A Place Called Home: A Conversation with Child Welfare Advocate, David Ambroz

Published Oct 16, 2023, 7:00 AM

The scene is 1990’s New York City. Young David Ambroz and his two siblings are homeless, sleeping in bus shelters and bathing in public restrooms, under the care of his mentally ill mother. The child he was is still evident in the person he grew up to be: a nationally recognized expert on child welfare, and a staunch supporter of the foster care system.

This week on It’s OK that You’re Not OK, we discuss both the horror and the joy of his childhood, landing on a vision of hope for the future that everyone (yes, you!) can help bring into fruition. 

 

Sensitivity note: this episode explores the realities of being a homeless child, including brief examples of cruelty and non-graphic mention of sexual assault. 

 

In this episode we cover: 

 

  • The terrifying, liberating power of putting your personal story out into the world for everyone to see
  • “Occasional angels” and how they helped young David survive the cruelty of his upbringing
  • The intersections of mental illness, homelessness, and poverty 
  • Beyond fostering: how anyone can take action to create the kind of world where kids are safe and loved and cared for

 

Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.

 

Follow our show on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok @refugeingrief and @itsokpod on TikTok. Visit refugeingrief.com for resources & courses

 

About our guest:

David Ambroz is a national poverty and child welfare expert and advocate. He currently serves as the Head of Community Engagement (West) for Amazon, coordinating with non-profits and community leaders for social good. David’s memoir, A Place Called Home, is a heart-wrenching yet inspiring story, depicting childhood poverty and homelessness as it is experienced by so many young people. Find him at davidambroz.com, on IG @hjdambroz, and on LinkedIn.

 

About Megan: 

Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief

 

Additional resources:

Just talking about foster care can help foster care. Check out FosterMore, the foundation David co-founded with his sister, Jennifer Perry. 

 

Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief consultation here

 

Books and resources may contain affiliate links.

I had an original line that I wrote for the first chapter, and the reaction I gotten from the publishing folks that I work with was like, absolutely not, and I understand why, but it was truly how I felt that I wanted to start. Here's the line. My name is Hugh John David Ambrose McMahon. But for the first five years of my life, I thought my name was I should have had an abortion. And that's what my mom would say to me.

This is Hereafter, and I'm your host, Megan Devine, author of the best selling book It's Okay that You're Not Okay. This week on Hereafter, national child welfare advocate and expert, David Ambrose shares the story of his childhood living on the streets of New York City and his hopes for a kinder, more supportive world for everybody, kids and grown ups alike. Grief is stitched into so much of David's childhood you're going to hear in this episode. Joy is in there too. Settle in Everybody. We'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider, or for professional supervision related to your work. Hey, friends, So unless it's part of your own personal story, you probably don't think about homeless kids very often or the experience of kids in foster care. The thing is, though, both homelessness and foster care have a much bigger impact on the world than you might imagine. Those childhood experiences are often full of loss and grief, and a lot of that grief goes unspoken. Today's has so much to say about why that matters, not just for people who have lived those experiences, but for all of us. In his new book A Place Called Home, National poverty and child welfare expert David Ambruse tells the complicated story of his childhood, including his mother's battle with paraanoid schizophrenia, his early life on the streets of New York City, and his experience of foster care, which tiny spoiler alert here was not the saving grace that it could have been, at least initially. Now. One of the reasons that I wanted to talk with David and to share him with you is that he has this incredibly beautiful way of telling the truth about all of those experiences. He knows how to explore the joy that actually existed right alongside the grief and the horror of that early life without I don't know, like somehow devolving into one of those terrible transformation narratives that glorifies suffering. He's also deeply committed to helping people take action to create the kind of world where kids are safe and loved and cared for. And as you'll hear in this week's show, a world where kids are safe and loved and cared for really does help build the world that we all want to live in. You're really going to love this episode, friends, and I bet you fall in love with David. David the Kid and David the grown up advocate the same way that I have. And a couple of content notes for this week's show. This episode explores the realities of being a homeless kid, which includes brief examples of cruelty both mental and physical, and non graphic mention of sexual assault. One last thing here, David's on publicity tour for his new book, which means he's being asked to tell the details of his personal.

Story over and over and over and over.

