthiness. The conversation touches on the long-lasting impact of these experiences, particularly in shaping identity and resilience. Despite the difficulties, they highlight the potential for these struggles to become a source of strength, advocating for compassion and understanding as essential tools for healing and personal growth. The discussion ends with an empowering message of hope for those who have endured similar challenges.

Transcript

(0:03 - 0:20)
Hi, I'm Joe Toles. Growing up in the foster care system, working within it, and single-handedly raising eight teens adopted from the foster care system has given me a unique view into that world. My reputation for working to keep children connected, healthy, and happy with families who love them is important to me.

(0:20 - 0:42)
Who I am today is a far cry from what my circumstances might have dictated. To start, I had to navigate my own childhood hurdles to become the athlete, father, and therapist I am today. Together with Child Advocate Specialist, Renee Damon, and our guest, I will highlight the issues that impacted me on my journey, issues that are most likely impacting children and families today.

(0:42 - 1:16)
Join us as we examine my first steps out of the starting blocks and into the race. Introduction. As I stand amongst the noteworthy crowd surrounded by Olympians, politicians, and business leaders, there's a surreal disbelief that I find myself worthy enough to attend a memorial service honoring a distinguished statesman, coach, and mentor, a man who earned my presence.

(1:17 - 1:50)
Despite the accolades and successes that have marked my journey, I can't shake the nagging questions that persist. Why am I here? How did I get here? And most annoying, how can I be standing among my accomplished peers and yet feel like an imposter? There's a peculiar discomfort that watches over me when I find myself in the company of those from a time when I wasn't so sure of myself. It's a journey back to the emotions and thoughts associated with that period, and it's both disconcerting and exhausting.

(1:51 - 2:17)
Intellectually, I can rationally qualify my worth. But emotionally, I've spent a lifetime standing on the wrong side of the velvet rope, never feeling deserving or certain that I belong, even when wrapped in my successes. No matter what heights I reach or accomplishments I attain, the persistent feeling of inadequacy remains, a haunting echo from the insecurities of my childhood in foster care.

(2:18 - 2:42)
The patterns of silence, submissiveness, and invisibility ingrained during those formative years continue to cast a long shadow over my sense of self. Returning to this place, filled with both wonderful and painful memories, evokes a conflicted sense of being home. I spent four years competing, growing up, and nurturing my ever-evolving identity here.

(2:43 - 3:14)
Even a snowstorm attempting to block my return couldn't prevent my presence, a testament to the importance of honoring the stability Coach Rosen and Auburn University provided in my life. The uneasiness I feel reminds me of a photograph taken of me as I stood in the hallway of my former high school, a frozen moment in time that paints a deceptive portrait of normalcy and well-adjustment. In that snapshot, I stand poised, a veneer of composure masking the profound impact of my lived experiences.

(3:14 - 3:34)
It's a peculiar image to me, a still frame that betrays the turmoil beneath the surface. On the exterior, I project an image of a high school student-athlete seamlessly navigating the corridors of adolescence. I appear well-adjusted, allegedly fitting into the expected mold of teenage life and experiences.

(3:35 - 3:56)
Yet the photograph conceals a truth that runs deeper than the captured moments suggest. It doesn't peel back the layers to reveal the emotional turbulence, the scars of trauma, or the internal conflicts that were my constant companions. It doesn't capture the silent struggles, the self-doubt, or the identity crisis that marked those formative years.

(3:57 - 4:36)
In this snapshot, the impact of my experiences remain hidden, cloaked in the facade of normal The image, perhaps unintentionally, perpetuates the narrative of a life untouched by adversity. Yet despite the conflict of the captured moment, I keep it as a tangible reminder of a version of myself I wished for people to see. And so, despite the impact of my experiences, the photograph endures as a paradox, confirmation to the art of concealment, a visual contradiction to the intricate tapestry of my internal struggles.

(4:37 - 5:02)
It raises questions about the stories we tell through images and the complexities that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary moments. In the quiet corridors of memory, that photograph remains a silent reminder of the intricate dance between appearance and reality. In this contemplative view of the image, I acknowledge the yearning of a version of myself unmarked by the disruptions of foster care.

