Author Bio for FLUX- Life After Foster Care

Leigh Ecke, alumna, age 36, TX, 9 years in care
Project manager, editor and lead writer

Leigh has been writing for a very long time. A letter she wrote to her grandmother, at age nine, began her journey in and through the Texas foster care system. During her nine years and more than 20 placements, she experienced shelters, foster homes, kinship care, adoptive homes, respite care, hospitalization, residential treatment and group care. So many people and so many places; through it all Leigh kept writing.

At 18, Leigh understood that she wanted to help herself, and somehow to help other people, and so she spent six years earning her bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin. F's in Biology and Modern Greek, along with a passion for volunteering led to the field of social work. A year out of college, Leigh was providing case management for young people transitioning out of foster care. Though she loved the work, maintaining 'appropriate boundaries' proved to be exhausting and so she shifted her focus to a bigger picture of child welfare and moved into middle-management and administration. In this capacity Leigh developed an infiltrator's understanding of 'the system'. She learned about finance, distributed-team facilitation and organizational politics.

At 28, Leigh understood that she wanted to help herself, and somehow to help other people, and so she spent two and a half years earning her master's degree in social work. As part of her degree, Leigh spent time in a Lakota community, listening, recording and transcribing other people's stories. She learned about racism, endurance and tribal politics. Through it all Leigh kept writing. She kept writing and began to understand her own story, but in a different way.

At 36, Leigh understood that she wanted to help herself, and somehow to help other people, and so she spent a year writing a book with a team of seven people, from seven different states. Aside from marriage, motherhood and growing up in foster care, she swears it's the hardest thing she's ever done. So, naturally, she wants to do it again.

Leigh believes that one way to find our collective voice is through sharing our individual stories, even the messy stuff, and so she continues to work on and blog about the making of Foster Princess, her memoir about a privileged life in and just out of foster care.

bio-mother relations

After a thirteen year gap, I've started 'writing relations' with my bio-mother. Her artist's-scrawl handwriting is distinct. Her pattern of reaching out on birthdays distinct. The inevitable waft of patchouli, also distinct.

This week it arrived. A little early. Her initials on the envelope: j h-b. Just like that, lowercase and hyphenated. juliet hapsburg-bourbon. The card, a color photo of beagle puppies 38 and 42 days old, on a palest-of-pink background.

17th of July 2010 FOR
28th of July

Leigh,
A good 38th yeAR FOR
you with hARd woRK +
FuN! love summer doors
+ wiNdows All oPeN.
Much love, juliet

P.S. iN RelAtivity theoRy
tiMe doesn't flow
but is, AS the 4th diMeNSioN
AS stAtic As SPACe.
what A PeAceFul
thought.
Bye
HAPPY BiRthdAy

___

I appreciate succinct. I'm working on a letter for her, though, that may open the floodgates. I might be wishing for cryptic and succinct then.

One translation of her note: "forgive me, because the bad parenting was inevitable and in the end, meaningless."

Maybe when you're 67ish this is how you look back on parenting, but as she notes I'm near 38 and still integrating my childhood as I parent my young children. 4th diMeNSioN or not, I'm still putting some effort into it. That must be all the hARd woRK + FuN! that she mentions.

Just in case she's become internet savvy, and ever lays eyes on this, let me say: Juliet, I'm easing into forgiveness in our own version of relativity.