INNOVATE!

S04E02: From Anger to Advocacy: Alexandria’s Journey Through 55 Foster Homes

• Innovate! Podcast • Season 4 • Episode 3

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Re-envisioning Foster Care Champion, Alexandria Ware, a fierce advocate and founder of Culture Creations Incorporated. A survivor of more than 50 foster care placements in Kansas, Alexandria shares how her lived experience—once marked by anger and survival—has become the foundation of her purpose-driven work. With unflinching honesty, she reflects on the ways trauma shaped her youth, the mentors and judges who offered steady guidance, and the healing practices that helped her transform pain into power. Together, Angela and Alexandria explore what it means to re-envision foster care, why cultural connection is essential, and how those most impacted by the system must be at the decision-making table.

Angela:

From the Treehouse Foundation, welcome to Innovate, a podcast that features individuals who are re-envisioning foster care in America. They are wise leaders who are using their firsthand experiences in foster care to inspire our nation to try something new. They are advocating for people with lived experience to be sitting in decision-making seats in our communities, states, legislative bodies, and our child welfare system. These visionaries have been awarded the honor of being named Re-Envisioning Foster Care in America Champions. My name is Angela Tucker. I was adopted from foster care. I am the author of the book, You Should Be Grateful, Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption. I too have been given this honor, and I am your host of season four of Innovate. In this episode, we're joined by Alexandria, a foster care alumna who knows the system's challenges firsthand. She's passionate about transforming the negative foster care narrative into one of empowerment and success. Through her organization, Culture Creations Incorporated, she provides fellow foster care alums with the love, resources, and opportunities they need to thrive. From experiencing over 50 placements in the Kansas foster care system to becoming a powerful advocate, Alexandria's story is one of resilience, mentorship, and purpose-driven work.

Angela:

Alexandria, hi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Alexandria:

Hi, yes, I'm super excited. Super, super excited.

Angela:

You and I met last November at the Re-Envisioning Foster Care Conference. And then during the conference itself, I was hosting and I don't know if you grabbed the mic from my hands or something, but you had a passionate, fiery speech to deliver at a certain moment. Do you remember that?

Alexandria:

I do, but I don't. My partner talks about it a lot. And it's like, sometimes I think you need to like bring down the passion. And I'm like, you know, as black women, our passion is always going to be seen as anger. And I was like, and I'm here for it. And I'm all for it. So and it was like, also, like, how are you not angry about kids and families lives?

Angela:

I often feel when I'm in a meeting about child welfare, and people are relaxed, chill. I'm like, Like something's not right here. This is shouldn't be treating this meeting just like it's we're talking about how to design a new pair of shoes. You know, like this is this is serious. So let me hear a little bit about the passion, which I do not misconstrue as anger. But I'm curious to learn about that. What experiences you've had around that? Can you tell me just a little bit about your your background? I've done some reading, and I know that you were in 55 foster homes, many of them white foster parents, and this seems to have colored your... your future and your career and what you're doing today. Tell me about that.

Alexandria:

You know, as a young person, I entered the system with my siblings. I have an older brother and an older sister. My brother and I are extremely close. Me and my sister aren't so much, but one of the things from all of us growing up in the system, my brother and I longer than our sister, that really striked me was like how I was treated so differently because I was having behaviors, right? And that was my way of showing out like my trauma, like I'm not okay, like I'm not I don't know how to talk about this. And my brother wasn't, right? My brother was that kid who just like went through what he went through, kept it quiet, you know, did what he needed to do, didn't move a lot. And it was just like, well, why was that? You know, even to this day, me and him still have conversations about that. Like, well, why did you just like conform to a system? Like, why were you okay with the way they treated us? And so for me, it was always like, okay, well, I was given all this attention. I was given all these services. I was given all this stuff because I was labeled as a bad kid. But honestly, I was just trying to like tell somebody like, hey, I'm not OK. And my trauma is like screaming. But we didn't know about trauma back in the early 2000s and the 90s when I was in care. Right. And one of the things I always think about was it came from like, OK, well, I had an amazing judge. Right. Judge Mackie Dick of Reno County and which is in Kansas. Right. Amazing. Phenomenal. Make sure that, you know, even if I got in trouble, like I wasn't staying in trouble. I wasn't involved, you know, with a juvenile legal system. You know, all those things like One, s he knows my whole biological family. But it was really the fact of the matter that like, for me, it was like, if I can do all this, and I can have people in my corner, then why don't we make sure every young person has people in their corner? Why don't we make sure every young person has the ability to heal? Right? Why don't we make sure every young person is able to understand their culture? I mean, I didn't know anything about being black until I was an adult. Okay, like I grew up in white families. My mentor always tells me when she interviewed me for independent living, like, she put put down I was white and when I showed up and I was black she was confused she was like no you're not Alexandria and I was like uh well I've been Alexandria my whole life so who are you to tell me who I'm not and she was like because you sounded so proper you sounded so white and so she her being a black woman I walk in I'm like here I'm hey I'm here to check in like y'all about to give me my own apartment my senior year of high school like what's up and so she just obviously like for her she was like it was a really big shock but I had grown up in so many white foster homes, I never was exposed to my culture.