I've been on that media circuit, and I know that that repetition can get kind of rough on a person. So I like to avoid asking guests to repeat those personal, painful details whenever where I can. So You're going to hear big parts of David's personal story in our conversation, but I don't ask him to summarize his story or his book at the top of the show. Okay, enough out of me, let's jump right into my conversation with child welfare expert David Ambrose. Here you are, Hey, good morning, Good morning. Look at you, all prepared with your giant book thing behind you.

Oh my gosh, what a pleasure. I've been listening to you all weekend.

Oh really, Yes, have you started a lot of the press yet where you're like, oh my god, I have to sit through the story again.

I've just begun in the last two weeks, and I thought writing it was the hard part. It's the publicity part and the excavation that you kind of open yourself up to in the kind of the intimate, dark corners of your life that I've just been like, Okay, this is exactly why I'm doing it. But it's still I get teary on all these things.

Yes, as somebody who now having done the media circuit with my own story for ten years, I still get tiery on the regular. So part for the course here, and this is actually, this is actually where I wanted to start our conversation too, writ like, so much of your work, even before this book, so much of your work was about visibility, right, visibility for homelessness and the foster care system and all of these things. But I wanted to start with like, Okay, so now you have this book out and there's a personal aspect that is visible now and you mentioned that a little bit, but like, what's that like for you now that everybody can pick up this book and read really personal stuff?

I just got chills. And that's not an atypical reaction for me. I think so many people in my life have had bits and pieces of my story and I have otherwise just pushed it down and acknowledged it, but never really thought about it as something I wanted to share in great detail. And I'll tell you, which is very personally, that the first people to read it were my brother and sister, and my brother apologized to me. He has nothing to apologize to me for, but It wasn't something that he did. It was the pain that he read. And this is my older brother and my sister, who are you you? Sipply's supposed to protect you, and we tried to protect each other. So that was profound, I would say. The other profound piece has been letting go of the power that these things had over me. I think of emotion now as a superpower, and before I thought of it as a weakness that could get me hurt. And that made sense when I was a kid, but it carried on into my late thirties when I was surrounded by people that I loved, that loved me, and still I had a barrier. I remember when me too was roiling through Hollywood. I worked in the media business and entertainment, and I'd be in these rooms where people were talking about rape and I just inside was dying. And I'm a disgendered white male and I experienced rape and I could not talk about it. It's a shame. And so how it's been has been a profound feeling of more space. When I breathe, that stuff is still there, it doesn't have that authority over me, and putting it all on paper, it's all out there there's no pull at it back.

Yeah, there's no take backsies now.

And I drove off the cliff with Elma Luise. It's just one way now and it is the scariest, most beautiful, important thing I've ever done, and it's the most self loving thing I could have done. We'll try and help other people. I inherently have helped myself by releasing that power.

I love That's that is the best possible response.

I didn't even realize I was hoping you were from you.

But there is this thing about the transformational power of telling a deeply personal story, not just to tell this deeply person story, not that there's anything wrong with that, but that there is a power and an agency we claim back from those events when we tell that story.

And also there's that.

Time travel element of it, right, Like that, looking back on it, you see different facets, That lens of the story gets a little bit larger, sure, right, And I love the liberation that I hear in what you just shared, the liberation of that to really look.

Back at that kid and that young person and say, like this, this really shaped me in good ways and in not so good ways. In the writing course that I run I remember when I moved to the West Coast realizing that any new people I met would never know my partner right because he had been dead for five years when I moved out here, and that weirdness of they would never get to know this person, And so I started writing about how they would know him by who I had become because of him, right for me, Like when I'm teaching writing, I'm talking about how do we know the person you were or the person you've lost by the shape of them in you?

Cool?

Right, And I was thinking about that as I was reading your work and preparing for a conversation today and wondering about what do we know about the kid that you were?

What is the shape of that childhood in you today?