(5:03 - 5:31)
It becomes a symbol of the ongoing journey to reconcile the aspirations of who I could be with the complexities of who I am, shaped by a history that is both painful and transformative. What the picture doesn't show is the me I believed I was, but more significantly, the me I thought the world would see. It doesn't show the me that lived in the shadows, away from the pity, away from the shame, away from the truth.

(5:32 - 6:00)
This is the current conflict I find myself in decades later, in a room of people who only know a fraction of who I am and only understand how our shared experience binds us together. This neatly packed package of self-doubt and uncertainty, a product of my past, remains a constant companion on the journey of self-discovery. It's a weight that I carry, an intricate part of the narrative that has shaped the person I am today.

(6:01 - 6:38)
Despite the desire to shed its burden, this package is inseparable from my identity, validation of the enduring impact of those early experiences. As I grapple with the past while planted in the present, I'm confronted with the uncertainty of whether the truth of my lived experiences was just my truth or a shared reality. Having been raised in the era of children should be seen and not heard, a pervasive culture of secrets, and the suffocating shame that kept people in line, I was molded into a perfect soldier, silent, compliant, and invisible.

(6:39 - 7:00)
The one certainty I hold is that, back then, I wouldn't have been ready for the truth. Even now, the readiness remains uncertain, for the truth of those years, if fully embraced, could shatter the fragile foundation on which I was built. In a space that holds yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I make a choice.

(7:01 - 7:30)
As I have done so many times as a track and field athlete, I choose to respond to the call of the starter. As he commands, runners take your mark, I get into position as I carry with me all my preparation and experiences for the event before me. As he commands set, I position and brace myself in the starting blocks as I listen for the signal that it is my time, and only my time, to remember who I am and why I am here.

(7:30 - 7:48)
At the sound of the starter's gun, I am out of the starting blocks and into the race. Unlike the many races of my past, this one includes no competitors. This race is about healing, this race is about understanding, and this race is about helping.

(7:48 - 8:15)
This race is about one man's journey through the foster care system, and how that experience continues to mold me into who I am today. Our guest today is youth advisor and foster care alum, Guillermo Mejero. A lot of foster youth, a lot of the time they don't really have that, that, um, that foothold in life.

(8:16 - 9:07)
You know what I mean? They're not going out, they're not running, a lot of them, they're not on debate teams, they're just trying to get through it. So what advice do you have for those foster youth who feel almost like their normality makes them even less, because they're actually in foster care, right? Yeah, well the whole part of this piece was that, that's exactly how I felt. You know, I had all of the surrounding pieces that from anybody else's perspective would say, wow, he's all together, he has made it, he's got all of these successes.

(9:08 - 10:12)
But the point of this sort of introduction is that I didn't feel it, I didn't own it, I didn't feel like I was worthy because of my experiences in foster care. I grew up in foster care 21 years and, you know, this was a portion of my life where I was lucky enough to have a talent and somebody else saw that I had a talent and it led to a scholarship to Auburn University where I did well, but I did well as an outsider from my perspective. And so to answer that question is more importantly, I think is, I mean, it's certainly important for foster youth to feel those things.

(10:12 - 10:37)
So just as you said, I was just surviving, you know, but I had a whole different environment to survive in. It's what other people do. And so one of the major reasons that I got to where I was was because I had a coach who discovered me, who saw me, and he believed in me.

(10:37 - 11:05)
If it were not for that interaction from outside of my home, from outside of, you know, my peers, that one man made it possible for me to get where I got without the knowledge that I was in foster care. He didn't know everything that was going on with me. I don't think he knew that I was in foster care until late in life.

(11:05 - 11:31)
And so a lot of what I did was to sort of please him. I had a purpose, right? I had a person, I had somebody to, you know, I don't think impress is the right word, but somebody that I cared what he thought. And so that gave me motivation to follow what he believed in, what he saw in me.

(11:34 - 11:49)
So there was no magic there. I was in that room, but as he says, I wasn't in that room. I was too still busy thinking about myself as a child and how I wasn't deserved to be there.

