The Story Behind Stories Within

There are things a child carries into care that cannot be packed into a suitcase—or, in my experience, a bin bag.

These things are not always visible to the adults around them. Sorrow, fear, shame, confusion, guilt and undying loyalty are just some of the emotions a child may carry before they even enter foster care. If left unprocessed, those emotions can remain with them well into adulthood.

Imagine a child carrying an invisible backpack. Each frightening experience, separation, disappointment and feeling they cannot express adds another stone. Because nobody can see the backpack, an ordinary request, a small disagreement or a change of plans may appear too insignificant to explain the child’s reaction.

But it is not the small event alone that overwhelms them. It is the weight they were already carrying. The final stone may be light, but the backpack was full long before it was added.

A child may also carry memories they cannot explain. The emotional weight of those memories may be so heavy that the child cannot process them, never mind put them into words for an adult. And that is assuming they have found an adult whom they trust enough to share what they are carrying.

The survival habits a child develops to cope with life may then be mistaken for difficult behaviour, a lack of engagement, defiance or an unwillingness to cooperate and trust. What appears to be an overreaction may actually be the response of a child whose invisible backpack has finally become too heavy to carry.

I know this because I was once that child. I am writing now because I can finally give words to some of the things I could not explain then.

For a long time, I understood my childhood only through the eyes of the child who had lived it. I remembered what happened and how it made me feel, but I did not always understand why those feelings remained with me or why certain situations could still affect me so deeply years later.

Adulthood has given me language that childhood could not.

I have spent years processing the emotions left behind by trauma, and I am still learning more about myself today. After a great deal of work, I feel I have reached a point in my life where many of the wounded parts of me have begun to heal. And yet, I am always discovering how my inner child can still react when something in the outside world touches a fear rooted in the past.

Healing has not made me perfect—no one is. But it has made me more aware. I am learning to recognise when my response belongs not only to what is happening in the present, but also to something I experienced as a child and was unable to process at the time. That awareness allows me to understand myself better, to respond differently and to continue growing.

I have come to believe that trauma can sometimes freeze a part of us in time. We grow older, our circumstances change and the world continues moving, but something within us may remain fixed at the age when we felt frightened, abandoned or powerless. Without understanding why, we may continue responding to present-day situations from that younger place within us.

But we do not have to remain frozen there forever.

Many of us had dreams and aspirations as children that became buried beneath the need to survive. As the years pass, the distance between those childhood hopes and the reality of achieving them can begin to feel like a wall. I want to explore how those walls are built and how, with understanding and support, we might begin to take them down.

I want to tell others who are still carrying the weight of their past: your past is part of your story, but it does not have to define your worth or decide the limits of what your life can become.

Healing is rarely simple or straightforward, and none of us can change what happened to us. But with support, understanding and a willingness to keep moving forward, we can begin to loosen the hold the past has on the present. We can make room for the person we once hoped to become—and perhaps discover possibilities we had never imagined.

My experience of working with children for over twenty years has also allowed me to look back with a different understanding. I can now recognise that some of the behaviours adults might describe as difficult, uncooperative or attention-seeking may be attempts by a child to protect themselves.

A child who rejects kindness may be waiting for it to disappear. A child who refuses help may have learned that depending on adults is unsafe. A child who appears unaffected may simply have become very good at hiding what they feel.

From my own experience, as the eldest girl in a family of eight children, I was doing laundry and changing nappies from the age of six. I've explored this experience further in The Little Mammy: When a Child Becomes the Carer, where I reflect on the responsibilities children sometimes carry long before they are old enough to understand them.

By the time I was eight, I was grocery shopping and helping to raise my younger siblings. That included trying to work out where food might come from when there was no money to buy any. I also learned that hiding myself away in a home where we were not allowed to be children was safer than risking another beating for defying the authority of my so-called “parents”.

A child entering care may already have coping mechanisms firmly in place. Those defences can be difficult to dismantle because lowering them means becoming vulnerable—and vulnerability may once have been dangerous. When a child has spent their life trying to survive, they may have learned that survival belongs to the strongest and that weakness has no safe place.

What looks like defiance may be fear. What looks like indifference may be grief. What looks like rejection may be a child asking, without having the words to say it, “Will you still be here when I push you away?”

This does not mean that every behaviour should be excused or that boundaries are unnecessary. Children need safety, consistency and guidance. But how can we respond effectively to a child’s behaviour if we never become curious about what may be underneath it?

That is one of the reasons I have decided to write publicly now.

I do not want to tell my story simply to describe what happened to me. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not the type of person who invites pity to the party. No, I want to use what I have learned to help others understand what may be happening inside a child who has experienced neglect, trauma, separation or a lack of care.

I want to write for the foster parent who wonders why their kindness has not yet been trusted. For the professional who has only a short time to understand a complicated young life. For the adult who left care years ago but is still carrying emotions they were never helped to process. And for the young person who needs to know that their reactions did not come from nowhere and that they are not beyond hope.

I also want to ask difficult questions about what happens after childhood. What happens when the State’s formal responsibility begins to end?

Entering care is not the end of a child’s story, and leaving care should not mean the end of meaningful support. A young person does not suddenly stop carrying trauma because they have reached a particular birthday.

And what about that heavy backpack?

Is it reasonable to assume that a young person can manage accommodation, employment, bills, relationships and their own mental health—things that can overwhelm the best of us—while also carrying everything that has been placed in that backpack? It can be even more difficult without the dependable family safety net that many other young adults take for granted.

Leaving the care system can feel like being told, “You’re on your own now.” At first, independence may even seem exciting: having your own accommodation, receiving a weekly allowance and no longer answering to carers or professionals.

But being given the means to begin an independent life is not the same as being prepared to sustain one. Without a dependable person to call when the rent is short, employment falls through, a relationship ends or their mental health begins to suffer, an ordinary setback can quickly become a crisis.

The freedom a young person initially welcomes can become isolation if meaningful support is withdrawn too soon. This does not mean that care leavers are destined for addiction, homelessness or other harmful outcomes. It means that expecting someone to manage adulthood alone—while still carrying the effects of childhood trauma—can leave them unnecessarily vulnerable.

Over time, Stories Within will explore the emotional experience of entering care, the meaning behind behaviours that are easily misunderstood, the lasting effects of childhood trauma and the support young people need as they move into adulthood.

Some articles will draw upon my own experiences. Others will reflect on what I have learned through working with children and through trying to understand the child I once was. I hope to write honestly, but also responsibly. There are parts of my story that belong in my memoir, parts that will be shared here and parts that will remain private.

I do not claim to speak for every person who has experienced foster care. Every child and every story is different. I can only speak from my own life and offer the understanding I have gained from it.

Above all, I want this to be a place of hope—the kind that allows us to believe that a person’s beginning does not have to determine their ending.

The invisible backpack may remain part of our story. But with understanding, consistent support and safe people to help us unpack it, we do not have to carry every stone forever.