Angela:

This judge. I want to go back to this judge. Do you make it seem as though she was with you for a long period of your life?

Alexandria:

Well, I'm from a small, small, I say I'm from Wichita, Kansas. Okay. This is me actually admitting I have actually found my identity as a Black woman. from Hutchison, Kansas. I was born in Hutchison, but I've lived a lot in Wichita, so that's what I consider home. But my whole biological family is from Hutchison, Kansas. It's a small town. It's a very rural town. Judge Mackie Dick has been doing sync youth cases for as long as I've known. I mean, she's still a judge to this day. She just did my little cousin's adoption hearing back in January, actually. They were actually officially adopted back in January. So, She has just been amazing. She made sure when I was aging out of care, I had a plan. She made sure I came to court. She made sure that I did what I needed to. She would be disappointed in me. I think she was the first person I actually learned what someone being disappointed in me felt like. I was always a smart kid, you know, like, and I just was, the smart bad kid. I just like to get in trouble. I think for me, she helped steer my child welfare case. Yes, I had some trauma, all those things. I didn't have a perfect story, but she was the one person besides my social worker who made sure that they were there. They showed up.

Angela:

I have had conversations with other champions about this difference between foster care in small towns versus foster care in the foster care in big cities and how... I don't know if this was your case, but for some, the care was more holistic in the small towns and more caring. And I'm... I'm feeling like that was the case for you specifically with this judge. But then at the same time, you had so many moves. And so I'm trying to reconcile that. What's your thoughts?

Alexandria:

What I will say is I had moves because I chose to act up, right? I chose to not learn to talk about my trauma. I mean, I had tons of therapists. I was in tons of different services. In one instance, I remember ComCare is a big provider here in Wichita. I was going to therapy at ComCare. Then I had a lady who would come after school or something and pick me up and hang out with me. So that one-on-one support. And then I had coping skills and I had different things, all these things. I could do art therapy, play therapy, all this stuff, but I was just so angry. I'm the youngest out of my siblings. At one point, me and my siblings were completely separated. I didn't have contact with them, anything. I think for me, it was a lot of that anger. I didn't want to accept that I was in foster care. I had been in foster care for so long. I was so angry at God. If there's really a God, then why did you not give me parents? If If there's really a God, then why do you have me in foster care? Why do you have me going to all these people's homes? Why do you have it to where I'm so angry to where I can't control my anger and I act up and then I become violent or, you know, or I run away or things like that? Like, but there's a God. Right. And so it was a lot of questioning and it was a lot of anger and it was a lot of like pushing people away who I they love me. Right. Like I have an adoptive family. They didn't legally adopt me. But if I didn't have placements, they would take me in. Right. And they still love me to this day. But it was like pushing those people away because I was just so I was so angry. I was mad at the world for everything. And I was a kid who blamed the system for everything I did. Like, no, the system did not throw a chair at a teacher. You threw a chair at a teacher, you know. So it was like as I got older and I started to heal, I had to take accountability for my actions. Yes, there's things that I completely agree that the system is accountable for. Right. But me punching a staff, me punching a foster parent. the system didn't make me punch that foster parent. Alexandria Nayware punched that foster parent because Alexandria Nayware was angry. And so looking back at my childhood, I was a very angry child, right? Very, very angry. I mean, up until I would say I was 21, 22, I was really angry. I was just so mad. I'm at a lot of things. And I think nobody had taught me how to channel that anger into something I'm passionate about. Nobody had taught me how to talk about that anger.

