What Foster Care Taught Me About Real Family (It's Not About Blood)

 

When people ask Tina Strambler who raised her, she never has just one answer.

"I wasn't brought up by a single set of parents, or a single home, or a single influence," she explains. "I was raised by a village."

That village was High Sky Children's Ranch in Midland, Texas, where Strambler spent 13 years of her childhood after being removed from an abusive home at age five. And the lessons she learned there about family—real family—have shaped everything from the way she parents her own children to the way she views love, loyalty, and belonging.

"For a long time, I thought family meant blood," Strambler says. "I thought if you shared DNA with someone, that automatically meant you belonged to each other. But foster care taught me something different. It taught me that family isn't about biology. It's about who shows up."

Amazon: Raised by Strangers, Rebuilt by Love: How Foster Care Saved My Life and Shaped My Purpose

The Myth of Blood Ties

Strambler's early years were marked by the absence of the very people who should have protected her. Her father's choices led him toward prison. Her mother struggled with addiction, disappearing into herself even when she was standing in the same room.

"When I finally met my mother again at 13, I didn't recognize her," Strambler recalls. "I wanted to feel that instant bond everyone talks about—that natural mother-daughter connection. But it wasn't there. It couldn't be. You can't force 13 years of absence to disappear just because someone shares your DNA."

The experience was painful, but it taught Strambler an essential truth: blood ties mean nothing without presence, consistency, and care.

"I don't think a mother-daughter bond is automatic," she says. "It's built. It's earned. It's created through years of showing up, through safety, through trust. And I didn't have that with my mother. That wasn't my fault, and it wasn't entirely hers. It was just the reality of our situation."

The Village That Raised Her

What Strambler lacked in biological family, she found in abundance at High Sky.

"There were so many people who shaped me," she says, her voice softening. "Jackie Carter, the director, she was the heart of that place. She created an environment where broken children could learn to be whole again. Jalynn Hogan, my counselor, sat with me through some of the darkest emotional places I'd ever been. She didn't give up on me, not once."

There were cottage parents like Alice and Lonnie Baker, who treated the foster girls in their care the same as their biological children. There were board members who drew names at Christmas, showing up with gifts and parties and love. There was a motorcycle group that roared onto the ranch every year, giving the children rides and a taste of freedom. There was a teacher who treated Strambler exactly the same as every other student—something that meant more to her than he probably ever knew.

"They didn't have to love me," Strambler says. "I wasn't their child. I wasn't their responsibility. But they chose to care for me anyway. They chose to show up. And that—that choice—is what real family is made of."

The Sack Lunch That Changed Everything

One of the most profound lessons about family came from an unexpected source: a fifth-grade friend named Amme Jones.

"Amme would show up at school with an extra sack lunch—one her mom had made just for me," Strambler remembers. "Sitting in the lunchroom, unwrapping a ham sandwich that didn't come from a cafeteria line, tasting a Ding Dong cake for the first time, sipping a Capri Sun—punch flavored—and thinking, 'Wow... this is what life could be like.'"

Strambler doesn't know if Amme's mother understood her daughter's story or if she simply saw a child who needed something more. What she does know is that those small acts of kindness left an imprint.

"Sometimes it's not the big moments that save you," she says. "Sometimes it's a brown paper sack, a ham sandwich, and a friend who shows up."

Redefining Family as an Adult

When Strambler became a mother herself, she carried those lessons with her.

"I knew what I wanted to give my children: presence, protection, consistency, and love they would never have to question," she says. "I didn't learn that from my biological family. I learned it from the absence of what they couldn't give—and from the people who stepped in to fill those gaps."

Today, Strambler and her husband Roderick have been married for nearly 30 years. They've raised three sons together and are now grandparents. The family she has built looks nothing like the one she was born into—and that, she says, is exactly the point.

"I didn't get to grow up in a healthy home. I didn't get to keep my siblings close. I didn't get a picture-perfect beginning," she reflects. "But I got something even more powerful: I got to create the family I always dreamed of."

A Message for Anyone Who Feels Like They Don't Belong

Strambler knows there are countless people—foster children, adoptees, estranged adults, anyone who has ever felt like an outsider—who struggle with the question of where they belong.

"Here's what I want them to know," she says. "Family is not about who shares your last name. It's about who shares your life. It's about who shows up when things are hard. It's about who loves you without conditions. It's about who makes you feel safe."

She pauses, letting the words settle.

"I found my family in strangers. In cottage parents. In counselors. In teachers. In a friend's mother who packed an extra lunch. And eventually, in a husband who loved me through wounds he didn't cause and children who made me whole.

"Blood matters less than presence. DNA matters less than consistency. And family—real family—is built by hands that choose to hold onto you."