Chirst Well, I love the story about your partner and how people know these people or things that happened to you by the way that you are today. That's a really beautiful thought. In the acknowledgments, there are a number of individuals I call out, and there's one mystery one and it's hj DA which is my legal name, Hugh John David Ambrose. And when I was about eight, my mom renamed me because she had me circumcised and decided that I was going to become Jewish because that was what would make me more successful. They were more successful as a people, and therefore I was going to become Jewish. And it almost killed me. We were homeless, I had very little aftercare, and I became deathly ill. And I think about that name, Hugh, and I think about that as one of these critical moments of my life where there was a before and there was an after, and the before was not pretty. We lived in public transportation stations in the park and shelters. We were starving, but there was a before, and in and amongst all that terrible upbringing was joy. I didn't go to school. We played, we called the ghetto Tag. We had adventures all over New York City. But after that I had to change my identity because my mom, who suffers some mental illness, decided that I was going to be a different person. And I became a different person because I was so violently hurt and experienced something so treacherous that it changed me. I think names have power, and I think about that boy quite often who he would have been, not just with the circumcision, but also with what happened after that, the decades of relentless abuse and violence, but also love, joy, crazy, adventure. So I see the shape of these things in me. I think about that boy often. I attended a spiritual retreat and one of the things you had to do was you had to write a letter to your childhood self. No one knew anything about me. People are all on their own journey. And I wrote a letter of apology to a twelve year old David who just was about to enter foster care. And I wrote, I said, I'm so sorry for what's about to happen to you, but she'll come out the other side. And so I think about different periods of my life than who that younger person was. And I'll tell you this. I get asked quite often, would you change your life? I would change anything I have had, the most beautiful Forrest Gump meets Hillbiliology meets precious life, the adventures I've had, the people I've met, the family I've cultivated and curated. Talking to you today about this book, how many people write a book. I love the life that I've loved, as hard as it is, and I don't even compare pain. I think about that boy and what he would have to overcome. But all of us have our own Mount Everest, and it's our own mountain to climb, and so regardless of who he might have been, he would have faced something too. But I do think about him. I do think about the power of names, and I think about what I would have wished for this young person, and I think about that with foster care. I actually had a lot of my foster care work. I ask people, close your eyes and picture a child that you love, your child, a niece and nephew, yourself as a child. What system would you want to take care of that kid if they had to go into foster care? And it's the same way I feel about the younger David, which is you would not want the system we have today, and we need to address that. We need to identify with that and really feel what these kids are going through, these children all over our country. So I love the question, and I do think about it, and I'll say one final kind of dark tangent.

I love a dark tangent.

Good Larry to say this, but hey, just you and me listening and talking. I had an original line that I wrote for the first chapter, and the reaction I got from the publishing folks that I work with, was like, absolutely not, and I understand why, but it was truly how I felt that I wanted to start. Here's the line. My name is Hugh John David Ambrose McMahon. But for the first five years of my life, I thought my name was I should have had an abortion. And that's what my mom would say to me. So I think about these younger David's or Hughes or she sometimes called the other names just because she wanted to, and who that person would have been, I don't know. But I love the person that I am. I love the life that I lead, and I love the fact that I'm able to just do this project and share my story hopefully to get people to do something to help children like my family.

Yeah, and there's so much in there. You picked up on some threads that I wanted to get into, which was like the one the horrors of the system and even the precursor to that, right, like the realities on the ground of mental illness and parenting and healthcare systems and homelessness and racism, classism, all of those things that go into creating a childhood like yours, creating a person like you. I think one of the things that can happen for people is we start talking about these issues and they one by one the sort of walls come down because they're like, it's too much, it's too much, it's too much. I can't close my eyes and picture a child. I can't close my eyes and picture somebody I love being put through all of these things. And as a sort of protective mechanism for our olympic systems and our hearts, we say, nope, can't think about this.

Boy.

Yeah, So what do you think we.

Need to change? Is maybe the wrong word, but how do we get people to really listen to the truth about child welfare?

So the first place I've started, after working in entertainment media for decades, is the realization that people are are human emotions that could become overwhelmed, which is what you're describing. I start with something positive, which I have found very powerful. We have the best foster care and poverty system ever invented in human history right here, right now, in the United States of America. We have the most transparent, equitable society that we've ever had in our country. Right now, more kids are taken care of by our system and we'll do better than they would have than any other time in our history. Right now, yes, we must do better. But if we as a child welfare movement and people that are empathetic to it constantly screen fire, the walls that you talked about will come down. And the reality is is there's a buffet. You don't have to have every item at the buffet, but you as an individual can contribute something and take an item from it. I launched a nonprofit ten plus years ago called Foster More. And the reason I launched Poster More was in looking at my sisters in the breast cancer movement. I wondered, how did they go from death and the sectomy and half the species thinking it wasn't their problem to where we are today, where the research dollars are flowing, where there's a associated color which has been taken over, where I can buy a pink car?

How did that at to totally issues with that too? But yes, I'm with you, I hear you, yeah.

