When Wilma’s youngest child got married and the house went quiet, she knew she wasn't ready for that silence. An empty nest wasn't something she could accept, not when there were children in her community who needed exactly what she had to give. 

So she opened her door. 

"I couldn't handle an empty nest when my last baby got married," Wilma says with characteristic honesty. What followed was years of welcoming children into her home, pouring love into them, and discovering something she hadn't anticipated: that she needed them just as much as they needed her. 

"It was so rewarding to know these kids needed me as much as I needed them." That kind of mutual belonging, the kind where everyone gains something real, is at the heart of what makes Wilma's story so quietly powerful. She didn't come to fostering out of obligation or program. She came because her heart still had more room. 

And the children she's cared for over the years haven't forgotten it. Years later, many of them still find their way back to her. They call to ask for advice. They reach out when life gets hard. And they still call her by the name that stuck. 

"I've seen so many through the years of fostering that come back to me for advice and still call me Mamaw." That name carries weight. It speaks to the kind of relationship Wilma builds, not a temporary transaction, but a genuine bond that outlasts any placement timeline. 

Mamaw. Not a title she was assigned, but one she earned through years of presence, patience, and love given freely. In a world where children in care can sometimes feel forgotten once they age out or move on, Wilma has become a constant. A person they know they can call. 

That is its own kind of legacy. 

For anyone standing at the edge of this decision, wondering if a short placement is worth the investment, Wilma's perspective is clear and generous:

"Even though a child might be in your life for a short while, the love you show that child will be remembered a lifetime." 

Robin’s path to fostering began with watching someone else do it well. 

A coworker of hers opened his home to family members in need. Robin saw how that choice transformed him, how purposeful and full it seemed to make his life. She watched, and she recognized something in it. "I saw how invested and happy it made him," she says. 

Robin's own childhood had been rocky. But rather than close herself off because of it, she let it open her up. She had space in her home and love to give, and she understood firsthand what it meant for a child to need both. 

One placement has stayed with her as a reminder of what this work is truly about. She cared for two brothers for over a year while their parents, though separated, both committed to completing a court-ordered program. It wasn't a simple path. But both parents showed up and did the work, and eventually the family was reunited. 

"I was so happy and sad to see them go back," Robin says. That particular mix of emotions, joy for the reunion, grief for the goodbye, is something foster parents carry often. It doesn't go away, but it does become familiar. And Robin has learned to hold both feelings at once, knowing that a successful reunification is something to celebrate even when it stings. 

Her relationship with that family didn't end at the placement's close. She and the children's mother have stayed in touch. Sometimes Robin picks up one of the boys to take him to the park. A small, ordinary thing that means everything. 

That is the thread running through Robin's experience: ordinary acts of care, extended consistently, leave a mark that doesn't fade. She keeps children busy, keeps things active, keeps showing up. And the children in her care feel it. 

Her advice for new foster parents is rooted in that same grounded, practical spirit:

"All these children are going through a lot. It takes patience to foster. Keep them busy at the park or creating something." 

Eric D. understands what it means to grow up in a hard home. He lived it. But he also knows what it feels like when someone chooses to show up for you anyway, to become family not by blood, but by commitment. 

"I grew up in a not great family, but was blessed to have people come into my life that, though I was not adopted, ended up as my family of choice," Eric says. Those people were foster and adoptive parents. And what they did for him planted a seed that never went away. 

When the time came, Eric knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to be for someone else what others had been for him. 

That is the quiet engine behind his fostering journey. Not a perfect childhood or an idealized vision of what family looks like. Just a clear memory of what it felt like to have an advocate, someone in his corner who stayed, and the determination to give that same thing to another child. 

What he's learned along the way is that the relationship itself matters more than the outcome. Whether a child is in his care for a few weeks or much longer, what they carry with them is the knowledge that someone fought for them. That they were worth fighting for. 

"Whether for a short time or longer, showing kids that you are in their corner, that they have an advocate, is huge," he says. "They are worth fighting for." 

Eric's story is a reminder that some of the most committed foster parents are the ones who know from personal experience what the stakes really are. He isn't fostering from a place of having had everything. He's fostering from a place of having needed something and received it. That kind of empathy runs deep. 

His advice to new foster families comes from someone who has sat on both sides of this experience, and it is both practical and profound:

"Listen to other foster parents. They can help you navigate things even better than caseworkers." 

The Arthurs came to foster care through a simple, deeply human starting point: they love children, and building a family the traditional way wasn't their path. Foster care, they discovered, could be that path. And over time, it didn't just grow their family. It grew them. 

"Foster care has increased our faith and love as a family and has made our family complete," they share. 

But they are honest about the fact that the journey has not been easy. There have been moments when the emotional weight of loving and then saying goodbye felt like too much. Moments when they questioned whether they could keep going. 

In one of those moments, they received the answer they needed. A young person they had previously cared for reached out and told them he loved them, and then said something the Arthurs haven't forgotten: he urged them never to quit fostering, because they were the best foster parents he'd ever had and other children would love them too. 

Another sibling set, on the day they left, handed the Arthurs a picture in a frame. The words on it read: "Thank you for being an important part of our story." 

Those two moments, a phone call and a framed photo, carry the full weight of what the Arthur family has given. The children they've cared for didn't just move through their home. They were shaped by it. And the Arthurs were shaped in return. 

This is what sustains them through the hard parts. Not certainty about outcomes. Not easy goodbyes. But the deep, settled knowledge that the love they pour into a child does not disappear when the placement ends. It travels with that child. It becomes part of who they are. 

Faith and perseverance sit at the center of everything Craig and Stephanie have built. And they want other families to know that the heartbreak and the hope are not opposites in this work. They come together. 

Their advice speaks to exactly that:

"Keep close in your faith. It's very hard on the heart at times having to say goodbye, but the impact you will have on young people they will remember for the rest of their lives." 

Sunni F. grew up in a foster family. Her husband, Joe, grew up knowing he wanted to create the kind of safe, stable home he hadn't always had. When the two of them got married, foster care wasn't an if. It was always a when. 

They told themselves they'd wait until the timing was right. A house. A more settled career. A little more stability under their feet. "We thought we needed to be more settled, own a home, and advance in our careers," Sunni says. But when they learned that more than 6,000 children were in the West Virginia foster care system, something shifted. "We realized kids do not need a perfect home. They need a consistent, caring adult. We knew that was something we could provide." 

Just a few weeks after their first wedding anniversary, they opened their home. Within a short time, they went from one child to four. 

The journey that followed was stretching in every sense of the word. Sunni eventually stepped away from her career to care for their younger children. Then came the news that several of the children in their home might be returning to their family of origin. In that uncertain moment, Sunni found herself questioning everything. 

The answer came the next morning, quietly and unexpectedly. She was sitting on the couch, waiting for the car to warm up, when she glanced over and saw her older children holding the younger ones' hands, all of them playing ring around the rosie together. 

"In that moment, I was reminded of my why," she says. "This was never about me or what I might lose. It was about creating a safe, loving environment for kids, even if only for a season." 

That image, children playing, hands held, belonging to one another even briefly, said everything. Fostering had reshaped what family meant in the Faye household. Not just for the children, but for all of them. 

Sunni's hard-won wisdom is something every new foster parent will eventually need to hear:

"One of the most important things I have learned is to understand what you can and cannot control. When you let go of the rest and focus on being present, the journey becomes much more manageable."