Fostered

Title: Fostered
Author: Tori Hope Petersen
Major Themes: Foster Children, Adoption, Family
Synopsis: The powerful story of a woman who spent many years in foster care, and eventually came to faith and found a family through her experiences.

For many years now, foster and adoption stories have held a precious place in my heart. When I saw Fostered for the first time about a year ago, I knew I wanted to read the book. Stories like this are often heart-wrenching, but they’re also vastly important. I feel like those of us who have grown up in stable families struggle to relate to those who haven’t—and because we struggle to relate, we often can downplay or even ignore the needs of people from difficult backgrounds, even when we meet them as adults.

I’ve been blessed to have friends in my life over the years who have chosen to reach out and foster and/or adopt children who desperately need help, and although I know the immense struggles they (and the children) have had sometimes, I also greatly respect those who have chosen that path. I also see their actions as a beautiful representation, here on earth, of our ultimate adoption—God, adopting us as His sons and daughters through Jesus Christ (Gal. 4:5 and Eph. 1:5, amongst others). If God chose to adopt us as His children, knowing our sins and everything we’ve been through, shouldn’t we also try to reach out to the hurting in our world to show that same kind of love to them?

Anyway, leaving the theology aside for the moment, I was excited to read this book, and even though it took close to a year to finally pick it up, it was well worth reading!

Tori Hope Petersen was born into a difficult home situation. With a mother who had a mental illness and often suffered from substance abuse, Tori received little to no direction or love as a child. Eventually, she and her sister were sent into the foster care system, but even that did little to help Tori as she grew. She experienced and saw horrific abuses, and often rather than receiving the help she asked for, she was sidelined and lied about. With the odds stacked against her, anyone on the outside would have said she’d end up just like her mother…but for God, who arranged things in her life such that even while she was going through the darkest times, there were people in her path who were living proofs of God’s existence and His love for her. This is the story of a girl who, with God’s help, overcame expectations and now is a foster, adoptive, and biological mom.

Fostered is a powerful story of redemption. It also tells about some very dark, difficult times, and I appreciated that Tori started the book with a trigger warning. She’s raw and honest in these pages, but not overly detailed—she shares her story with heart and courage, but tempers it with discretion, which I appreciated! There were many parts of the story that both challenged and encouraged me; I didn’t really even know where to start or what to focus on! Perhaps I’ll share my three biggest takeaways, and leave it at that:

1. Love unconditionally, and ask God to help you see hurting people the way He sees them
2. Selflessly invest your time in people, rather than just throwing resources at them
3. Live out your talk

If you want to reach out to those in the foster and adoption communities, this would be a great book to choose. If you enjoy true stories of God leading people through difficult times, and reminders of who you are before our Heavenly Father, this would also be a great choice to read. I was challenged and inspired while I read Fostered, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to grow in loving and serving others (and better understand God’s ultimate plan for themselves and His kingdom).

I was given a complimentary copy of this book, and this is my honest opinion of it.

WARNING: Conception through rape is mentioned several times. Alcohol and drug abuse, prostitution, trafficking, and sleeping around are mentioned occasionally, as well as a few references to pornography. Fights and beatings are told about occasionally. Swear and swore appear fairly frequently in the story, and there is frequent lying, as well as references to cuss words (but no specific words). There is a story about a woman who had an abortion in ch. 3. A man abuses a girl in ch. 5 (discreetly told, but you know what happened). In ch. 11, there is a story of how a girl had sex with a boy close to her age, and had the morning-after pill after that. Suicide is mentioned a couple of times, and someone takes “every pill in the house” in ch. 14. There are semi-frequent mentions of sleeping around from ch. 14 – 18. Pregnancy out of wedlock is told about in ch. 18.

——————
Related posts:

Windows to Our World Anything but Simple There was Always Laughter in Our House Eight Was Enough