And I'm sure absolutely in greenwashing. There's all sorts of things we could talk about, but I'd rather a pendulum in that direction, yeah, rather than where we are with child welfare.

What I hear you describe me.

I'm just going to interrupt for one second because I can hear people who are listening going, okay, but the pink washing thing is a real situation. Yes, yes it is friends, Yes it is topic for another day. And what I hear you saying is, let's look at the mechanism of action that took breast cancer from a not my problem thing that people were dying of because nobody pays attention to women in health into something that is so popular a topic that we've also got problems with its popularity. So what is the cultural movement, what is the culture jamming engine percent that we can apply to Foster Care. So now continue so that people are still listening to you and not be an upset about pink washing.

No, it's thank you for saying that, and I plan to adopt some of that. I think we can learn from it, because talk about an area where people don't think they have anything to give or contribute, or that it's not their problem, or it's too overwhelming, or there's no solution. There is and so Foster More learned from some of that, and we really focused on rebranding foster Care as something that you want to be part of and we did that a number of ways. One was talking to people that create entertainment shows elevating stories. We created the National Scholarship Fund for Foster Youth, kind of like the Pink Cure fundraising. You may not be able to foster, but could you give a dollar ti the Scholarship fund so kids can be a vocational education or higher out of any sort. We created Child Welfare Foster Care Friendly Workplace certification so companies can certify that they love and care about this population by allowing their employees, for instance, to take time off when they get a placement. So we've tried to adopt some of the things we've learned from other movements where companies and individuals have been able to contribute other than adopting the fostering, and that has made a big difference and started to move the needle on it.

We've been talking with David Ambrose, a national poverty and child welfare expert and all around awesome human.

Let's get back to it.

I'll tell you a story. When I was in bostcare, I went through a series of very challenging, challenging assist to euphemism, horrible placements that were physically, emotionally violent and abusive that rented me out for terrible things, and I did not think I was going to make it through. And I remember I was working as a volunteer at the YMCA and I met a woman and she was the camp director. Her name was Holly, And y'all can't see it, but right to my left is a picture of my foster family. And the reason I happened there above my biological family photo is because Holly, who was not a foster parent, saw what I was going through and spent more than a year fighting to get me and I her and eventually we did. So here's a person that had no horse in the race and she decided this was what she was going to do. All of us can do something. We don't all have to be Holly. I think about La. If anyone's ever been in LA, you drive down the freeway and there's a car accident, and you're two things at once. You're pissed off that it's slowing down traffic and you're hopeful that everyone okay and they are in competition because we're human and we're awful and beautiful. That car accident is the condition of children, and the reality is that no one is getting out of their car, and we have to because either we pay now or we pay later, both in economic and moral terms. So I strongly believe you may not be able to be holly. But instead of asking someone what they did that weekend, can you donate your small talk? Can you talk about children in poverty? Can you look up free fun facts and say, hey, did you know seven hundred kids entered foster care this weekend.

I love that you brought up donate your small talk because I saw that on the foster care website.

I was like, I want to.

