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June 30, 2011

fosterkidsonly: Endurance

fosterkidsonly: Endurance: "Hi blog family! Sorry I have been working hard on the book in hopes of helping you have an easier time in foster care! As some of you know m..."

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: advice for those entering a new group or foster ho...

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: advice for those entering a new group or foster ho...: www.createspace.com/3587372

the above is the link to my self help book for teens: surviving foster care and making it work for you!! make today a positve day!
hope your enjoying your summer, and reading!!

June 29, 2011

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: journals for healing

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: journals for healing: "Hi blog family! summer is in full effect! kids are off at camp, college is on breatk and you may be having too much time on your hands to ..."

June 23, 2011

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: surviving foster care & making it work for you

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: surviving foster care & making it work for you: "my new book for foster teens is available at: www.createspace.com/358737 2"

learning how to have faith, even in hard times miracles happen!


hi blog family! look at this post from yahoo.  ( i hope you are enjoying the summer, but remember i said to read a book or two for the summer to keep your mind sharp!)
I know i hate to copy post other peoples work....
 BUT I want you all (all my blogs), (especially you teens), to read it and know that life is something we should ALWAYS value! 
even when hard times hit, 
when we lose a love one, when you have no family, 
 facing being moved to ANOTHER group home
- STILL keep your head high and know that, miracles can happen at ANY time in your life....I call this: "The last minute miracle".... 
read and understand life is like playing baseball (to a woman that is NOT in love with baseball)
....long, 
boring,
 low scores
no real contact like basketball or hockey...
 BUT just when you think your not interested......someone hits a home run! 
Then your awake and ready to watch for more action....a true fan (like a lover of life) will always be expecting something good to happen, even when your team is down and looking bad....never, ever give up hope, keep faith the size of a mustard seed!! check out this article!!

Homeless man with inheritance suffered tragedy

SALT LAKE CITY – A homeless man whose rags-to-riches story made international headlines suffered a devastating family tragedy decades ago that may have led to his life on the streets of Salt Lake City.
A friend tells the Deseret News that Max Melitzer's wife and two friends were killed in a 1990 car crash. Melitzer was driving and, according to Karol Behling, hasn't been the same since.
Behling says Melitzer was deeply affected by the death of his wife, Janice, and his life as a transient seemed to begin after the accident. Last week, a private investigator tracked down Melitzer to deliver the life-altering news of a sizable inheritance left by a brother who died last year of cancer.
Melitzer has since left Utah to reunite with family in New York, whom he hadn't been in contact with in months.
Behling's deceased husband, Steve, knew Melitzer for more than 20 years.
"He was very much in love with his wife, I believe. And it was really hard for him — one, to have her gone and, two, to have been driving," Behling recalled Tuesday. "I'm sure that affected him a lot, and I'm sure he missed his wife a lot."
In July 1990, Melitzer was driving through Wyoming when he lost control of his car, killing his wife and two passengers, the Deseret News reports.
Behling said she recalls Melitzer lost his apartment after the crash and bounced from place to place between Ogden and Salt Lake City.
Behling last saw Melitzer in December, when he visited her husband in the hospital. She said she was surprised to hear Melitzer's family was looking for him, because he never spoke of having any family.
"I hope this works out. And I hope his family is truly interested in him because he's a good guy," Behling said.
Melitzer's family recently hired a New York law firm in an effort to locate him, and the law firm contracted with investigator David Lundberg.
Neither Lundberg nor the lawyers have disclosed the amount Melitzer will receive.
"He'd have money where he could take care of himself or hire someone to take care of him," Lundberg said. "Apparently, he does have some emotional issues. The family just wants to make sure he's set up and he's taken care of."
Others who know Melitzer say he was an example to those around him.
"He takes donations of bread and other things like that, and he tries to donate them to my ministry," said Jason Florez, who runs the homeless ministry at Mountain View Christian Assembly of God church in Sandy. "He just happens to be one of the purest hearts of all the homeless people we bring in and come and see."
Florez gave one of the critical tips Lundberg that led to finding Melitzer at Pioneer Park in downtown Salt Lake City last Saturday. He said he saw a television news report highlighting the search for Melitzer.
"I was sitting next to my wife, and I couldn't even talk. I said, `That's Max,'" Florez recalled.