Angela:

And Tell me about that because you say that you were provided many different services that you could have chosen to engage in because of... It sounds like your brain was definitely changed because of what you'd gone through. So the impacts of trauma may have made it such that you were not wanting to access those services. So how does that impact your work today when you think about perhaps the new knowledge we have about trauma and how it manifests? Are we still just throwing lots of resources? at youth who don't want to accept it? Or is there something, a different strategy that we need or maybe are employing?

Alexandria:

I think it's both, right? Because a lot of times, like I do kinship care for a 13 year old and she's in a ton of services, which makes my schedule extremely busy. And I'm always running from appointment to appointment, right? Or people are always in and out of my house. And I'm a big sticker where I'm like, I don't like everybody knowing where I live because everybody's energy ain't good energy. And all these energies are up in my house all the time. But at the same time, I see how those don't really help her. I learned at a very young, young age, how to play the system. She's learned how to play the system. And so sometimes she'll try and play me and I have to tell her like, baby girl, you can't play me. I played the system. And so you can't play somebody who knows how to play. You know what I'm saying? And so my nieces and nephews always say, you can't finesse a finesser. And so it's helping her learn that. But we're like, when we go out to my adopted brother's farm and there's nothing there, there's no noise. It's all quiet, completely different kid. Completely different. But in the city, she's from Wichita. She knows a lot of people. This is where she can get in trouble. She knows all the things. But we go an hour away. respectful, listens, not, I'm not, we're not bumping heads. She's not always trying to run away. And, you know, she just has all this land to run on, to play on, to do whatever, you know. And so some of those things that I've been learning, like sometimes our brain when we're in trauma needs to be quieted, right? Like it needs to, it needs to be quiet. Like it needs to be in an area where it can just be quiet and be still. And with her, we, I've learned that. I've learned like, okay, maybe once a month we have to go out to the farm. I love seeing my brother and my nephews anyway, so it's an excuse for me to see them and them to see me, but to quiet her brain, right? So she can just have it. So we'll be out there all day. We'll go from like 9 a.m. on a Saturday to like 9 p.m. And, you know, me and my sister-in-law, we cook, we get to laugh, we get to have fun. The kids get to play outside. You know, there's pigs, there's goats, dogs, you know, all the things, right? But I see a whole different kid because for at least those 12 hours, She doesn't have to focus on the noise of living in a city.

Angela:

My husband is a filmmaker and he recently did a film and it was about gang activity in the Seattle area where I am now. And there was just a lot of gang violence. And there was a program where they decided to take a select number of these gang affiliated youth out of the city to a totally different place for what they called 30 days of peace. And it was very similar and of course we can understand why you know if these youth aren't surrounded by the folks that they have rivalry with then they were just different kids I mean they were running around they were playing they were acting like kids but then they had to come back and so there's discussion about what substantively changed because it's, it's obviously not that they are inherently bad kids. And I would say that about you probably too, but that the environment wasn't going to support them to be healthy. And given that for you, you as well have to bring her back to Wichita and you, Do you think is that the recipe?

Alexandria:

I think for her and for me, like I remember moving from Wichita to like small country towns and like I would have different behaviors as well. And for me and her, we've been talking about about a lot about like, how do we create peace for you within the house? Right. Like, do we need to have you a little sanctuary, like a little part in the closet where like that's just for you where we can put some noise canceling stuff up, go buy some egg cartons and cancel the So then that way, when you're feeling overwhelmed, and you're feeling overstimulated, you can go sit in there, you have a spot, because for her out there, she says, I don't have to hear the cars, the birds, you know, and I just get to be. When I was in the system, I was fighting demons that it didn't matter what we would have done, right? Some demons and some things are way above us. And I had a lot of demons on me that were very spiritual, right? And that's why I was always so angry. And it wasn't until like, you know, half a year later, I was like, Having to talk with my aunt about like, baby girl, I love you, but you got to do something else. Like, do you love yourself? You know, do you like yourself? You know, it was those hard questions I think people were afraid to ask me that made me actually start thinking about it, right? Like I didn't start really this healing journey, I would say until I was about 25 and I was completely away from the system. I mean, I took a two, almost three year break from doing anything related to child wealth fear. Like I was done with it. I was like, I grew up in this system. I decided to work in this system. Like, when are y'all going to change? You know, I just have a lot of trauma and then dealing with other young people's trauma. And we don't talk about, you know, how if you actually have trauma and then deal with young people's trauma, it's completely different than if you don't have trauma and you deal with trauma.

