Just One Good Home

I recently met a man who grew up in foster care, and I’ll be honest—I braced myself for a heartbreaking story. So many of the kids we work with come from pain layered on pain, and I expected more of the same. But instead, he told me something beautiful.

His mom died when he was just nine years old. His dad was in prison. He entered foster care, and that’s where everything changed. Not because someone swooped in to fix it all—but because a family quietly, consistently showed him what it meant to live with dignity. They taught him how to set an alarm. How to do laundry. How to cook a meal, write a resume, show up on time, and care about things that mattered. He said, “I didn’t even know I was learning. I just lived with them, and life started to make sense.”

When his dad got out of prison a few years later, this boy—just 13—moved in with him. And because of what he'd learned in that foster home, he was able to teach his dad how to make a list and grocery shop, how to keep their apartment clean, how to show up for a job interview dressed like it mattered. He helped his father learn the very life skills he had missed out on as a child. And from there, everything shifted. Their life wasn’t perfect, but it was different. Stronger. Steadier. He told me with full confidence that being placed with that foster family didn’t just change his life—it changed his dad’s too. And it reminded me: healing doesn’t stop with one person. It ripples.

Whether a child stays in foster care for a few weeks, a few years, or forever—every moment matters. A safe, stable, loving foster home can be the place where a child learns what it feels like to be seen, to be capable, to belong. We may not be able to control the full arc of a child’s story. But we can shape the chapter we’re in. At Foster Light, that’s the goal: to surround families with the support they need to be that kind of home. Because one good home can change everything—for a child, for a parent, for generations to come.