(11:50 - 12:13)
The coach that I had in college, Mel Rosen, deserved my presence because of what he did for me. But he had no idea I was in foster care either. So he, you know, he provided some structure that enabled me to sort of grow and be part of that whole experience, which was a wonderful experience.

(12:14 - 12:47)
If I could remember it all, it would even be better because I wasn't present. Right. And so often, you know, Guillermo, when you ask that question, so often those feelings of, why am I here? And that imposter and the turmoil beneath the surface and that self-doubt, even when somebody from the foster care system gets that foundation like Joe got, it doesn't take away all those internal feelings that you have been feeling going through the system and going through the foster care system of what they feel.

(12:47 - 13:37)
And as Joe said, and I've often said too, sometimes it just takes that one person, just that one person to get that fire within you and give you something to focus on other than all of this. But that's still going on inside of you, right? I mean, and Joe shares that within the video of even going through all these things and running track and being quite the track star and still having all of that other stuff still sitting in the pit of your stomach and internally working through all of that. And I think that one of the biggest things that Joe and I want to do is look at that and look at that journey and the effect that it has on your whole life going through, even into your adulthood, trying to figure stuff out.

(13:38 - 14:08)
There was a couple of things that were said, the silent, compliant and invisible. How often does someone feel like that in foster care? And I'm going to put it back on you, Guillermo, because you're in the system and you're getting to that point where I think that you've aged out. I don't know what that looked like, but I'm sure that you could relate to a lot of the stuff that was said in that video as well.

(14:08 - 14:46)
One hundred percent, especially the sense of silence. The one thing that I wanted to hit on, you put this amazing, excuse me, Chevron about it, that dichotomy of being able to look at this picture, which you are a strong person, but it's almost like a secret to yourself, right? You being able to kind of look at that picture and say, no, I did. It was it was an assed up time, right? There is a silent pain, to be honest with ourselves.

(14:47 - 15:19)
There comes a point where you're tired of crying out, right? You're tired of being helped, right? So it becomes a fear at some point, as Joe had put it perfectly, that there's points where you do have to become that perfect soldier, because if you're not that perfect soldier, you get beat up. I feel like a lot of myself personally, but a lot of foster youth as well, had to act fake in real circumstances. They had to put on a mask.

(15:19 - 15:49)
You know, personally, when I was when I was put into group homes, you get sized up, right? That's the first thing the kids are. Other kids are kind of looking at you like, like, what what can we get out of it? Because that's the mentality we're, you know, and it's not to blame them when you're put in a in a situation that's almost feel like you are when you're treated like a prisoner, you're going to act like a prisoner. Right.

(15:49 - 16:04)
I think one thing that I'm starting to realize, especially with this whole personal journey I'm going on now, is that it's OK to be yourself. It's it's it's OK. Right.

(16:04 - 16:17)
And it sounds so simple. It's not simple because you you reference, you know, sort of that sort of jail, the institutional jail. But there's also the jail that we create for ourselves.

(16:18 - 16:38)
And so when you talk about this, it's and I tried to get this across in this piece is that I was always looking outside of the present. Right. So I was evaluating where I should be, why I should be there.

(16:39 - 17:11)
Not really able to just be yourself and relax and enjoy the the moment. So part of what you might perceive, what you might assume was like, oh, you're a competitor and you got to do this and you got to go to college and you got to do all of this. Celebration that I saw other people engage in around those things was not a celebration that I participated in.

(17:11 - 17:32)
And so if I participated in those celebrations, it was as an actor. Because I didn't feel like I had the right or I didn't feel like I had the people around me. You know, there's a couple of things that, you know, my my nobody came to my graduation.

(17:33 - 17:49)
And as this story unfolds, some of those stories are going to come out. But there are big moments in my life where people would have celebrated greatly. Families would have celebrated greatly.

(17:50 - 17:59)
But I was alone in that moment and I didn't know how to celebrate. And so there was nobody to celebrate for me. Wow, that's powerful.

(18:00 - 18:18)
That's powerful. And I think, obviously, I think that's that's something that a lot of foster youth go through. A lot of our achievements are not talked about enough.

(18:19 - 18:28)
It's amazing. Thank you so much for saying that. And it's it's almost it's almost like a an impossible hole to fill.

