Three Little Birds

Kathleen is seventeen and is haunted by memories that leave her shaking. Placed in foster care because of her alcoholic parents, she navigates a broken system where the people meant to protect her only deepen the damage. Clinging to her boyfriend, John, with a desperate obsession to “make it out,” Kathleen struggles to survive as a teen, her life shaped by childhood trauma, neglect, and systemic failure. With her eighteenth birthday looming and facing the future ‘care cliff’ of being left to live independently with no support, Kathleen begins making decisions that will impact the rest of her life.  Kathleen must fight to break the cycle and ‘make it out’ of a system determined to keep her.

Three Little Birds is a memoir about Kathleen’s last twelve months in foster care, a coming-of-age story set against the reality of aging out of the foster system.