Talk about donate your small talk, and I actually used it in conversation yesterday, which I will tell you about in a second. But I think I think what you're you know, where you're going with this is like, if we really start feeling into it, thinking about it, becoming aware of all of these issues and problems in the suffering involved in so many different levels of it, there is the temptation to just say I'm not interested in fostering kids for whatever reason, and then that's the end of it, sort of like there's this, Okay, there's one yet one more disaster in the world for which I am helpless, right, and nobody likes that feeling of helplessness, so we try to like not look at it. But I also love that you brought in. Look, this is not just a foster care issue. If we're looking at racism, classism, sexism, violence, incarceration, rates, homelessness. Like all of the things that we look at as problems and challenges in modern culture, so many of them begin in childhood. So many of them begin in suffering and abuse and neglect and torture and economic instability. Like, all of these things build this culture that we have, and we have to find inroads to start talking about them. Otherwise we just collapse in despair. And that while it has its merits for an afternoon, collapsing into despair like that doesn't build the world that we want. I think for a lot of folks, foster care is just not It doesn't make it into the top ten issues that they're thinking about, when in reality, it is one of the top ten foundational things that build the world that we have well said. So what I love about I'm going to tell you what it means in a second. Everybody but the donate your small talk thing. What I love about that one from an artistic point of view, like I love culture jamming, it is my favorite. And two, getting people to be curious about an issue is the biggest hurdle in a lot of ways, and I love how you describe that that, Like, if we can get you curious, then you can find ways that you can be of service to act on your own personal agency to create the world that you want. And it doesn't have to mean that you have to add on three more bedrooms to foster more kids, right. There are lots of different ways to get involved with that. So the if you go to we'll link it in the show notes everybody, But the if there's a video on the nonprofit website that shows you, like a really cute interaction of I think it's a it's a person in an uber and the uber driver says, wow, crazy about those foster kid stats. Huh or something like that, and the woman in the back goes huh, and he goes, yeah, seven hundred kids a day coming into foster care. And the look on the person's face, you know, the rider in the car as they just like they become curious and horrified about it. In that moment, and it's not a weird interchange, you know, like it doesn't last very long. But I love this idea that like we all have these kind of awkward small TALKI kind of moments. I invoked it yesterday. I was sitting with a friend and we were talking about voter rights and voter registration and how to get younger people to register to vote and show up at voting polls. She actually said, I figure, anytime there's an opportunity for small talk, I'm going to talk about voter registration. So she did that mechanism of action, that culture jamming on a one to one basis, and it was so cool, and I got to bring you in and say, hey, there's actually a really great video about this. So anyway, total culture jamming, nerdy detour there, but we will totally get in the show notes everybody. And this is I think this is really an important thing here. So much of what I tend to talk about is like that fire hose of overwhelming things that need attention and how do we how do we find inroads into those things, and how do we help people care? And how do we how do we help people understand that that feeling that comes up when you read your book or when you really dive into what it's like to be a homeless child in this culture, in this country, when those feelings come up, you can actually do something with those feelings.

I have a whole series of these campaign ads and they're hilarious, and they're on my website David Ambrose dot com. You can see all of them, and we have all new round coming out too. And the reason I created them is because when have you ever seen a foster care or child poverty PSA that's funny, And so I've learned from other movements that humor is one of the ways, in addition to other tactics, to get to people's heart. The reality is to more than two thirds of the kids coming into foster care in different systems are there because of quote neglect, which is a euphemism for poverty, which is a euphemism for racism and classism. So we can remove two thirds of young people roughly by supporting their families, by having whole communities that have not a poverty of opportunity, but an embarrassment of riches of opportunity, with recreation space, positive schools that are healthy, non food deserts parents that have the skills they need and if they don't, will help them mental illness that's treated. Instead of taking their kids away and spending whatever it is, four hundred thousand dollars a year, we can work with the families to preserve them and negate the need and really focus on the kids that need to be removed. That is not asking anybody to do anything but center children and families and their politics. To have the conversation to be like, hey, does my counting remove two thirds of the kids because the neglect. Ask that at a county supervisor meeting. Ask that to your assembly person when they do their town halls. We're not asking it a foster necessarily, but could you start to center this in your politics? And I think there's a real opportunity people could donate that talk, which we can all do, and also just use humor and intelligence, have fun. When you get into the elevator and someone asks you how your weekend was, no one actually cares. No one cares. No one cares about your kids, No one cares what you had for lunch, No one cares what you thought about the movie. But if you could use that time to talk about this issue, and that's one of the offshoots of foster More is, in addition to changing the stories that get told by movies and TV, can we change the narrative in the public conversation so that you don't run away screaming from this topic. Because you're right, you said it so beautifully. Foster care is not a root problem. Fostercare is a symptom of the failure of all the other social welfare shaking it programs that have failed. We capture the children who, through no fault of their own, are here because these other systems have been hacked to death, be it underfunded public schools, social workers, are too many kids, whatever it is, And this unique moment, we all can do something to create the system we would want for our own children. The afterward of my book A Place Called Home, is a prescription for the sum of the things that I believe would change the outcome for these children. And the reason I made the afterword not a flash forward of where I am today, but a policy prescription is the exact reason you asked me when we started talking is why I wrote the book, which is to move people from empathy to action. Whatever that action is.

Action Yeah, I love this. I love this idea of empathy and action being partners, right, and that that is the antidote to overwhelm right. I also really really adore that we're talking about foster care as an end result of system failure.

This is what I love.

About this work is we get to talk about the patterns, the bigger systems, the web that we are all part of that creates these sort of hot flash moments of like, oh, this terrible story about foster care, Oh, this terrible story about whatever.

Else is up today?

