Fostering Cinnamon's Freedom One mom learns to help her foster daughter discover who she was meant to be

Fostering Cinnamon’s FREEDOM

By Muyoka Mwarabu

Photos: Left/top: The author, her daughter, and Cinnamon at Union Street Bridge in Salem. Right/bottom: The author and Cinnamon making chapatis, an African food, on New Year’s Eve. ALBERT EINSTEIN. I had just given my 16-year-old foster kid, Cinnamon (not her real name), a personality test and I was thrilled. It said she had the same personality as Albert Einstein—a deep thinker, able to solve complex problems. I felt like I had discovered a golden nugget everyone else had overlooked. My mind went into overdrive: booking a tutor, finding out about early college admittance, giving her her own room to have space to quantify the universe. Cinnamon regarded the personality test with much less enthusiasm, then asked if we could go to McDonald’s. pamphlets, but the real thing was different. At the park, Cinnamon didn’t play on the structures with the other kids. Instead, she would sit next to me and tell me stories about her life. She was easy to talk to, humble and absolutely hilarious. Her life had not been easy, but she had this inner strength and beautiful personality that had withstood a harsh environment. She was beautiful on the outside too. Strangers frequently stopped us to tell her how beautiful she was. So it didn’t take long for the boys to come calling.

After a summer of changing diapers, I had asked the Department of Child and Family Services for a 16-year-old girl. I had made a master plan. For the next two years, I would teach her everything I had learned in corporate America and help her get to college. In exchange, I would get more help around the house with cleaning and cooking. The department flooded my inbox, and I painstakingly read through each profile. I picked Cinnamon because of her story. She should have entered foster care three years earlier, when her sister did, but she had stayed loyal to her sick mom. She had been left behind to endure more, and then entered into a system that highly favored younger children. When I called to speak with her on the phone, she said, “I don’t eat that much, so if you let me come to your house, you won’t have to buy that much more.” I called her social worker and said yes. A week later a 5’4” bundle was dropped at my door.

I had read books on teenagers and the social worker had given me One day she told me she had met a guy on the internet and wanted to meet him in person. Rico Suave had offered to take her to a Ramen restaurant after hearing that I forbid Top Ramen in my house. I saw his game from a mile away and wanted to lock her in her room till she was 18. But, locking a kid in their room until 18 was apparently against DCYF protocol, so I compromised. I needed his home address, parent’s phone number and high school transcript. Rico Suave showed up with my requests and flowers. Letting her go was nerve racking. I sat on the couch for the next three hours completely restless. She was supposed to be home by 8 p.m. When the clock hit

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8:30, I considered reporting her missing but didn’t think law enforcement would take me seriously. Cinnamon strolled in at 8:35 saying her phone had died. I took her phone and told her to go to her room with no intention of ever letting her out again.

Of course, I did let her out, and as the months rolled on, we started to bond and the good memories that make all the hard work worthwhile started to happen. One time my 9-year-old daughter and I were playing a game of Memory in the hallway before bed and I invited Cinnamon to join us. Cinnamon refused. I told her, “You can be here, or you can be square,” and she said, “I’ll be square.” My daughter’s and my mouths both dropped in shock—no one had ever chosen to be square before. Cinnamon started laughing, seeing our mock fear in her life choices, and then we all started to laugh. Cinnamon left the safety of her room, removed her teenage “I-don’t-care” armor and joined us in the hallway for one quick game of childhood innocence before bedtime.

Soon enough the school year started and Cinnamon set about her studies. My plan with getting Cinnamon to Harvard was rolling along quite nicely. There was just one problem. Cinnamon did not want my plan for her life. She would be mowing the lawn while I trimmed the bushes, and she would start singing “We shall overcome.” Cinnamon’s history teacher gave the class an assignment asking if the U.S. was now a fairer place to live than in the past. Cinnamon wrote an essay likening the foster care system to slavery; she was Harriet Tubman and slavery had not been abolished in 1865. She wrote that as a teenager she had spent time in a juvenile facility when she had done nothing wrong, while a younger white kid who was in foster care would never experience that. She wrote about her long list of chores and how she didn’t have a choice. I thought back to the Facebook foster page where every day kids were posted and families picked out who they wanted to join their home. All the foster parents I knew were great people who were passionate about helping kids, but Cinnamon’s essay was touching on a deep human need: the right to choose and to have freedom. As healthy for her as my spinach broccoli smoothies were, she missed the fresh baked cinnamon cookies her mom used to make for her.

