LANSING — Despite what she’s endured, Lansing resident Brina Williams realizes that among her peers she might consider herself fortunate.

“I know there’s a lot of other people in foster care that have gone through worse experiences than me,” she told Bridge Magazine.

Williams, 18, entered Michigan’s foster system just shy of her 15th birthday after years of what she said was verbal and sexual abuse from her mother’s boyfriend that prompted a family court judge to approve her removal from her home.

So began her journey through foster care, first to a home with a relative, then to a second and third foster care home. She was homeless for a couple weeks.

At times, she said, she was so distraught she cut her skin, starved herself and threw up her food. She had head and stomach aches from acute anxiety and trouble sleeping. In her lowest moments, she thought of suicide.

Source: How Michigan shortchanges foster children facing life as adults | Bridge Magazine