Right, That these are not issues that happen in a vacuum. There are issues that happen in the culture, in the networks, in the safety nets or lack of safety nets that we build and that we pay attention to and we talk about and we fund and we vote for. It all comes down to one kid in one place at one time, living this story, and that child sitting inside a system that created his life.

One hundred percent. I see why you do this for a living. You're incredibly eloquent. I think all of us have the capability to do big things. I think we as a society have gotten to this place where we don't believe we can where we can barely build subways. We all just kind of accept it as it did. I don't accept it. I always think about a coin. When you flip a coin, there's heads or tails, right, there's actually a third side when it lands on its side, called equipoise. And I think of society as an equipoise where it is a collective delusion. And thank God, but we get to create that world every single day with our actions or inactions, and I think all of us can do something. If we can send a person to the moon. No child should be homeless in this country. No child. We just make that decision, and we get to decide that, and then we get to manifest that by our political power and voting once every four years. Does not a democracy make showing up asking questions. There's so many school districts where we know as young as eight to twelve that these kids will not graduate high school. We know, we statistically know. How are we not doing everything we can to make sure that they do? How?

Yeah, And we can't put that on the educators either, because the educators are doing everything they can with a system that doesn't support ye them. You can't pluck one piece out of this without making the whole web reverberate, right, and it's like, ah, I think those conversations often go to like, teachers need to do Okay, you need to act the hell off of teachers, everybody, And let's get schools, the schools and libraries, right, Like, let's get schools and libraries supported to do the work, the social work that they are already doing.

Schools have become health clinics, mental health centers, feeding programs, guidance counselors, family integration therapists. We have asked schools without giving them the resources to do so much more than we created them for. And then we're collectively shrugging our shoulders. And why are schools in trouble? Schools are in trouble.

Because why are teachers quitting? Well, let's ask some teachers.

My sisters was a social worker for almost fifteen years, and I remember asking her how she would describe her job, and she said, paperwork occasionally punctuated by interacting with kids.

Absolutely.

So we create these systems and we overwhelm these people, and then when we underfund them like foster care, and they had bad outcomes, we pointed it and go look out of the outcomes. So I go back to the positivity, which is where I truly feel because in any other time, in any other place, I would not be talking to you. I would be a statistic dead in sale or something. We can do this. I strongly believe it, and I also believe that American public in general is good, especially on issues as it pertains to kids. I talk about closing your eyes and envisioning that system. When I close my eyes, I cannot see your political party. I strongly believe that kids in these situations are a place where we can come together and create a more holistic system. Foster care is ironically and uniquely at place of bipartisanship. Donald Trump signed one of the most important bills in foster care Reform, which allowed for the first time, money to be spent to preserve families. It was buried in this other bills, but it passed. Bill Clinton signed the first bill spending money on eighteen for foster kids that were leaving so they didn't become Almost automatically, this issue can bring us together. We can solve big things, and we could stop that intergenerational poverty and violence. You may not be able to foster, but can you give a dam. Can you talk about it? Can you post that video? Can you just do something to contribute to the conversation, Because when you look around, you're going to pay for it. You're going to pay in your taxes, You're going to pay in your morality. However you calculate or it's important to you, the bill will come doue And we don't want to pay that. We want to do better, and I believe we can, and I believe we've steadily improving. But the reason I'm sharing this story is to go even further. I've had this forest gump life, to have the connections, capability, education, to share my story conspire people to do things. I'm so fortunate for that. And it didn't follow me like an apple, like I carved it. Be that as it may. Opportunity met accident, and I am here today because of the system. So I'm trying to get people to a little bit more lean into the forwardness of it. Take whatever action you can. Here's some ideas, and let's do it together. Yeah.

So we've talked about the book as a way to lead people from your story into action. Right, what do we do as adults with resources of whatever those resources look like. So we've talked about that, and one of the things that I want to come back to is the power of your story for kids. You write on your website about finding hope and libraries, right, and I'm going to assume that this is not just the physical space but also stories, right. And what I want to know is, what is the power for you in telling the truth about the horrors and joy of your life as a child. What is the power in that story for are kids who are living a similar horror story today.