Angela:

So what did you do for those two years that you took off? I worked in 4-H. Ah, animals. Yep. Yeah. I mean, it does seem like that's a peaceful thing

Alexandria:

for you? I liked working with youth. I'm good with youth. And so I was like, you know, not really into cow plows or my like, you can't get me in a pair of cowgirl boots, like a baby from Kansas, but I'm not that Kansas girl, you know, like, you're not gonna see me in a cowgirl hat, nothing. But I enjoyed being able to teach life skills and, you know, work with clubs. And I enjoyed like when we would do our central county fairs, you know, things like that. So I learned something outside of child welfare.

Angela:

So what what made you shift back into advocacy and child welfare?

Alexandria:

I missed it. Like I, you know, like people would come and talk to me about it and all the things. I'm like, yeah, that's cool, whatever. And then it was just like all these people kept asking me like, what would you do about this? What would you do about that? You know, it is just like this, you know, how sometimes I don't know if you're spiritual or religious, but God keeps telling you something. And it was like this annoying little voice that just kept saying, you need to go back. You need to go back. And I was like, get away, bro. Like I'm done. I'm done for life. You you know, you need to go back. And I'm like, you can pay me a million dollars to go back. Like that was my mindset then. Like, because I had finally been like, oh, okay, I can handle my own trauma process. You know, the anger I have towards like all these things. Right. And a lot of my anger came from my mother. Right. Like it came from like, you grew up in foster care and you know how the system was. And yet you still allowed your kids to fall victim to the system. And in my head, I was seeing it from a child's And I wasn't seeing it from now an adult. And so as a child, I was really angry. And so I had to work on healing inner Alexandria. Like a lot of people don't know, I didn't go by Alexandria. Most people who know me know that I used to go by Alex. And I switched and I started going by Alexandria because in the system, I felt like Alex was somebody I had to create to protect Alexandria, right? I had to become this hard shell of a person. I had to, you know, be on guard all the time. You know, I couldn't let my guard down because at any moment a foster parent could be like okay well we don't want you no more or we're gonna stop doing foster care or you know one behavior and you're gone right and so I feel like for me it was like I constantly had to be on guard and Alexandria was like this person who was like nice and sweet and all that right but Alex like was this protector who was like what's up you got something to say I'm gonna deck you you know and so it was like I had to do this this shift of okay what is it I want out of my life life like when I die how do I want people to remember me do I want people to remember me as being the angry black girl and I was like no I'm but do I have a right to be angry yes I do but it was like that ugly honest conversations you have to have in yourself that I think sometimes people don't understand that's what healing is it's not just oh we're gonna take a bath and no like there was days I would be go to work I'd get up I'd be bawling Stop it. Go to work. Come home. Ball again. Right. I mean, I was in therapy. I was journaling. I was praying to God. I was doing all these things because I was like, I can't live with this pain anymore. What it came down to was I had to write letters to people that had hurt me. Some people got them letters. Some people did not. And some of them I burned because it was just God was like, I don't think you need to tell them everything that you said in this letter.

Angela:

hmmm.

Alexandria:

I would write how I felt about myself on a plate and I would destroy it. But one of the things was I literally had to learn to truly love myself, right? And love my flaws and love my imperfections because I had always been, you know, as kids who grew up in foster care, we were always taught we had to be perfect and our behaviors had to be perfect for us to stay. So I had to unlearn a lot of the conditioning that the foster care system had put on me. And I think that was tough. That was really tough for me to be able to have to go through that and have to sit through that and have to be honest with myself of some of the things it was not the system. And I think that was the moment where my shift happened was I blamed the system for everything that had went wrong in my life. Right. Yes, there was some things that were my fault. There were some things that were the system's fault and there were some things that was my mother's fault. Right. There is equal accountability on everybody because we can't take young people from homes and put them in homes and not have the right resources or not make sure that, you know, those homes are equipped. Right. And all those things. So I think for me, that's really when I started to heal and I started to look at my time and care because everyone knew I only talked about like the positive stuff that had happened to me. I never wanted to talk about the negative stuff. I never wanted to get into to the raw or the trauma because in my head it was like, that's not worth it. Like we're going to sit here and talk about trauma and what y'all going to do. Y'all ain't going to change nothing. This system been around for years and you ain't changed. So why give you my full story?