Cinnamon would wake up every morning and sit at a table for eight hours of online school, then spend two hours with a tutor. She was so restless at that table, confined to a life that wasn’t organic to her true spirit. Cinnamon had arrived at my house with a 1.5 GPA, due in part to multiple bouts of homelessness. The Albert Einstein personality test results had given me the deep-seated belief that Cinnamon could achieve, but hadn’t had the opportunity. But as we sat at that table for hours graphing equations, Cinnamon’s heart wasn’t there. One day Cinnamon dropped a note on my desk while I was on a conference call. It said, “I don’t like school.” She might as well have told me she did drugs. I was devastated. I felt like my dream of cheering her on as she walked across the stage at Harvard was being suctioned from my hands. That dream was the reason I had wanted to foster.

I had picked Cinnamon like a puzzle piece to fit into my life—someone I could teach to be successful in corporate America, who could help with the cooking and cleaning, who could be a big sister to my daughter. But Cinnamon was not a blank puzzle piece ready to be bent and stretched to fit my likings. She was already made. I started to see more of who she was each month. One time we were at Project Lemonade where foster kids could pick 20 free clothing items. I encouraged her to stuff what she wanted into the bag. Cinnamon picked three items and then said she wanted to make sure there was enough for all the kids. Next, we were at the hospital and my daughter did not want her shot. Cinnamon held her in a hug and rubbed her back and the needle went in without even a whimper. She was good at caring for people. I set up a bank account

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Photos, Far left: Cinnamon dropped off self-care baskets she made for teenage girls staying at Open House Ministries in downtown Vancouver.

Left: The author, her daughter, and Cinnamon at Mt. Hood Ski Bowl during Christmastime.

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for Cinnamon to save money for her future, but it kept going to zero—Cinnamon kept giving the money away, buying stuff for her siblings and the girls still at the juvenile facility. Then the final incident: Cinnamon said when she became successful, she wanted to find her birth mom and help her with her health issues. Help the person who hurt you the most? After my own professional years in corporate America, Cinnamon’s oversized heart was a foreign personality trait to me. It came across as a liability to her success, but it was refreshing to be around and contagious in our home. She had the DNA of a human services manager. Who Cinnamon was naturally, was more beautiful than who I had planned her to be.

Cinnamon’s freedom was going to come at the cost of my purpose for fostering. To me, a college degree was safety. Black women have to work harder to operate in a system not designed to make us win. As Cinnamon’s foster mother, I wanted to give her the best protection I knew: an education. Cinnamon’s chance of ending up in poverty would decrease from 43% to 9% with a college degree, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But it was her life to choose. I sat her down and told her I found a 10-week CNA nursing program at the community college so she didn’t have to go to college for four years. She looked at me and said, “Mom, I am going to go to college, just not Harvard. After I graduate I am getting my own place and I am not taking the spinach broccoli smoothie with me.” A feeling of relief went through my body and I reached out to hug her and I got a rare teenage treat: she hugged me back! And it hit me, in that instant: Black girl with a tough childhood, deep thinker, likes to help people and give away money. Oprah. I was hugging a little Oprah. The next day I cancelled the tutoring session. I told Cinnamon we could drop off a gift basket at a homeless shelter. Cinnamon’s eyes lit up and she asked if we could make three baskets for teenage girls. She started writing letters for the baskets and spraying them with perfume. I saw a glimpse of who she was going to become, and I wanted to be a part of her story. We walked to the car and I gave Cinnamon the keys. I told her whichever way she decided to go, I would support her. She released the break, smiling ear to ear and took off. Cinnamon was free.

Muyoka Mwarabu lives in Vancouver with her daughters, Ajuna and Cinnamon. She works in B2B sales and writes after bedtime. In February 2021, Cinnamon was one of 15 youth selected to serve on the Steering Committee on Youth Homelessness for the state of Washington