Well, first we say about libraries just like schools, They've become homeless shelters, they've become cooling centers, they've become new immigrant education centers, and yet we just whittle away their support. I would be at libraries. I would stay warm and cold. I tell a story in the book where I didn't go to school and I learned to read at the library. And I went to one story time and the librarian picked up a book and I was hoping it was Change in the Giant Peach, because I had heard the start of that story at another library and I was dying to hear the rest of it. But she read where the sidewalk ends, and if you're familiar with that book, it opened so beautifully. And my book opens actually with the discussion of sidewalks in New York City, because when you're cold and walking as a child, you try to distract yourself to not feel everything feeling. And I would look down at the sidewalk and I would see the ones with Micah, or the slabs in the bowery, and you just see all this diversity. And she pulled that story out in the middle of me having this life. And as she was beginning to talk, this mother came up and stood in front of me, and her son was sitting next to me, and she basically said, you know you're filthy, get away from my son. And to her credit, I was, I'm sure I had lice. I'm sure I smelt. I probably hadn't showered in an eon. And I was so mortified. And this librarian came over and she smoothed it all out, and I moved a little bit, and I heard the story and she read that poem the opening of that book, which, like it is, burnt into my mind. I am here today because of sleeping on subway cars from one end of their route to the other I'm here today because liberians. That one snuck a candy bar into my bag, which was a thank you bodega bag, a plastic thank you bodega bag. So they're just critical infrastructure. And as I was thinking about this book, I really thought about the stories I would tell in order to get it into many hands as possible. How young could I still share the truth but also not alienate people that would not want to necessarily share this book with young people. So I really aimed for like a middle school age where our kids are experiencing real things right now we all know it. I wanted to share the story so that like kid like me, saw themselves, not in some sort of cute book like Harry Potter, which I love. He's a kinship foster kid if you think about it, Elizabeth his relative as kinship foster care. But what really goes on. I wanted to see themselves reflected and in sharing that truth, give them actual hope, not a candy high, but an authentic hope that they too will come out the other end through perseverance. And so I shared my story not just for the you and me and adults who vote, but to get into the hands of young people that may be experiencing any element of this poverty, families with mental illness, violence, deprivation, instability, foster care, failing schools, whatever it may be, that they will see their story in there and bear a little bit hope. So I think sharing your story is a powerful way to change politics, but is also hopefully reaching people like myself that never saw themselves in these books. Regardless of the Catcher in the ryal these great books. As a kid, I never read about a fostered kid, a homeless kid that lived at Grand Central or the Park. And what does it mean to take a shower at a fast food restaurant in the bathroom and get chased out and feel disgusting to not have healthcare? And so I want to get stories to be there, so that a kid who picks up this book or is given this book by a social worker or a teacher who sees them, that they feel just a little bit of that hope that I was really so hungry for and so desperate for it so many times in my life. So I hope adults read it. I hope it changes policy, hearts and minds, but I hope it gets in the hands of young people really need this. That's part of what I hope has happened here. So teachers, if you're listening, I know you better than anybody else, are going to see these kids, what's going on their lives. Please make sure they get this book.

You kind of jumped right into how I've been closing every conversation this season, which is a conversation about hope. One of the things that's been really cool for me having these conversations.

Everybody seems to.

Come around to Hope so far, every single person I've spoken to, and I haven't told y'all ahead of time that this is what we're going to talk about, but I think we're really tapping into something here that there is so much disaster and so much beauty, and so much much overwhelm and so much we want for this world, that those desires, those thoughts, those stories seem to, just by their own natural rhythm, end up at the doorstep of Hope. You brought us there. And I'm stammering a bit here, everybody, because that story about what hope really means. Hope isn't a pink, fluffy bunny the way that it often gets sold to us in the media and in books, Hope is this right, like hope is seeing yourself reflected in something truly horrible, so that you have hope for something that surrounds that horror.

