# The foster-care leader who had been a foster child

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Story
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-foster-care-wa-curtin-medal
- Themes: inspiration, service, suffering, community
- Life situations: looking for inspiration, community service, childhood hardship

## Synopsis (editorial summary)

At a Curtin medal ceremony, one recipient had been put into foster care as a child and suffered. After raising her own family she fostered others, then devoted her life to fixing WA's foster-care system so children would not endure what she had — becoming, he thinks, head of Foster Care WA.

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

And this year, one of the recipients was, uh, a woman that if I remember correctly, she, you know, was put into, uh, an orphanage, foster care when she was very young. And she had a terrible time, as many people do. And so, she survived. And then when she survived, uh, she had a family. And when her children grew up, she thought, "What can I do, you know, to actually to to help?" So, she started with fostering other kids. And then from there, she was so good at it, so energized, she gave all of her time, her life to making sure that the foster care system in Western Australia was not going to follow the mistakes which she had endured as a foster kid when she was young. And so, I think she's now head of foster care WA. The person's running the organization. The person who's spending so much of her life making sure that kids who don't have a home, kids who don't have a family, have one. Now, she had been there, she had suffered, she knows what it's like. But she also knew what the solutions were. And when I sort of heard that, I thought, "Wow, these are great people. People who actually doing something, but you don't know about it.

## Teaching point

People who have suffered and then serve quietly are among the greatest inspirations; their work rarely makes the news.

## Reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

At a medal ceremony, Ajahn Brahm met a woman who'd suffered in foster care as a child and later spent her life fixing that system so other children wouldn't. Such people rarely make the news. Seek out their stories rather than the cynical ones. Inspiration makes you want to do more, not rest on your laurels.

## Source

- [Energy in our Body and Mind from Inspiration | Ajahn Brahm | 2 November 2018](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWz3LAAj-J0) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 14:22 to 16:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWz3LAAj-J0&t=862s