(18:29 - 18:55)
Because even when people were celebrating it, I never felt like it was it. This can't be for me. And and and the piece, the point that I want to get across to kids that might be listening to this and anybody who, you know, sort of feeling out of place with themselves is that I'm writing about an event.

(18:57 - 19:10)
Forty years after I was in foster care. That was my feeling as a grown adult. This is only that that event being in that that space was only just a few years ago.

(19:11 - 19:16)
And so it doesn't go away. We have to learn to manage it. We have to learn.

(19:16 - 19:33)
I mean, I you know, I would like to think that I'm a stable adult most of the time. Although my kids might disagree with you. But it's it's it's not it's not it's not a snap of a finger and it goes away.

(19:34 - 19:48)
So these are things that that I continually have to manage as I walk into a room. You know, it used to be a longer process and might have been a process where I wouldn't walk into the room. It took me a time to walk into the room.

(19:48 - 20:03)
I can walk into the room now and quickly. Dismiss those feelings and and and and grab on to my worth. Right.

(20:03 - 20:21)
And to but but, you know, 21 years of being in foster care or five years or two years, it doesn't really matter. Those experiences get really like tattooed into you. Right.

(20:21 - 20:43)
And there's no process to remove all of that ink, that stain from those experiences. One of the things I tell kids often is I think it's extremely important for kids to know that somebody cried before them. And I think it's extremely important for them to understand that somebody suffered before them.

(20:43 - 21:19)
But the most important message is they need to know that somebody survived before them. So that they can, you know, if if I can be an example of survival of the foster care system. If I could teach people who are not part of the foster care system to focus in on helping people embrace a feeling of survival and, you know, resilience and moving forward.

(21:20 - 21:47)
Although these things happened, I still have the ability to be and do and create what I want to. Yeah. And how often I ran into that with the youth that I worked with in residential, you know, and Guillermo, you said something that just really hit on my stomach with, you know, they put you in a jail-like environment.

(21:48 - 22:27)
You're going to act like a prisoner. But again, as Joe was explaining and you, and my experience with working with kids in care and in residential is that, yeah, it looked like a prison and it felt like a prison. And they had that double whammy and that extra heaviness because they've already put themselves in that internal jail, right? So how important it was for me working with kids in residential and in the foster care system to exactly what Joe just said, like, there is a space for you.

(22:28 - 22:44)
And yes, all of this happened to you. And yes, it's awful in that process of going through that to be able to grab onto something. And like I said, sometimes it just takes that one person to, oh, I can do this and I can push forward.

(22:45 - 23:21)
And I still hear from foster care kids that I worked with from years ago that are like, Ms. Damon, why am I still feeling like this? Why is this still in the pit of my stomach? I just graduated from Cornell and I feel so alone. And we have those conversations. And again, it's so important because in the beginning, when you're processing this and going through this and looking at your life and your years in foster care and then going like, where do I go from here? And what is my space in this world and my purpose? And it gets easier.

(23:21 - 23:29)
And I've seen that with the youth that I worked with that have gotten older, like, oh, my gosh, this is so hard. This is so hard. And I can't walk into that room.

(23:29 - 23:57)
And now they can walk into a room, they have to take a minute and make that shift like, I do belong here and it's OK. But I think that internal stuff and relating that to the way that it felt being in residential care and feeling like a jail and then also kind of like putting that together with the jail that, Foster Youth Joe, you put yourself in as well. So there's that extra heaviness that goes along with it.

(23:57 - 24:12)
And it's so important to the people that are working with youth in foster care to understand that. And there's so many that don't. I think it's hard for society to to sort of deal with it because it's not a really quick fix.

(24:12 - 24:29)
And we do as a society deal with and I'm going to change the I'm going to put kids in foster care in a different category. I'm going to put them in the category of underdog. And we do deal well with that when it's related to sports.

(24:29 - 24:47)
And you know where we really, really do well? When they're superheroes. And you can I can list all day I can list all of these superheroes that either lost their parents, grew up in foster care, were adopted. And we celebrate them because they have a superpower.

(24:48 - 25:14)
And it would be much easier for a society to deal with kids in foster care if they had a superpower. And if you stretch my ability to run into my superpower, although there was a secret, I had a secret identity, right? I didn't want people to know that I was a foster child. And so they everybody sort of labeled me as, you know, a track star.

