Sadie Harpur: "People have more power over you when you are a victim"

The Hidden World Of A Foster Girl is a gut-wrenching read, pulling at every heart string. Hugely powerful, it’s a memoir about the anxieties of growing up in foster care in Ireland. And the woman it all happened to, Sadie Harpur, is sitting in front of me. She’s upbeat, excited and a little nervous.

“I think I’ve always been resilient and I’ve always been positive,” she posits. “My foster family would be very positive as well. My foster mom would be like, ‘Talk about it so we can move on’.” Sadie is married, a mother, an SNA at a local school in Wexford, and has in turn become a foster parent and now author. Her being here, in the Hot Press offices, along with her ghost writer (and former Hot Press staffer) Jackie Hayden, is, in itself, a success story. But that’s not what The Hidden World Of A Foster Girl is about.

Her memoir deals with painful experiences such as growing up as a foster child, being different at school, resorting to self-harm and alcohol abuse, and finally meeting her birth mum – who had been married young and was unable to cope when Sadie and her twin sister Kizzy were born three months prematurely.

Then there was the shock of finally accessing her file at age 18, to see that she had been categorised as ‘low intelligence’ (spend even two minutes with Sadie and you’ll realise that’s complete bull). Overall, her tale reflects the massive failures in the foster care system in Ireland. Sadie doesn’t think her story is unusual.

“I think it’s typical,” she suggests. “In fact, there are so many stories that are worse. Not that I’m saying that mine isn’t bad. But it’s actually nice to know I wasn’t the only one. Because sometimes you think, ‘Am I just overreacting?’”

It seems that, as much as this memoir is about sharing her story, Sadie is also reaching out to others. “I do feel that, by writing the book, I’ve started off with one brick,” she says. “Kizzy [Harpur’s twin sister] feels the same way as I do and that’s a brick. Others have contacted me after reading the book and that’s another. I feel like: if we put all the bricks together, maybe we can build something.”

Which begs the question, who does Sadie Harpur want to read The Hidden World Of A Foster Girl? “Definitely the Taoiseach,” she replies. “Anyone that can help make the change – I really want to highlight it for the HSE especially. I just feel if we could get everyone together to take a look at the system, we could change it. A lot of people are saying things like, ‘Oh god, we can’t change the system’ and ‘It is the way it is’. But why can’t we try?”

The first change that Harpur would instigate if she had a magic wand, would be to make sure that people understand that fostering isn’t the same as adoption.

“When I say me and Kizzy went to mum and dad at nine months old and right up to 18, a lot of people would have said to me, ‘You’ve been with your mom and dad since you were a baby’. They think there’s this stability. But there isn’t, because mum and dad didn’t have any legal rights over you. Mam couldn’t sign the school tour permission slips, or permission for whether or not we could have an operation. Everything had to be passed through the social worker.

Sadie Harper. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

“We thought it was so unfair, thinking, ‘Why can’t you see we are their children?’ You do actually see a lot of children that get adopted for the wrong reason. They get adopted because they don’t want to be a foster child. Because being a foster child, it sucks. You don’t feel secure.”

Harpur delves into her own painful memories. “Myself and Kizzy, we always felt like, ‘Oh god, somebody could take us’,” she says. “We would say to mom and dad, ‘Can we be with you forever?’ We were always told, ‘You can stay with us as long as you want to stay’, and that’s what social workers tell you to say to your foster child.”

HIDDEN WORLD

This deep feeling of insecurity, combined with lack of supports at school for Sadie’s dyslexia and dyspraxia, led to a tumultuous adolescence, which culminated in Sadie having to live out of home in what they call ‘respite care’. This, in turn, caused behaviours of self-harm and substance abuse. When I ask Sadie if she feels let down by the foster care system, her answer is simple and unflinching.

“I was.”

There is a pregnant pause in the room. Her honesty is disarming.

“But there was one thing, like, when Jackie said to me about being a victim,” continues Sadie. “And I remember going, no, I don’t want to be seen as a victim.” Maybe you feel like a survivor, I suggest.

“I think I do,” Sadie replies. “People have more power over you when you are a victim.”

Sadie Harpur is nothing if not a force to be reckoned with, and the process of writing this book has made her realise the power she holds.

“She was huge, that little girl,” she says. “I know that now. She went through so much. Being an adult, there’s people at work, people I went to school with, and no one knew that about me. Yeah, they knew I was fostered and things like that. But they never really knew who Sadie is, and what she’s been through.

“My foster mum said, ‘The hidden world of foster girls is that foster children have to fit into different worlds. You’re trying to fit into society, trying to fit in with your foster parents, your birth parents.’ I felt like I didn’t fit into my foster family and didn’t fit into my birth family.

“I didn’t fit into school. That became really lonely. And when I was having a tough time in school, it just confirmed how I felt about myself. I think I was so critical of that young girl. I feel like nobody really knew her except me, so now that she’s out in the world and people are actually liking her – yeah, I’m liking her more.”

Is there anything Harpur would change about The Hidden World Of A Foster Girl, if she were to redo it?

“I don’t know I’d be that honest!” she says with a warm and earnest laugh. But, I say, she must be proud of herself – of all she’s been through and where she is now.  “Yes,” she says, without skipping a beat. Dead right too. She’s come a long way.

• The Hidden World Of A Foster Girl is out now.