Deana's Story

One Little Girl's Journey Through Foster Care and Adoption

Resilience- the idea that you can withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Without even realizing, kids with abuse and neglect in their past are redefining their futures every day, one positive choice at a time. They are choosing to be brave, to have hope, and to love again, despite all that they’ve endured. Donovan and Denissa, who have been fostering with 4KIDS since 2017, have been able to witness this kind of transformation in their 5-yearold adoptive daughter, Deana.

“If you were to spend an hour with Deana, you would never guess the amount of trauma she has overcome. She is a confident, joyous, bright little girl who will embrace you with love,” Donovan shared.

When she was three years old, however, she first came to Donovan and Denissa’s house very shy, guarded, and afraid. Her biological family had been involved in dangerous activities, and were unable to keep her safe. Before being placed in foster care, Deana’s “normal” had been to regularly experience physical and verbal abuse from her caregivers. It took her time to see that her 4KIDS foster parents were not going to hurt her. After months of Deana making little, subconscious choices to slowly trust in her foster parents, she became a different child. She went from being the toddler who would run and hide whenever someone knocked on the door, to leaping with excitement when someone new came to visit.

Two years after they first began fostering her, Denissa and Donovan said “yes” to forever with Deana, officially adopting her this past June. Incredibly, just days after her adoption Deana begged her parents to take in another foster baby. She is obsessed with taking care of him, and has a beautiful maternal instinct. “I remember when we first started fostering Deana, she had to get seven teeth pulled out right away because they were rotten. And now, she has this adorable, gap-toothed smile on her face all the time, reminding us daily of how strong she is,” Donovan added. Today, Deana is one of the brightest in her Kindergarten class, fluent in both English and Spanish. Though we’ve only scratched the surface of both the trials, and the triumphs she’s experienced in her short life, it is clear her story has just begun.