(25:14 - 25:25)
So I had a superpower. People can get get around that. They can deal with that, right? Um, I suggest that each one of us has a superpower.

(25:26 - 25:55)
And it doesn't have to be to the extent of getting a scholarship to, you know, a college or university. Being able to identify something that you connect to, do well and enjoy is a piece that I think just a lot of kids have an issue with sort of embracing that. And adults, every child has something that's special about them.

(25:56 - 26:11)
And it's I think it's our responsibility as adults to help that child find out what that is. And the only way you can do that is if you feel seen. People have to see you.

(26:11 - 26:32)
They have to interact with you. They have to hear you to be able to say, you know what, you're really good at this. I spent my life in education based on that, like helping people find their place, finding their bliss, moving forward, going to college or not going to college.

(26:33 - 26:54)
But I and and I was a track coach for a billion years. And, you know, the celebration of the person on my team who was the slowest and just ran their personal best meant just as much to me as anybody who would break a record. And they knew it.

(26:55 - 27:01)
I hope they knew it. I mean, they told me they knew it. But it's really important for us to to meet people where they're at.

(27:02 - 27:13)
Everybody, everybody has something special about them. It's hard sometimes to identify what that was. I love that so much, this idea that everybody has that superpower.

(27:15 - 27:26)
And honestly, I agree with that so much when you say you don't have a superpower in your foster care. It's just that, you know, it's just it's it's a sad thing. Right.

(27:26 - 27:52)
And one thing that as a society that we do not kind of address is once things start getting sad, it's uncomfortable. Right. But us as people who have been in the system, people working people in the system, we start to understand that our comfortable is uncomfortable.

(27:53 - 28:00)
Right. It becomes a point where we're in that we're in that jail cell. We're in that jail cell.

(28:01 - 28:23)
And when we finally are able to grab the key for ourselves, let us let ourselves out, you come outside and you're scared. You're so scared. You're like, well, it's going on and you you recede right back into that jail cell because that's the only hope you've known.

(28:23 - 28:30)
Right. And that is that is such a sad thing, you know, that is so depressing. Right.

(28:30 - 28:38)
But it's a reality. It's something that we have to as a society, we have to address that. That is such a true statement.

(28:38 - 28:45)
It's like uncomfortable is my comfort. It's limited. It's it's limiting.

(28:45 - 28:50)
But it's but it's a reality. It becomes dangerous. Right.

(28:51 - 29:10)
Because you you get so comfortable with the uncomfortable and usually the uncomfortable you don't realize it's almost it's almost you know, it almost seems it's almost like a silent killer. Right. I don't want to put such intense language to it.

(29:11 - 29:25)
But yeah, you know, the other day I had a panic attack. I used to think that panic attacks were just a moment where I would just breathe in and breathe out a lot, hyperventilate. Right.

(29:26 - 29:56)
But that moment where I was hyperventilated and then my body started getting numb and I was home by myself. I thought I was having a heart attack. But it became a moment after, you know, obviously, after I went I went past that, it became a moment where I was like, there's something wrong, right? There's obviously something wrong because I'm in this household where I should feel comfortable.

(29:56 - 29:58)
And then that's what I kind of noticed.

(30:00 - 30:25)
I don't feel comfortable. I feel uncomfortable, but I'm comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, so I'm not able to even address it. Right, and you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself because what you said was I should be comfortable here and because I'm not comfortable here there must be something wrong with me, and that's just not how the world works.

(30:27 - 31:08)
I mean, I think everybody could be able to relate to being uncomfortable in a place where they should imagine that they shouldn't feel uncomfortable. Did I say that right? I don't know if I said that right, but I think you got the point, right? That's not unique, right, to just anybody. What compounds everything is your experience and how you've been taught or not taught to deal with those uncomfortable experiences, and what's missing for a lot of kids in foster care is there's no guidance.

(31:09 - 31:19)
You're figuring this out by yourself. There's nobody saying, you know, Joey, you shouldn't feel like this way. This is what you can do.

