Neshia: Carrying Truth, Creating Safety

Content Warning: This episode discusses suicide and mental health struggles; if you or someone you know needs help, please call/text 988 in the US and Canada.

Neshia, short for Teneshia, is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was apprehended from her biological mother due to neglect and entered the child welfare system as a Crown ward in the late 1980s. After being adopted in the early 1990s, she was later remade a Crown ward again in the mid to late 1990s. The systems meant to protect her did not simply fail—they turned away.

Neshia is of mixed race and identifies as Black. Her story lives at the intersection of race, silence, and survival. Within child welfare systems that lacked cultural safety, accountability, and care, she learned early what it meant to endure rather than be protected. What happened to her was not a series of unfortunate moments—it was systemic abandonment.

For years, Neshia carried her truth quietly, holding pain that was never hers to hold. Listening to others speak their stories helped her understand that her own voice mattered and that healing could begin with being heard.

Now almost 40, Neshia is a mother of four and a foster mother by choice. She is raising children while healing herself, rooted in trauma-informed therapy and intentional care. Her life’s work is breaking cycles, reclaiming her voice, and becoming the safety she once searched for.

Season 11: Adoptee Memoirs - books in order:

Practically Still a Virgin by Monica Hall

You Can't Get Rid of Me by Jesse Scott and Keri Ault

Unspoken by Liz Harvie

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RESOURCES for Adoptees:

Adoptees Connect

Adoptee Mentoring Society

Gregory Luce and Adoptee Rights Law
Fireside Adoptees Facebook Group
Dr. Liz Debetta: Migrating Toward Wholeness Movement
Moses Farrow - Trauma therapist and advocate
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1-800-273-8255 OR Dial or Text 988.

Kristal Parke Because She Is Adopted

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