There are so many moments in the book and in my life. I call them occasional angels. Yeah, I tell the story in the book of robbing Holmes survive or hustling people, and people that I was thinking that I was ripping off would give me more money than needed to pay for the wrapping paper I was selling door to door because they saw me. Hope was when the church in the book Let Us Sleep in a linen closet. Hope was Holly rescuing me from the brink. Hope was Gabriella in the book when I committed fraud on an exchange program grant application and got emancipated and moved to Spain at seventeen. And Gabriella was this mother bear who helped rebuild a human out of pieces that built on what Holly started. Hope was a secretary whose son worked for the Clintons, who got me a White House internship that then plugged me into national politics and policy. Hope was my foster son who at thirty seven taught me that my feelings and emotions are a superpower and taught me to be open and free with that, which allowed me to write this book, which hopefully will add hope to other people's lives. I think we're all just innately hopeful and beautiful. Every day, ninety nine percent of us as humans go home to our families all over the world, and we do our lives, and they may be hard, but we do them. I think about la like four point something million people got home last night and just had dinner and did whatever. Doesn't mean they don't struggle. But there's so much beauty in the world. And I have had the occasional angel in my life so many times that here I am talking to you. I try and paid forward. I tried to be an agent of that. How could you not be hopeful? That's how I feel. My therapist a couple of years ago, described as I was starting to deal with my emotion, said, David, you have taken all of these things that have been thrown at you, and you put them in a clear plastic box, and you label them, and you put them in the index box. You know exactly see where they are, and you can see them, but you don't have to feel them. He said, your shelf broke, your boxes are coming off all that old trauma, and your coping mechanism is gone. You can't put anything on there. And the way that I've been able to move through all that, process it and deal with it and find a new way to deal with life is hope. Is to realize I am buried in love all around me, by my found family, by my biological family. I care for my mom today, my biological mom, the very woman who's at the root of his book. I hope I was gonna admit it. I pray. I wish I could talk to my mom for an hour without the mental illness. I think about what we would talk about. And I hope that she finds some peace in her days, because God, that's a prison. He feel so much hope in my life. I hope people read the Day of book and do something.

Read the book, take action.

Yes, how could you not hope? I'm just chuckful. I'm overflowing with hope.

Your hope cup runneth over.

Indeed, I love this.

You're holding up a vision of hope for for okay, at least me to walk into thank you for that. All right, this has been an amazing conversation. I am so glad we got a chance to talk. Obviously, we're going to link to everything in the show notes. But what do you want?

What do you want to leave people with? David?

Where should they find you? What do you want them to do? How do you want them to donate their small talk? What do you want people to know?

First? Before the business? You have power whoever you are, to do something, and when we do it together, it's even bigger power. But you have power. You're looking around waiting for someone to save whomever or whatever you are that person. That's what we have to realize. That's what I want you to do. I want you to go to my website David Ambrose dot com, which links to the PSA's that you're talking about to donate your small talk. It links to Foster More, which is my nonprofit which has a ladder of engagement from simple small steps like we talked about, to how do you become a COSA, a special volunteer, or a foster parent or adopt. It has that all laid out. It also lets you purchase my book A Place Called Home. I also read the audiobook. So if you like my voice and enjoy the journey, encourage you to do that. I want people to get involved. My book is a lens. I hope it inspires people. But I want to go back to the first thing I said. I want you to believe that you can do something. I'm here today because people did, and I want you to believe that you can create another David Ambrose, and together we could create a system that produces only beautiful children that reached their full potential.

Thank you, David.

All right, everybody, we'll be right back after this last week.

Don't go anywhere.

Each week I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. And you know, it really struck me in my conversation with David was how easily and naturally he jumped into hope to keep your eyes open to so much pain, so much complicated pain, so much complex pain of the world, and to come out with a kind of unshakable hope that David has. It's just really cool. Which parts of the conversation stuck with you today? What parts made you think or cry? David and I actually spent a lot of time just sitting in silence crying together, which you don't hear.

In this episode, but it was in there.

What parts made you feel empowered to do something about the pain of the world, whether that's your pain or someone else's. Let me know, everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but I do hope you find something to hold on to. As you heard David say, talking about this difficult stuff really does make a difference, and we would love to hear from you about what you've taken from this episode, or really about anything at all. Check out Refuge in Grief on Instagram or here After pod on TikTok to see video clips from the show and to leave your thoughts in the comments on those posts. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast app looking for a new thing to listen to. They're going to see the show description for Hereafter and think, I don't want to listen to difficult things, even if cool people are talking about them. Well, here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here. We talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone, So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world, on social media, in your friend groups, or as David says, donate your small talk and also click through the Leaver review of the show, Subscribe to the show, download episodes, keep on listening all the things want more Hereafter. The grief education doesn't just belong to end of life and death issues. As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay, plus the Guided Journal for Grief at Megandivine dot Co. Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, Logistical and social media support from Micah, and edited by Houston Tilly. Music provided by Wave Crush, Background noise occasionally provided by Luna and the Leaf Flowers.

It's the realization that people are human, they have emotions. They could become overwhelmed, which is what you're describing. So I'm not sure I understand.

So I'm not sure we understand either, Siri.

That's ironic, an Irish accent. I can't help it. I love it.