June 18, 2011

Wallace D. Wattles--on getting rich chapt 10

Hi blog family!
School is done-great job! don't get comfortable, stay reading a book! keep your mind fresh! I am reading this book and wanted to share it with you. Think big, do big and be big when it comes to your life! You have great purpose and your thought and actions decides what you get in life, so think big, fair, with love! xo

You must want real life, not mere pleasure of sensual gratification. Life is the performance of function; and the individual really lives only when he performs every function, physical, mental, and spiritual, of which he is capable, without excess in any.
You do not want to get rich in order to live swinishly, for the gratification of animal desires; that is not life. But the performance of every physical function is a part of life, and no one lives completely who denies the impulses of the body a normal and healthful expression.
You do not want to get rich solely to enjoy mental pleasures, to get knowledge, to gratify ambition, to outshine others, to be famous. All these are a legitimate part of life, but the man who lives for the pleasures of the intellect alone will only have a partial life, and he will never be satisfied with his lot.
You do not want to get rich solely for the good of others, to lose yourself for the salvation of mankind, to experience the joys of philanthropy and sacrifice. The joys of the soul are only a part of life; and they are no better or nobler than any other part.
You want to get rich in order that you may eat, drink, and be merry when it is time to do these things; in order that you may surround yourself with beautiful things, see distant lands, feed your mind, and develop your intellect; in order that you may love men and do kind things, and be able to play a good part in helping the world to find truth.
But remember that extreme altruism is no better and no nobler than extreme selfishness; both are mistakes.
Get rid of the idea that God wants you to sacrifice yourself for others, and that you can secure his favor by doing so; God requires nothing of the kind.
What he wants is that you should make the most of yourself, for yourself, and for others; and you can help others more by making the most of yourself than in any other way.
You can make the most of yourself only by getting rich; so it is right and praiseworthy that you should give your first and best thought to the work of acquiring wealth.
Remember, however, that the desire of Substance is for all, and its movements must be for more life to all; it cannot be made to work for less life to any, because it is equally in all, seeking riches and life.
Intelligent Substance will make things for you, but it will not take things away from some one else and give them to you.
You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created.
You do not have to take anything away from any one.
You do not have to drive sharp bargains.
You do not have to cheat, or to take advantage. You do not need to let any man work for you for less than he earns.
You do not have to covet the property of others, or to look at it with wishful eyes; no man has anything of which you cannot have the like, and that without taking what he has away from him.
You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now.
I am aware that there are men who get a vast amount of money by proceeding in direct opposition to the statements in the paragraph above, and may add a word of explanation here. Men of the plutocratic type, who become very rich, do so sometimes purely by their extraordinary ability on the plane of competition; and sometimes they unconsciously relate themselves to Substance in its great purposes and movements for the general racial upbuilding through industrial evolution. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, et al., have been the unconscious agents of the Supreme in the necessary work of systematizing and organizing productive industry; and in the end, their work will contribute immensely toward increased life for all. Their day is nearly over; they have organized production, and will soon be succeeded by the agents of the multitude, who will organize the machinery of distribution.
The multi-millionaires are like the monster reptiles of the prehistoric eras; they play a necessary part in the evolutionary process, but the same Power which produced them will dispose of them. And it is well to bear in mind that they have never been really rich; a record of the private lives of most of this class will show that they have really been the most abject and wretched of the poor.
Riches secured on the competitive plane are never satisfactory and permanent; they are yours to-day, and another's tomorrow. Remember, if you are to become rich in a scientific and certain way, you must rise entirely out of the competitive thought. You must never think for a moment that the supply is limited. Just as soon as you begin to think that all the money is being "cornered" and controlled by bankers and others, and that you must exert yourself to get laws passed to stop this process, and so on; in that moment you drop into the competitive mind, and your power to cause creation is gone for the time being; and what is worse, you will probably arrest the creative movements you have already instituted.
KNOW that there are countless millions of dollars' worth of gold in the mountains of the earth, not yet brought to light; and know that if there were not, more would be created from Thinking Substance to supply your needs.
KNOW that the money you need will come, even if it is necessary for a thousand men to be led to the discovery of new gold mines to-morrow.
Never look at the visible supply; look always at the limitless riches in Formless Substance, and KNOW that they are coming to you as fast as you can receive and use them. Nobody, by cornering the visible supply, can prevent you from getting what is yours.
So never allow yourself to think for an instant that all the best building spots will be taken before you get ready to build your house, unless you hurry. Never worry about the trusts and combines, and get anxious for fear they will soon come to own the whole earth. Never get afraid that you will lose what you want because some other person "beats you to it." That cannot possibly happen; you are not seeking any thing that is possessed by anybody else; you are causing what you want to be created from formless Substance, and the supply is without limits. Stick to the formulated statement:--
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe.
A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.
Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.