(31:19 - 31:44)
There was none of that advice and that sort of guidance to lead me to another solution, and so I was stuck and continued to drag that with me. I'm sure that those issues as I, you know, I'm 65 now and these are still issues for me. I handle them very well and don't try to take advantage of them because that doesn't work.

(31:45 - 31:59)
But when I was younger it didn't work. I had to learn the skills to be able to navigate the world in a healthy way for myself. And so now I have a voice and I have power because I know those are my issues.

(32:00 - 32:11)
And I know that they're not going to go away, but don't screw with me. Because they have now become a superpower. Right.

(32:12 - 32:22)
I love that so much. I just want to bring it back one more time. I mean, that's such a strong image.

(32:22 - 33:02)
The image that you invoked when you were speaking about the picture, right? You just standing there solemnly. Well, I don't think you solemnly, but that's what came into my mind. But having so much behind there, right? I wanted to ask, is there ever a point where you're able to look at that and kind of see its beauty, right? Because a natural dichotomy, I mean, it's a little storybook, right? You're talking about appreciation.

(33:04 - 33:23)
And so my appreciation for my experiences and the things that I've been through has grown as I get older, as I get more comfortable. So, yes, that's why I talk about that picture. I like that picture because I like it.

(33:25 - 33:51)
Because it looked normal, right? It looked normal. And I like seeing myself look normal. That wasn't my perception when I was younger, right? But now I can look at it and say, I can identify resilient moments in my life that I never thought were resilient moments.

(33:51 - 34:03)
But now, as I look back, I can say, wow, you know, I was going through crap. But look at that picture. That picture was me being part of a team, being part of a community.

(34:04 - 34:21)
I just didn't know that I was. You know, I just I can't help but think how much society plays a role in that as well. Like Joe, not his coach, not knowing, nobody knowing he was in the foster care system.

(34:21 - 34:40)
And I think I know that's another piece of this just strikes me as awful. Like so often, so many children that are in the foster care system, again, adds another piece, Guillermo. So you feel like you're in jail, you're in residential.

(34:40 - 35:02)
You also have that internal putting yourself in jail. And then again, there's another layer of this. When you do get outside of that residential door and you're in a place where you should be able to be who you are, you still have that feeling of I can't say anything because there's so much stigma and judgment.

(35:02 - 35:08)
And oh, they're in foster care. They've got that kid right there. That's that stuff's going on with them.

(35:08 - 35:28)
And, you know, honestly, and that's our society. And that's the part that I just want to scream at the top of my nose. Yeah, you know, there's the, you know, reality TV, I think, is screwing with with the ability to be able to do that.

(35:28 - 35:48)
But when I was younger, I, you know, younger and aware. So, you know, early 20s, I used to say, damn you, Carol Brady, who was the mother of the Brady Bunch. Because everything that we were that I was presented with ended with a group hug or, you know, that was resolved in a half an hour.

(35:49 - 36:06)
And those were my my my life didn't work that way. And so I would watch these images and and and see that. And it's like I would imagine that, I mean, you know, there were lots of behaviors that, like, I think, how could I even? It's like we're so stupid.

(36:07 - 36:33)
But I mean, I used to tell some it was a show that was on Here Comes the Brides, and there was an actress in way before you. And there was a there was an actress in there that I would I would tell everybody that was my mother. Because I had to feel like I made up things to make me feel like part of the world.

(36:33 - 36:53)
And I think, oh, my God, people must have looked out of my mind now. I think I'm like, I cringe over. Oh, my God, was I telling people really that? But I know that I was because she portrayed this character that I guess I thought would be like a mother.

(36:54 - 37:17)
So I had to even though I had a foster family, and that's a whole other issue, but that's for later episodes. But I had, I created this, this, this existence. And the pain of it all is I couldn't find out or connect or learn where the hell I came from.

(37:18 - 37:30)
And so we deal with that moving forward. Just like, who am I? Yeah, you know who everybody else is in my mind. Look, they have a family.

(37:31 - 37:33)
They have a mother. They have a father. They have brothers and sisters.

(37:33 - 37:38)
They look alike. They're, you know, they all have blonde hair. They all have whatever.

