Faith. Because I have always had Faith.

What Happens to the Ones We Fail?

I can still hear her voice whenever I want to. Just like when we were sitting across from each other in the living room of the basement suite, after she’d snuck in through the back door late at night, excitedly getting me fully engaged in her story.

She taught me what I’d need to remember to stay alive this past handful of years on the streets. I’d forgotten, like all children of extreme abuse do, if they ever learn to overcome it.

She, and every kid I ever cared for, showed me in intimate detail what they lived through with their stories, beliefs, and behavior.

I had their files, studied their clinical conditions, understood the pathologies and pharmacological interventions they’d been assigned. I also had my own brain, life experiences, and specialized training.

While my degree was in Holistic Healthcare, I respected allopathic medicine and believed in the system as a caregiver. I never tried debating or debunking it. I didn’t feel that was my business to assert my beliefs upon them. I just listened to them and advocated to their doctors and social workers accordingly.

Conversations we had, which they will never remember, are permanently etched into the memory of my soul.

I know what my kids went through.

I know who put them through it.

Each of them were my greatest teachers and it’s through my genuine love of, love for, and love from each of “my children” that I “really do exist”. It’s been an emerging, because there is nobody more detached than I am. I had to learn—through considerable courage and conscious effort.

It’s not been easy and I’m certainly not dismissive. I have been through hell and back enough times to promise, it has not been a process I’ve developed in vain or in haste.

I expect Faith to be found again soon!

I’m willing to bet on it.

And until I see her in the real world, I retain fond memories of her in my mind.

I can still see her big smile and the crinkle of her nose as she’d push the glasses I got her up higher onto the bridge of her nose with one finger while telling me a story.

I appreciate feeling her image impose on mine as I write. She’s always with me.

Giggling. Talking. Explaining.

I’m in her blood. She is Me, too.

Like when my students in Germany realized I couldn’t see and took me to an optometrist after class one day, I recognized what she needed and managed it for her immediately without waiting for “permission”.

My kids and I will go forever without, if we let them dictate our lives.

There’s nearly never reasonable need for any delay. It usually takes less time to step into a problem as the solution, than it does to discuss it.

She was not with me for very long, though our relationship ran deep.

She and the little one would set each other off. They both had high needs and the office made me choose which one to keep and which one to let go of.

It wasn’t easy, but I believe I made the right decision. At least, I made the decision from a harm reduction perspective, and I stuck by my promise to protect the baby.

She’ll probably never forgive me for not choosing her to keep once their living together was no longer sustainable.

I hated that she had to argue her case to me. It’s not that I wanted her to go. I did everything I could to help her manage her own behavior. It just wasn’t enough. We weren’t given the gift of time. She was already 17 by the time she walked through my door. Had I not had the little one again, things would have been different.

I do trust she’ll eventually find her way back to me again though. I’ll just continue keeping her memory alive in my heart as long as it beats.

A little over a decade ago, I found her online and she managed to stay in touch with me for a short time. She told me she’d been back in contact with her father. She was always fearful of him.

The last time I heard from her she was living in an SRO in The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver—not far from Dr. Gabor Mate’s former clinic.

She wanted to know what our old address was. Probably for some sort of application.

How many times have you filled out forms with your address, household details, and personal information—without thinking of who might be looking?

Predators, addicts, and criminals have to work for a living too. Don’t you think that the people you shit on while exalting the monsters might be keeping an eye out for you too? Once a mark, always a mark.

It was still years before I’d hear from Annemarie again.

When the little one found me, she was clearly playing games—though I never let on that I knew. I just appreciated the opportunity to be there for her and with her again in a tiny way.

She had so many questions.

She’d been convinced that I was a bad guy—as had been intended.

She had no memory of what was real.

She had no memories of the truth.

14 years since being taken out of school at 8 years old, without any trace of or word from me—emotionally violated and dying from the inside out, because the one person who she trusted to protect her let her down.

That person would be me.

I promised.

I signed papers.

I made the deal to keep her until she turned 19.

Leanne and Marcel broke it.

They handled her horrifically, and every detail that went along with it—Joelle, the school, Dr. Blank, Lynne—all of it.

Lies and corruption, torture and terror.

Leanne was extremely invested as her band Social Worker. She’d even brought girls back to her house to visit and live with her—despite massive conflicts of interest. She really wanted Annemarie.

Teresa, the government Social Worker that was “advocating” for her until loosing the kid’s file to Squamish Nation, told me everything about the plans they had for the kid.

I couldn’t believe it—though at the time I thought she was prophesying, not trying to get me onboard.

I still didn’t recognize adult grooming from the inside. I believed in the system. I was so, so incredibly wrong.

I’d escaped the system myself by being blind to it. God only knows how.

Bringing Amy, Theo, and Ivory back into the picture was an especially disgusting move.

Then, there was the deported father, Diego, who found me online years later, after she’d gotten “out of control”.

But I had no idea. When he contacted me I believed him. Just like everyone who my mother ever contacted with lies about her loving me believed her.

How could I have been so stupid for so long? Of course they want their kids to get into “treatment”.

Over the phone I could hear the pimp with her in the room, though she denied it. He was just a friend who was audibly getting her high, though she denied that too.

He was not her friend.

I heard the other guy that came in too, the two of them talking in the background.

They’d make her put me on speaker as she said all the things she’d been preparing to say. But she did not expect what was coming.

They were not getting the results they wanted. She was legitimately unraveling.

They bounced. Left her there in the hotel room. Security came up to kick her out. Then the cops did.

She wanted money from me, of which I had none. She wanted me to fly myself out there and save her, which unfortunately I could not. At the time I thought I was dying.

She was going to have to save herself—though I stayed with her from across the country for nearly 40-hours by phone.

I was existing in a van, parked in a Florida parking lot. She was out on the streets in the middle of a Vancouver snowstorm.

No home. No family. No friends. Not real ones, at least. Same situations, though different.

I knew she didn’t want to stay in the house with the woman who insisted she go inside from the snow storm—the mother of one of her “boyfriends”, she’d said.

At the time it seemed to be the safest option. Not long after, she was gone again.

While comprehensive data on life expectancy specific to homeless youth is scarce, research indicates that individuals experiencing homelessness face a markedly reduced lifespan.

Reports suggest an average life expectancy of approximately 48 to 50 years for the homeless population, significantly lower than the general population’s average.

Foster children, particularly those aging out of care, are one of the most at-risk subgroups within the broader category of homeless youth.

Up to 30% of foster youth become homeless within 18 months of aging out of the system, and by age 26, as many as half have experienced homelessness at some point.

These young adults often lack stable family support, job opportunities, or housing safety nets—making them disproportionately vulnerable.

Foster youth often carry trauma from abuse, neglect, and frequent placements.

When they age out they may have no secure income, incomplete education, and limited life skills.

Mental health and substance abuse rates are significantly higher than in the general population.

Many foster children (and those like me who manage to avoid foster care) become unstably housed (couch surfing, staying temporarily with friends, living in vehicles), chronically homeless, or survivors of trafficking and exploitation—especially girls and LGBTQ+ youth.

The child welfare, juvenile justice, and housing systems operate in silos.

Without coordinated support or proper transition plans and accountability, these youth fall through the cracks and are often criminalized for survival behaviors.

Turning back time is impossible.

I will not rest until My Girls are safe.