June 15, 2011

keep in touch

hi blog family!


this is my brother who passed , he was my favorite person growing up because they took my sister and little brother away, I miss him and don't want you to ever go through losing a sibling so....

I know school is almost done!!! (in NY anyway)..congratulations on finishing the year!! I want you to relax this summer and be a teen BUT stay away from the drinking etc...and always be safe and make GOOD choices that will not effect your future!!!
Just some advice if you got seperated from your siblings when you went into foster care or when you all got moved again and the family or home could not take more than one of you...STAY in TOUCH! there is no reason you cannot if you can both use FB or skype...instant messaging... it can be done! talk to your worker and ask to talk to your siblings every night!!! you need to maintain a close relationship because you are all you all have!! when i aged out i only had one brother (who died almost 2 yrs ago now) and my other brother and sister i searched for...found my sisiter, baby brother was adopted off, I feel horrible because we use to visit the house and meet the family, nice people with a daughter from Elmsford, NY.... it would have been nice to be close, it took years for me to get close to my sister because of our seperation...it is never too late and you don't have to go through what we did IF you listen and hit your siblings up through FB, twitter, youtube, IM....if your over 7 you know how to set up all those accounts and do it!!! good luck and never let anyone or anything get you down, your the bomb!! xo Tanya
ps. Stay on your A-game, don't sleep cause its summer!!! read a book every day...keep your skills sharp!!

June 10, 2011

Anger to acton

Hi blog family!


I remeber my first day in foster care!
being taken away from my home, 
no matter how neglected 
or starved we were,
 it was still home...
I remember getting in the car 
with the social worker and 
waving goodbye to the nice police officer, 
I remember my first drive.
Sitting in an old office, 
lots of paperwork, 
no one really talking to us, 
eccept to ask where is mommy or
 when was the last time we saw her, 
I remember like yesterday..
Hunger, gripping my stomach, 
i had not eaten since yesterday, 
I miss that pancake mix, 
it 
sure
 was
 tasty!
My sis, always there for us, 
making us feel safe while she was around. holding my brother's hand...
time to go.. wonder where? wonder when mom is coming back?
grab
 the plastic bag...
off in a car to our first "group home they say...
 I remember the ride in the car... looking out the back of the car the street narrows and everything is farther away...but  something new is closer.....
I am angry,
 i don't know why mom has not come home in weeks....
maybe longer...she is "very sick" those people say...
someone should get her a doctor!!

