Honorable Mention - Lawrence P. Adams, Age 55

Welcome to our Optimistic Essay category. Here you will find the $1,000 winning contest essay, 5 finalist essays and 15 honorable mention essays and a growing list of hand-picked select essays that readers submitted during our "Why Are You Optimistic About the Future?" contest. This is a special category dedicated to those who took the time to share their touching stories and bright perspectives with HappyNews.com.

Over the past several years many have asked me: "What was it like being a foster child?" "What was the impact on me?" "How did I overcome?" "Why I am so optimistic about things?"

I would like to take this opportunity to attempt to answer those questions as honestly and openly as I can.

"What was it Like Being a Foster Child?"

I was relinquished at birth supposedly for adoption. However, I was placed within the foster care system where I would remain for eighteen years.

I was bounced from place to place; a total of fourteen times in eleven years.

I was always living on the outside looking in. I thought when I was little everyone is the same; only to find out I was treated different, not because of who I was but rather what I was.

I lived in a world of never knowing; where I would live, who will take care of me, where I would go to school. I never knew if I will ever be secure again.

I rarely had friends as I was seldom in one place long enough to make them. I didn't know what it felt like to attend the same school more than a year or so.

I was forced to steal food at times to lesson hunger pains. At age eleven I was even sexually abused.

I built up brick walls and didn't let anyone in. Once the walls were in place it took so much to take them down. If they start to come down and something happens I would put them back up higher than they were before. Each time I got hurt the walls got higher and higher.

I was an enigma tangled up in a mystery. I was the lost puzzle pieces swept under the rug. I was a missing link in a chain of life. I had no roots. I was like tumbleweed blown in the wind calling home where ever the breeze took me. I was a chameleon changing colors to blend into my surroundings.

My losses were etched upon my face and within my eyes, pain for which no penance can atone

At eighteen I was moved once again, the fifteenth time; basically thrown out on the streets as the system "washed their hands of me" whether I had gained a support system or not. I was now considered an adult and on my own...it was up to me to make it or not.

This was my life of eighteen years within the foster care system!

"What was the Impact?"

The system was responsible for providing my most basic needs as a child. By basics I don't mean simply shelter and food. To me the basics are a stable home life, knowledge that someone actually gave a damn about me, self-worth and most importantly, the ability to trust those responsible for me! They did not even come close to achieving them.

How did I feel during and after my years in foster care? I felt pain, like a nobody, unwanted, depressed,, in constant fear of what each new day might bring, worthless, a failure, second class I have felt alone, I have felt depressed, I have felt that no one understood, I have felt no one really cared about me and yes; I have even wondered if it was worth living...to name just a few.

During the years on the merry-go-round of the foster care system I could but ask questions. What was wrong with me? Why didn't anyone want me? Will I never have a family?

These were just a few of the feelings and questions that haunted me throughout my childhood. At that time I did not realize that the problem was not me but the "system" itself.

That is the impact and damage the foster care system caused that I had to overcome. The damage only began to be reversed when "the system" made the decision to give up on me. Yes, they actually made a decision that I was the failure and sent me off to an orphanage for boys for someone else to deal with.

Despite all that happened within my childhood I somehow maintained hope and optimism for the future…it was all I had to hold onto!

"How Did I Overcome?"

At age eleven I experienced my fourteenth move. It was to Father Flanagan's Home for Boys; better known as Boys Town, Nebraska. I arrived there as an embittered young boy.

I was angry at the world. I cared less about school. I hated any type of authority. I was already well on my way of being just another failing statistic of the system.

Things slowly began changing. Three people entered my life that was to have an influence upon me, not only then, but for the rest of my life!

Msgr. Wegner, then Executive Director of Boys Town, took me under his wing during my freshman year of high school as I went to work for him as his cook's assistant. We spent hours talking. He always had an open door for me when I felt I needed someone to talk with. He provided me with a "father" figure, missing from the early days of my childhood. He went further out of his way to support me than his position required. He lived his faith by example.