(37:38 - 37:57)
Who did I match with? And so growing up in a foster home with, you know, there were six biological, I mean, two biological kids in that family and four foster kids. And we didn't look and not just look. We had different last names.

(37:58 - 38:23)
It's like, so there was no natural connection that you could be, oh, you know, you take after your uncle, whoever, and you, you know, you get that from your dad or none of those things that ever, I heard everybody else messages that they were getting. I had to create my own messages. I think you just hit on something that is so, so important.

(38:24 - 38:31)
This idea of identity, right? And I think about it. That's my big thing. That's my big thing.

(38:31 - 38:46)
Yeah. Yeah. I remember that it was part of one of your answers during the panel that inspired me, honestly, but that's what our childhood is for, right? To build that identity.

(38:47 - 39:27)
So when you're, when you get into this disruptive scenario of being put into foster care, right, you, you, you, you pick that up, right? Like you say, you might, you might, there's times where you feel like an outcast. But the thing is, as a child, as an adult, you're put in that scenario, you just like, whatever, you know what I mean? Like, it's, I'll just keep on going. I can, I can, you have the broader mindset, but as a child, when you're put in that scenario and you see, oh, wait, I'm an outcast, it sticks with you.

(39:27 - 39:52)
As you, as you talk about that, I was thinking, and I was that kid who was placed from birth, always looking and wondering when my mother was going to come and get me. Like for, for, for 21 years, it became, it became a real issue. So, um, like, you know, one day somebody will come and claim me.

(39:55 - 39:59)
Yeah. Yeah. That just, I want to cry.

(40:00 - 41:13)
Um, do I, I, so many youth that I've worked with for over all these years, Guillermo shared that story more often than I cared to hear that they were present. Um, hearing their parents say that they did not want their child back, you know? Um, and my journey through this whole foster care system and having to be a part at one point in time of case planners, taking children out of the home, um, and them not understanding and hearing the parents don't bring them back, um, and working with those children and working with those youth and the challenge that was set in front of me of identifying some of their worth and, and that they, there is a space in this world for them and that they do matter. Um, and sometimes rewinding all of those tapes that a, a child has in their mind and, and filling them with new messages and, and new tapes to fill that inner peace that they so need to have.

(41:13 - 41:47)
But I can't tell you how many times I've witnessed it, how many times I've read it, how many times I've worked with children that, and, and what do you say to those kids? Like, you know, my own parents said they didn't want me there. They didn't want me, they didn't fight for me. Um, and I've also seen those youth grow into amazing people, um, with amazing families and switched through all of this going on in their life.

(41:47 - 42:08)
And, and all the self-doubt and all the things that Joe talked about in, in the video that we, um, watched, and it is a journey. Um, and people will be, go ahead, Joe. And I, and I suggest that although it may not make any sense today, that will be your superpower.

(42:09 - 42:31)
That will be your strength. Um, those, those, you know, if it doesn't destroy you, those scars will heal and they will make you a stronger person and hopefully a kinder person and a more observant person. Um, what we're missing in this world today, I think is a lot of compassion.

(42:32 - 42:51)
Um, if you, you, you know, I, I do what I do because I was built to do it. I was built to do this. So all of the, the loss and all of the trauma and all of the pain made me the person that I am today.

(42:52 - 43:27)
And although I couldn't say this, maybe when I was your age, I love myself and I love my mission. And when I lean into that mission, I am a better person. And so the purpose of this is to sort of help people understand these issues and hopefully inspire people to look at each other differently and let kids know that, that are going through this, that, um, there is hope it's going to look different for each one of us.

(43:28 - 43:47)
Um, but find those people that make the world seem hopeful. That's so much. I also, I want to add, especially to any entity, uh, that's out there that, um, that struggles with the same thing.

(43:48 - 44:01)
You are wanted. You've been listening to Out of the Starting Blocks and Into the Race. We want to thank you for joining us and especially a really special thank you to Pierre Mo for joining us today.

(44:01 - 44:14)
Thank you, Pierre. Um, yeah. And, you know, please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and you can also find a video version at JoeTolls.com, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

(44:15 - 44:23)
And remember the baggage we carry throughout our life is a lot lighter when we remember to make space for help.