by: little Tanya

 i don't know why she did not come back for us..but I do know ... i do know, i am grateful to her for NOT aborting, killing or selling me!!! For not leaving me on a step! So many kids did NOT make it to foster care!! no matter what happend is was NOT your fault AND you should be grateful for your life, you can always start over every day you wake!!! You are here for a reason, to help others to save or change a life!! 
I know my mom's addictions was serious and there was NO help back in the 60's and 70's, I know it was hard for a woman to make it with no family support and a husband back from war, dismantled.....I know at that time, i was angry! But this is good!!

that anger would be the reason i fight for so many foster kids today!
 I never forget that moment, why?
 Because as long as I feel like it is yesterday, I can feel other foster kids pain and it can motivate me to take action and help!
Some of you may have left foster care, what are you doing to not only stay more than alive BUT to help others in the system? Let all of your anger, sadness and disapoinment spark the activisim in you!
 Start a blog, write a book, screenplay, create art...whatever...just do something to help others still in.
 We cannot rely on any person OR "system" that makes money on you to be your comfort"!

 We must wakeup, stop feeling sorry for our situations and make other kids feel their is hope! 
I know some of us are focusing on the abuse, neglect or abandonment issues that got us in care BUT you must remember: you are still alive, you made it! now its time to help others and minimize your pain and suffering by going to therapy, work all those issues out in the chair AND then you can help others....
life is a lesson for all of us, what did you learn? 
how can you be of service to others in the same situation? 
You did not deserve to go through what you went through but remember you must go through SOMETHING in this life to learn and share...and become something....your body is only temporary, the mind and the good deeds you do for others are forever...because they will pass it on...pay it forward....learn to turn your stories and your anger into positive actions!!!

 you are loved, 
blessed and the universe needs you!
 xo Tanya

June 5, 2011

Message delivered!

Hi blog family!

National foster care awareness month was a major success! Thank you to those who attended the event and to you reading.

I spoke to some lovely (mostly boys) and girls at a group home today.
Why this is important?
 I believe young people are going through alot today, especially young males:
Having to live up to "society's idea of success, looking at the young kid in Valhalla, who was in college, a good kid, but still was murdered by the popo...because of a DWB...driving while black!
Some say he should have just "stopped his car but remember his friend that was there said, the officer told him to "move his car", even if he kept going, the officers should have thought: this kid is PROBALY in college (it was a college party)...so they should have let him "ride off" knowing, they had a liscence plate and could have got him at home!...

I understand what you males are facing, even in the media they give you role models like"snooky from jersey shore or flav flav, or Mrs. "NY" really?
These are probably good people, BUT they are only on your screen for one reason: to make money!! 
To make money and send out the wrong message is the big thing now but I beg you not to follow! 

Please remember God made you - you are the best thing ever made- failure is not an option!!
No matter where you are in your life, God has a purpose for you EVERY day that you wake!! Know that you are King and Queen of the universe, anything you want, you can have and do!! 

Summed up: The message given today to all of our young boys....(and girls)
1.     Put goals in your mind, as big as you can imagine!
2.    Write them down what it is you want to do (be singer, lawyer etc...)
3.    How long you want to take to do it..realistically...(you can't be a lawyer in 2 months...but you can   in 6 years)...
4.   and hang up what you write as goal and time to do, so you can see everyday!
5.   find out who (counselor, therapist, teacher, friend) can help you achieve that goal!

God sends you many angels, right here on earth!! 
look around and see the stranger that was willing to help, the teacher that went out of her way....angels on earth, learn to utilize them, they want the best for you and to guide you to greatness you were born to become!!
6.    Love and value ALL life, yours, his, ours!! Never do anything that will jepordize your freedom or sanity!!


know that you are loved and have divine purpose, go out into this world and be the superstars you were destined to be!!! xoxo


Tanya

May 31, 2011

fosterkidsonly: Tanya delivers a message to youth

fosterkidsonly: Tanya delivers a message to youth: "Foster Kids, Personal Mentors Honored at Event Scholarship funds, awards presented at event coinciding with National Foster Care Month. By ..."

