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Kathryn Melaw
Kathryn Melaw entered the system in Boise, Idaho, at age 11 because of physical abuse she suffered in her home. Foster care gave Kathryn two choices—change yourself or change homes. From an early age, Kathryn knew changing herself wasn’t an option.
“I shouldn’t have to hide any part of me,” says Kathryn. “Some of my foster parents thought I was just going through a phase, that I would get over it. But I always felt like I needed to be a woman. I wanted to wear women’s clothing and grow my hair out.”
Kathryn’s first social worker did his best to find placements for her. But Kathryn also wishes that her social worker would have spent more time educating her foster parents about her needs rather than simply moving her to a different placement each time a problem arose. “Some of my foster parents would have been open to listening to the social worker,” says Kathryn. “They were very responsible people. Even though they were very committed to their own personal religious beliefs, I think they would have backed off if they had known that they were causing me emotional and spiritual harm.”
When she was 12, Kathryn’s foster parents required her to attend religious services for a faith she didn’t follow, and they forced her to enroll in counseling to “cure gay people.”
“A lot of my foster parents were so concerned about my religious beliefs and my sexuality that they didn’t care about what I did in school,” recalls Kathryn. “I got into fights. No one told me I needed to do my homework—so I didn’t do my homework.”
For Kathryn, poor performance in school wasn’t teenage rebellion—she simply didn’t know any other way.
“If you’re in foster care, you’re not there because you came from a good home environment—you’re in foster care because your parents had problems or couldn’t cope,” says Kathryn. “Especially if you enter foster care in your early teens, you carry assumptions your birth parents have given you. You need someone to show you how to live in society.”
The kind of thinking that seems like common sense to adults from supportive homes is not so obvious to youth whose formative years taught them to survive alone rather than to succeed in society. “I grew up thinking that if I was punished in school, I shouldn’t go to school," said Kathryn. "I grew up thinking if the homework was too hard I shouldn’t do it. I grew up thinking I shouldn’t ask for help, because no one wants to help.”
Despite many bad experiences, Kathryn did manage to make connections through groups and programs that supported her identity and her beliefs. These included the Youth Alliance for Diversity, which met weekly to give youth from a variety of backgrounds a chance to meet friends and mentors who openly shared their diverse backgrounds and lifestyles.
Now 20, Kathryn is transitioning from male to female. And on her next birthday, Kathryn will legally assume the female name by which all of her friends already know her. In a year, she will complete her business degree, and she is looking forward to pursuing her entrepreneurial dreams.
Someday Kathryn will become a foster mother herself, confident that her experiences in care will help her be the kind of nurturing parent she never found until she left the system. She knows that one of the best ways to change the system is to get involved—to join the other foster parents who offer love and support without judgment, who listen, and who try to understand the youth in their care.
And she knows that gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender foster parents who have faced discrimination and harassment are a natural fit for many youth in care, because they bring sympathy and understanding to those who have been traumatized in similar ways. Kathryn’s call to action? “We need more same-sex couples to get involved in foster care, and more foster parents who try to understand the youth they’re caring for.”
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