Project ACE

It’s all about connections. A family fostering a sibling group was in need of a new dryer after theirs died suddenly, and our connections were able to find one in the community AND get it sponsored!

It takes a lot to foster, but it takes a lot more to be a kid in foster care with nothing in your control… and you don’t need to foster to get involved in improving the foster care system!

Volunteer, mentor, donate, learn more and spread awareness. There’s so many ways to support those who are experiencing or have experienced the system in some way.

Thank you to our friends who made this possible!

Grief is weird. It’s random. You’ll be doing great, better than you have in a couple Mondays, and then BAM. You get mail for people that have been dead for 4 years.

2026 has been a year of transition. A year of rewinding through some of this tape I call grief that I’ve had to press pause on at various times in my life.

Pressing pause may have been more like taking the tape out and boxing it somewhere deep inside to deal with later. Anyways, this year I have been unpausing some of that healing. Out of necessity, and out of the situation I find myself in.

I’ve learned in this healing and Project ACE journey that our brains force us to pause, mask, distract, and redirect when confronted with unfathomable grief.

It’s a protective/survival mechanism… it’s a really cool brain feature actually, until we are no longer actively in a place of survival. I haven’t been in a place of survival for years but sometimes my subconscious and body don’t know it.

There’s years beyond just the year my whole family died that I’m rewinding through in this season. It all comes up when I see this mail too.

My time in foster care, the memory loss as an effect, years of identity loss. I’m thinking about parts of a childhood I remember basically none of, and my Da and Nana who aren’t here to fill me in.

I wasn’t actively thinking about any of this today but then… I checked the mail. Compounded grief is a sneaky thing. Something I’ve learned to manage over the years kind of, but still have work to do. Because woah.

All I did was check the mail, and that “tape” of compounded grief became the forefront of my focus. Luckily I have done a lot of healing and it’s not debilitating anymore… but I’m also reminded all too well of a time it would have been. It’s so random.

Just a reminder that there’s no timeline. Be Kind and Rewind. Be kind to yourself and the people you love when you see they’ve been brought back. Learn how to healthily communicate you’ve been brought back.

Grief never leaves us and will never shrink… but we can grow and shape-shift around it.

How a Tennessee Foster Youth Turned Pain Into Policy | The Imprint While in high school, Ella Bat-Ami's experience in Tennessee foster care drove her to draft mock legislation that was the impetus for the state's Foster Youth Bill of Rights.

Update: this was quickly sponsored. We are so grateful 💚🖤 and excited to help. It truly takes a village.