Angela:

So I'm curious about how this all relates to your present work. Why did you choose to name your nonprofit Culture Creations?

Alexandria:

So the thing about Culture Creations is we are a family-brand nonprofit. It came from my family. We have all been affected by the child welfare system, from my brother to my sister to my aunt to my uncle. And those are their stories, you know, all of them to tell their own stories, right? But the thing was, we all seen how culture was something that was lost. I kept talking to my nephew because at one point in his life, he was going to school for marketing. I was like, I'm going to have an in-house marketer nepotism for free. I ain't got to pay you that much while you're in school. That was my mindset. We just got to talking and he had this naming app thing that they had showed him how to use in one of his classes. I was just telling him the vision and the goal and all this and all that. I kept talking about culture. I was like, young people don't get to create things. Young people are told what they need to do. They lose their culture, you know, all that. Like my nephew is half black, half Mexican. He always says like, you know, nobody ever nurtured his Mexican side, right? He was like, I don't know how to speak Spanish. I don't know how to make tamales. You know, he's like, I don't know how to do any of that. I completely understand that. And so he just like, we were in the middle of conversation. He just blurted out. He was like, what about culture creation? And I was like, I like that. I like that a lot. I was like, it's like young people get to create their culture, but also we're helping teach them about their culture and an aspect because I was like foster care is its own culture within itself and then you have your culture of your race and your ethnicity and how do you combine those two together the name actually my nephew created and then the logo was created my niece hand drew it and so for us the house is our mother so that's my mom in the middle and then the wings is everything that like her nieces her grandchildren her kids represent

Angela:

People can go to culture creations a And look at your logo, which is gorgeous and very colorful. There's a there's a house, an orange house in the middle of two big yellow wings and underneath the wings are words, you know, like love, joy, home, artistic, empower, faith. And it is a stunning image. And I knew there was so much to it. There's also symbols. Symbols within the wings of... Oh, and I love the word humor. I didn't notice that. But the symbols, you know, heart across the sun. It looks clearly like there was so much thought put into it. I know a lot of transracial adoptees who struggle with their own... understanding what their culture of origin is. to a Samoan and white mother. And she grew up largely in the Samoan community. And she says, I feel Samoan. And when I look in the mirror, I'm just shocked and don't like what I see, essentially. We're

Alexandria:

going to be honest. There was moments in my life, even though I look Black, since I've been raised by white people, I felt white. My partner always says, he was like, you say the craziest things to white people in conferences or when you're on panels and stuff. And he was like, and everybody who black in the room, like, baby, no, don't say that. Don't say that. No, like that. And he's like, I think it's because they know like you were raised by them. You know, this population. I'm curious if you could share an example. I went to a conference in Hawaii recently on like restorative justice and transformative justice. And one of the things I said was, you know, the child welfare system loves to take kids that don't look like the people who are coming to take kids. And I was like, and they were love to tell people that they can raise their kids better than them but the system has determined the outcomes that's a lie but you want to take these little black and brown kids and put them in white homes and then not teach them about their culture and then have them walking around like who done did it and boo boo the fool with their hair not done but I was like but I don't know that's just a knee slapper to me and all the white people were like yeah yeah yeah and all the black people in the room were like no she did not just say that

Angela:

but all the white people are clapping because you have gained their I always conclude by asking the champions how they'd respond when asked if foster care can really be re-envisioned. What are your thoughts on that?

Alexandria:

When I think about re-envisioning foster care, actually on the back of my business cards, one of the things that we have on there is how do we recreate the foster care system? I think it's possible. I think there needs to be certain young people who come into care, and there are certain young people who do not need to come into care. We've classified poverty as neglect, and it's just poverty, but that has to change. We're supposed to be in the business of helping people, but sometimes it feels like we're in this business of helping people. of hurting people, you know? And so we're in this business of hurting families. So for me, I think when we think about re-imagining care, re-envisioning care, innovating care, it's how do you have everyone who has lived experience at the table, right? Whether you're a parent, grandparent, kinship provider, non-related kin, young person, you know, whoever, but how are they helping drive that change? And actually listening to young people, because I feel like, you know, Young people have been saying the same things for years and years and years and years, and we're not listening.

Angela:

Thank you for listening to today's episode. another episode of Innovate. If you liked this episode, share it with a friend or leave a quick review. It really helps. See you next time.