Even as a small child, I loved to argue. If it were night, I would argue it was day...anything for an argument.

My tenth grade English teacher that year saw something positive in my argumentative nature. She kept me after school one day early in the school year. She talked to me about my arguing and how she saw it as ability, if it were directed in the proper way. I had no idea what she was talking about.

She took me to another English teacher, also the coach for the newly begun Speech & Debate Team. She simply told him, "I think we have a debater for you." Yeah, I could now argue, and get away with it! The debate coach, of course, let me know that with the ability to argue, I also now had to prove my case. This meant lots of hard work researching the question being debated. It also meant that to be part of the debate team and go to tournaments, my grades had to improve. I was determined to do whatever it took.

Someone finally saw something positive in me; I had reason for hope and optimism for the future! Maintaining my optimism and hope over the years was finally paying off!

My senior year I made the varsity debate team. My partner and I were, if I say so myself, great. We were rarely defeated. We traveled throughout the Midwest on weekends during the season, accumulating numerous trophies as winners of the tournaments. Our record at the end of the season was 289 wins as opposed to only 29 defeats.

I finally felt I had accomplished something. I was worth something. I could do more with my life than the low expectations the foster care system had previously set for me.

When that light bulb went on in my head, I knew I had a decision to make that would determine where my life was headed. I could sit on the sidelines of the highway of life whining about my childhood, blaming others for my failures and actually make my life a failure. Or, I could decide to say, "OK, I was dealt a bad hand at birth. My childhood had been a disaster. However, now is the time for me to travel the highway of accepting the responsibility for my actions and determine my life is in my control and no one else's."

It was not a difficult decision. The highway of whine and blame is a well traveled one...too crowded for my taste. I was alone in my life, no matter whether I was willing to accept it or not...I was responsible for my future. I decided to travel the highway of responsibility!

Graduation from Boys Town is different from any other high school graduation in the country. You are not only graduating high school; you are also losing "your home." This graduation meant I was now an adult and it was time for me to go out into the world and make whatever mark on it I was capable of. It meant that for the first time in over seven years, I would once again be "homeless."

I carried with me a fully paid college scholarship. I had gone from near the bottom of my class to the top five per cent and it was the only way I could afford college

Boys Town had given me a diploma and opportunity. The foster care system, that had moved me time and time again gave me a letter only stating I was now eighteen and on my own!

Three people had taken it upon themselves to take a young man under siege in his life and attempt to teach him to reach for his fullest potential. It was not up to me to do it!

I went on to receive a college degree. Only two per cent of those who age out of the system ever receive a college degree.

I have had a successful professional career in the years that have followed.

"Why am I so Optimistic About the future?"

You may feel like your life is in turmoil.

At times, you may feel like you are all alone in the world, and that no one else ever has or is now going through what you're facing. Most of the time, your feelings are not true!

However, I can understand many of the things you are feeling...because I have been exactly where you are today. As many young say today, "Been there...done that...bought the T-shirt!"

There is very little one could share with me that I myself have not experienced.

You are not as unique as you think you might be. In matter of fact there are many thousands who, besides me, have been exactly where you are at.

I am here to tell you that you can overcome ALL of this.

It does not matter why you are in turmoil. What is important is how you come out of it!

I know many aspects of one's life can make one feel that you might be of no value; that you cannot be a success and many other negative attributes.

This is absolutely not true!

YOU are of value! You can hold your head up proudly! You can be whatever you choose to be!

You need to begin making those changes today. You can reach for the highest of goals...don't let anyone convince you otherwise!

Why am I so optimistic about the future? The answer is quite simple. If it were not for my optimism my life would have been a failure already as a child.

I confronted many obstacles as a child in foster care.

I chose however, not to concentrate on the obstacles and hurts of that time but hope for the future; to do something to change my circumstances; to have hope and be optimistic that things would get better.

Being optimistic about the future has been a feature of my life. Many hurdles have crossed my path since childhood; enough to break even the strongest of people. Optimism remains my trademark and will remain so no matter what confronts me in the years ahead!

If I can make it...I know you can!