July 2010 Face of a Foster Care Graduate – LaTasha C. Watts
July 4, 2010
Our July feature comes to us from Ohio. She spent her childhood in the foster care system. LaTasha is best known as a professional advocate, serving the foster care community and has won numerous honors for her endless dedication to children. One of her greatest achievements is the creation of a wonderful website called “The Purple Project” which is a support source for former and current foster alumni.
Name: LaTasha C. Watts
State: Ohio
Occupation: Child Advocate and Mentor/Motivational Speaker/Future Author
Website: www.latashacwatts.com and www.thepurpleproject.org
LaTasha Watts
Most people wake up each day with a mom, a dad or some form of a family structure. But for some of us in the foster care system the reality of this type of life is few and far in between………I barely remember important parts of my life, it’s as if those parts never existed. I own no baby pictures of myself and only acquired a few pictures during my adolescence & teen years. It’s as if a whole section of my life disappeared. I grew up my entire life in the foster care system, struggling to grasp the concept, drifting in and out of relationships and trying to find what one would call normal. On top of it all, I still had to endure the normal stages that children and teens generally face throughout their developmental years. Being in care was no picnic for me. While I did not bounce around from place to place, I did face more turmoil while being in care from deaths, exposure to molestation, drugs and even turning to alcohol all before the age of 15.
I officially aged out of the foster care system at the age of 18, two days shy of my 19th birthday and a day after graduating from high school. But by then I was lost, alone and broken. And the system that once kept my mere existence alive had vanished. One would think that the system that put me here would have prepared me better for the world in which I was about to face. After aging out of the foster care system, I experienced a form of homelessness, living from place to place, without a stable place to call my own. Not to mention I lacked the essential skills that most people take for granted: cooking, washing clothes, paying bills, maintaining a bank account and even holding down a job for more than a week. Life became “survival of the fittest” for me. I learned how to manipulate any situation, to get the results that I needed “survival tactics,” or a “hustle” one might call it. Whatever you call it it’s definitely not a place you want to be. A whole year after exiting the system, I finally caught a break, a sigh of relief, there was a program that was designed for people just like me. At least until the age of 21, I could finally be free! I could attend college for an entire year, have a place to stay and most importantly I could eat. But I was forgetting one crucial factor, that college at the time was not right for me. Like many foster kids I struggled to get out of high school and although I did receive a high school diploma, keep in mind that so many of us do not. Unfortunately, college was the last thing on my mind, I spent the next year living on campus, never going anywhere, especially during the holidays and school breaks, all because I had no place to be. I was eventually kicked out of college. And would then spend the next two years in a controlling relationship, being diagnosed with OCD, having a kid, becoming a single mother and battling Cancer all by the mere age of 23.
A lot has changed since then; it has been approximately 17 years, since I have “aged out” of the foster care system. My Life is much different now, I have triumphed over adversity. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the importance of making a difference in someone’s life. That difference came for me, with the creation of The Purple Project (sm), which is a support network that I designed to help change the negative outcomes that many of us face after being a part of the foster care system.“Being in the system does not mean that you are alone!”
For more information regarding, LaTasha’s story and The Purple Project (sm) or if you would like to book LaTasha as a speaker or a panelist at your event, please email lcwatts@thepurpleproject.com.