May 27, 2011

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: moving....again

EX FOSTER KIDS UNITE: moving....again: "ok i admit i am NOT a techy!! i am talking like a bruce lee flick, but you get the point so watch!! My book is ready at: creatspace.com s..."

May 24, 2011

Tanya in the Journal News!


Former Bedford foster child honors her late brother by helping others

Comments
BEDFORD HILLS — At one point when Tanya Cooper was reading to her brother from the draft of her book about surviving foster care with a smile, her brother said: 'Coop, I think you are really going to do something here. This is going to save lives or change lives.'"
A year-and-a-half since the sudden death of that dear brother Robert Cooper to heart disease at age 41, Tanya Cooper is ready to test his prediction, starting with an outreach event planned in his honor at the Mount Kisco Library.
"This is about changing the way people think," says Cooper, 46, a Bedford Hills mother of two and an advocate who credits the Bedford community for enriching her life as a foster child. "Foster kids come in scared and frightened because they never know what is going to happen next."
That is saying a lot in Cooper's case. At the time she was placed in foster care, she and her baby brother Robert were being raised in Brooklyn by their 7-year-old sister, because their mother would disappear for days on drug binges.
There were good days in foster care and days she endured rape and death threats at the hands of her foster brothers, Cooper says.
"I want people to understand how someone feels in foster care," Cooper says. "It feels like an alien abduction."
Cooper's library event, planned for Wednesday during National Foster Care Month, is about trying to reach local children in foster care with a message that they are destined for special purposes. Even more, it is about reaching families in Westchester and Putnam counties with a message that little acts of kindness mean everything to a foster child.
"Something as simple as paying a kid a compliment can go so far," Cooper syas. "Foster kids don't get any acknowledgment except when they are doing something bad."
A highlight of the library event will be the inaugural Robert Cooper Memorial Scholarship presentation to a local foster child whose hope and positive spirit are part of a dream to succeed after he or she ages out of the system.
The memorial scholarship was created in a partnership with Megan Castellano of Carmel, the executive director of the Mental Health Association in Putnam County, and a high school friend of Robert Cooper's.
"He did a lot to lift up my self-esteem and what I didn't realize until I was older was that he was doing that for me and for others while he was having a hard time himself," Castellano said.
The hope is that after the $250 scholarship money is gone, the moment will linger for foster kids that they are heard and appreciated and supported, Castellano said.
In addition to the scholarship announcement and other awards that will be presented at the library event, Cooper will read from her book, "Surviving Foster Care and Making It Work for You!"
An extension of her two foster kids' blogs and her public speaking, the book sets guidelines for enjoying foster-care life and preparing for independence.
Anecdotally, it is also the story of how education, faith and friends helped Cooper make the transition from foster care to college and a career, so that she was able to give back.
Whatever her crisis, her brother Robert was always there, telling her not to give up, even as he waged his own battle with substance abuse.
"I didn't want every anniversary of his death to come around and say 'Oh, my poor brother,' " Cooper says. "This helps me stay positive and helps me to know that his death won't be in vain."

