“The Frozen Psychological Independent State Theory”
Ms. X self-referred for DelgraciaCorp preventive services because she grew up in foster care, parent in foster care, and aged out of foster care with her son. Her story is relatable to many of the young parents, mothers, and fathers, whose life experiences are “documented,” and “saved” for the next generation of children and young parents who are ID as numbers in the child welfare system AKA foster care.
Ms. X tells her story unapologetic and with no regrets. She begins stating “At no time growing up in foster care did anyone ever ask me what it is I wanted and/or needed. I’m just a pawn in this system to reproduce a generation of helpless victims who “mistakes a lack of abuse from human services providers' as an act of kindness.”
Ms. X entered foster care at 5 years old with her 2 younger brothers because her father allegedly brutally beat her mother senseless in front of her children that led to allegations of abuse and neglect against her mother for failing to protect the well-being and safety of her children.
She described her parents as addicts, violent, and “children” who never grew up. Yet, as Ms. X angrily recalled her experiences she cried out to her mother and grandmother for being left alone and unprotected, forcing her to move from a psychologically dependent state to a frozen, independent state.
Ms. X cycles in and out of 8 foster homes and later a group home, and later system dependency. She described each placement as a “prison” that she described as a place of confinement and captivity. Due to her age (5), gender (female), race (Black), she was separated from her brothers, and “family visits” were far in between. In each placement, she had to learn to survive either live or die. No mercy was given to the weak or helpless, which she learned early. Girls’ foster care placements meant domestic and child care responsibilities with minimum protection from the foster care system. Many of the girls are forced into child labor or sex traffic to avoid local or borough child centers that warehouse and market children for prisons and hospitalization. Whereas, males’ placement goal was prison or long-term hospitalization. System rules are to strip males emotionally, mentally, and physically of their natural beings as a means of control at managing their psychological independence. For instance, males are either placed in solitary confinement, hospitalized, or imprisoned.
Her life was not of her own, but “belonged” to an institution called foster care that labeled her, her brothers and her children as “wards of the state.” She cried about the many times she was hospitalized, imprisoned, and/or detained at the children’s center for not following system rules that broke her natural state of independence.
The one lesson embedded in her soul that broke her will was Ms. X’s first court hearing at 16 yr. old where she lost her son to adoption. She sadly told how the court described her as a troubled teen who was aggressive, promiscuous, intellectually, and emotionally delayed. She was accused and charged with breaking the rule for visiting her incarcerated boyfriend while pregnant. Her natural state of maternal instincts of yearning and needing her son only led to 2, 3, and 4 pregnancies and termination of her parental rights to foster care because of her unwillingness to submit to child welfare rules.
She concluded, “It must be true what they say and write about me because the courts not only terminated my parental rights but my mother and father, too.”
Now living independently with her 5th child who is trial discharged to her care and pregnant for the 6th time Ms. X hopelessly stated “The system has broken me. I’ve given up, and can no longer fight. I now follow child welfare rules and will raise my son and unborn in “reversed roles.”
“Through it all, her biggest fear was that the city’s child welfare agency might take away her children. Being a product of the system, they look at us first.” So, Ms. X will psychologically have to teach her son to be mentally dependent on her for protection, but physically strong. Whereas she will teach her daughter to be psychologically independent at protecting her brother, her family, and her children by working 3xs harder in labor and service.
State and monitoring foster care agencies are appealing to “Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to issue an executive order allowing young people to remain in foster care beyond their 21st birthday...They also want the state to allow former foster youth between the ages of 18 and 21 to return to foster care without waiting for the approval of a judge, which is currently “difficult if not impossible” to attain given the limited operations of family courts, according to Betsy Kramer, policy director at the New York City-based Lawyers for Children. The renewed demands came three weeks after New York’s Office of Children and Family Services wrote that the state would not step in to provide extra support for foster youth who turn 21 — or provide funding to counties that decide to extend care on their own. The state’s position comes even as a growing number of other states take the opposite approach, rushing to enact emergency orders to help vulnerable young adults” (Conn, May 29, 2020, (Megan Conn, New York Reporter, The Chronicle of Social Change
Yet, the letter from a dozen lawmakers does NOT include funding or protection for young parents with children but poses the risks of their inability to parent, meet child(ren)’s needs, well-being and needs. The recycling of foster care placement of children is not by chance, it is intergenerationally rooted in history. The separation of black and brown children from their birth father and mother is caused by institutional racism (education, health, and mental health, community, etc) where coercion is used to reinforce female psychological independence and male psychological dependence.
Pridefully, Ms. X's story ends by asking for help for services that will at least help her to withstand another day and another battle she can not beat!!