May 23, 2011

Tanya delivers a message to youth


Foster Kids, Personal Mentors Honored at Event

Scholarship funds, awards presented at event coinciding with National Foster Care Month.
For Tanya Cooper, growing up in the foster care system meant changing residencies and abuse. While she could have ended up as a statistic pointing to hardships, she overcame her difficulties thanks to support from people who cared.
At a Wednesday event at the Mount Kisco Public Library, Cooper raised awareness of being a foster kid, gave recognition to those who helped her growing up and arranged for a new scholarship fund to help teens who are "aging out" of the foster system and heading to college.
For Cooper, who spoke emotionally about his background, her childhood and teen years did not come easy, as she grew up without a permanent household.
At just 5, she and her three siblings were taken away from their mother in Brooklyn, who was sick and had a heroin addiction; she passed away when Cooper was 17. They were left alone for periods of time and with no food. However, being pulled apart as a family created its own problems for Cooper, as she passed through group homes and foster care, hardship that included sexual abuse. Since then she was tried to reconcile with her sister, whom he declined to name, and is trying to locate her other brother, Mark. Growing up, she was still with her other brother, Robert, whose life was cut short in 2009 when he died of heart disease at 41.
Even being pulled away by her mother, in a process intended to help children, felt alienating to a child who did not know the circumstances.
"They treat you like you're a rare animal meant for the zoo," Cooper said in reading from her book, which lookde at the matter from a child's perspective.
Yet, despite getting a torrent of hardships and obstacles in her way, Cooper persevered, graduating from Fox Lane High School - she lived then, and lives now in Bedford Hills - and then New York University. She also did a stint as a model in Paris, and got involved in substance abuse counseling for teens. She now has a family of her own with two daughters, Arielle and Tatiana.
Recently, Cooper has taken on a new, informal career as a motivational speaker, and is even self publishing a book about her experiences, titled Surviving Foster Care & Making it Work for You, which she reads parts of at the event.
This interest, combined with Robert's death, spurred her to action to speak out about foster care issues.
In organizing Wednesday's event, in recognition of National Foster Kids Month, Cooper got together with Megan Castellano of the Mental Health Association in Putnam. Castellano, who is originally from Mount Kisco and was a high school friend of Robert Cooper, got together with Tanya Cooper after discovering a 2010 profile of her in The Journal News. She spoke emotionally about the loss of Robert Cooper and passionately spoke about about the issues of foster kids, noting that mental health is tied in as an issue. She also noted that Robert Cooper got her interested in her career based on how he felt positively of a social worker who helped him.
It was Robert Cooper's memory that helped spur the creation of the event. A $250 scholarship was presented in his honor. The first winner this year was Ramusa Alejandro, who is a Fox Lane student and lived in a Bedford group home. For college, he will be heading to St. John's University.
“While I was too young then to understand what was happening, I was not going to end up just another statistic," Alejandro wrote in an essay that was read aloud. In accepting the scholarship, he said that “a smile does go a long way," and noted how seeing smiles would cheer him up.
Three honorable receipients of extra amount of $100 were also honored: Amanda Ocasio, Reggie Silva and Crystal Abad.
In her acceptance, Ocasio, who is a student at the Dr. Kenneth B. Clark Academy in Dobbs Ferry and will go to the Fashion Institute of Technology next fall, thanked St. Christopher's, which works with Clark, for its support. Silva, who also attends Clark, will attend LaGuardia Community College and study accounting.
In recognition of adults who helped Cooper, two Citizen of Change Awards were presented. They went to Mary Ellen McKee, who was a physical education teacher at Fox Lane when Cooper was a student there, and Gamilah Lamumba Shabazz, a counselor who supported her when she was in a group home as a teen.
“She did everything, but she just had so much bottled up inside and didn’t know how to release it," said Shabazz. "Once she was able to vent everything she just flowered.”
McKee also received recognition from Mayor J. Michael Cindrich, who issued a local proclaimation for May 20 to be a day in her honor. Locally, her ties to Mount Kisco include being a congregant of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, and having served on the boards of Mount Kisco Child Care Center and the Boys & Girls Club. This proclaimation was made along with a general one for foster care, with is May 19.
Cindrich recounted his own family history with helping parentless children, noting that he had a great-grandfather who lived in Brooklyn a century ago who adopted two children, in addition to his six biological children. They went on to become New York City police officers, he said, while the biological children turned to careers that included clergy and teaching.
Ultimately, the occasion was one to bring people together and to spread awareness of foster kids, as well as to encourage those aging out of the system to keep grow into productive adults.
Editor's Note: Some references to Tanya Cooper's brother, Robert, had him identified as "Richard Cooper," in addition to the correct references. The story has been updated and fixed.