A Suitcase and a Dream

After a difficult childhood navigating the foster care system, Brittney Hill ’26 turned her healing into action, providing suitcases — and hope — for children.

BY AMBER BOWMAN

PLANES EXPERIENCE TURBULENCE every day. Any pilot will explain that turbulence is a completely normal phenomenon and usually not a threat to the safety of the passengers on board.

But passengers may disagree based on the feelings that arise as a plane flies through turbulent air. The shaking and bouncing of the plane stirs up a variety of reactions, from panicked laughter to screams to sweaty palms, all fueled by a deep sense of anxiety about the future.

Passengers are helpless to solve the problem of turbulence. All we can do is hold on and hope those pilots are telling the truth. Until we are safely back on the ground, there’s no way to know with certainty that we’re going to be okay.

Born in Flint, Michigan, and placed in the foster care system at the age of ten, Brittney Hill is familiar with turbulence. In fact, it’s the exact analogy she uses to describe her experience in foster care. Hill experienced a constant feeling of anxiety and uncertainty about the future, leaving her unsure if there even was a future for her at all.

Despite the heartache of her childhood, Hill has managed to build something remarkable with her life.

“Before foster care, when I was in fifth grade, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up,” says Hill. “I told her I wanted to be an actress, a comedian and a five-time bestselling author.”

Hill was a child with big dreams, but she was not a child with a smooth path to accomplishing them. Hill spent ten years in the foster care system in Michigan, where she bounced from home to home, dreaming of being adopted and experiencing unimaginable trauma.

“I always use the example of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when I talk about adoption,” says Hill. “For foster kids, adoption is the golden ticket out of the system. Charlie got his golden ticket, but I never got mine.”

Despite the exhaustion and pain of being in the foster care system, Hill never forgot the dreams of that little girl she had once been.

“During my time in foster care, I had fallen in love with reading poetry. It just spoke to me, and I thought, ‘I can do that,’” she says.

One day, while living in a group home, Hill was in a therapy session where she repeated that same 10-yearold’s dream to her therapist.

“I told her I still wanted to write a book. She could have laughed at me or told me it was impossible, but she didn’t do that,” Hill says. Instead, Hill’s therapist gave her a pamphlet on writing that would serve as a guide to help Hill structure her story and remember and document her experiences.

“I carried that with me everywhere I went, tucked into a composition notebook. Some places I went, I never even touched it, but it was always there,” she says.

Eventually, that little composition notebook would become a dream fulfilled. Thirteen years later, in 2019, Hill published her first book, titled A Suitcase and a Dream. The book tells her life story, documenting her experiences with abuse, loss, suicide, depression and much more through both poetry and prose.

Before fulfilling her life’s dream, however, Hill still had to live her life, even when it felt hopeless.

“When you grow up in the foster care system, you’re not prepared for the future. It’s hard to plan for it, because you feel like this part of your life will never end,” explains Hill.

Feeling aimless, Hill eventually phased out of the foster care system at age 20, with no plan for her future. “I had nowhere else to go, so I just stayed where I was,” she says.

After phasing out, Hill decided she needed a major life change, so she boarded a plane with nothing but a suitcase and a ticket to Atlanta, Georgia. “I had no family there, no friends, just a dream of something different,” Hill explains.

In 2012, Hill officially became a resident of the state of Georgia. She had always hoped to further her education, so she enrolled at Point University as a residential student. She had originally wanted to be a social work major, but at that time, Point did not offer the degree. Though she eventually had to take a pause from her education, during her time at Point, Hill was deeply impacted by the Point community.

“I was a student worker in the Admission Office, and that’s where I met Tiffany Wood,” says Hill. “Tiffany is the reason I am where I am today.”

At this time, Hill was still working to process through her trauma. “I felt so lost and alone and just like I didn’t know who I was,” she says. “Tiffany became my safe space.” Wood, who now serves as vice president of strategic initiatives and partnerships at Point, stepped in to help guide Hill through the admission process and student life on campus, but she was more than an academic mentor.

“She became my family,” explains Hill. “When you grow up in the foster care system, all you ever want is a family. Now, Tiffany’s family is my family. I’ve learned over the years that families don’t have to match.” The bond between Hill and Wood has remained strong for a decade now, and Hill and her husband even spent Christmas with the Woods.

In addition to their friendship, Wood has continued to advocate for Hill, her education and her dreams. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hill reenrolled as an online student at Point, this time pursuing a degree in the newly accredited social work program. “Tiffany encouraged me to apply for scholarships, and I was able to get one,” says Hill.

“My heart’s desire is to finish school,” says Hill. “Only three percent of foster kids ever get a bachelor’s degree, and I will do anything to be in that three percent.”

But Hill’s journey to the commencement stage has not been easy. A few months after reenrolling at Point, Hill began experiencing an unexplainable illness that affected her ability to comprehend information.

“I was having vision loss and auditory processing issues, so I wasn’t able to hear something and immediately comprehend it,” says Hill. She has since undergone treatment, and continues to do so, sometimes completing her classwork from her hospital bed.

“My professors have been so accommodating, and they’ve really made it possible for me to keep going,” she says. “I just keep telling them, ‘Please don’t give up on me.’”

Like that 10-year-old girl, Hill is still a woman with big dreams. While her primary focus is on getting healthy and finishing her degree at Point, she is also the founder and president of A Suitcase and a Dream, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

“After my book came out and did so well, I just knew I couldn’t stop. I felt like there was more to do,” says Hill. Thus, A Suitcase and a Dream was born. When foster children are sent to a new foster home, they are typically given a trash bag to transport all their belongings. The implications of that message to a child are obviously deeply problematic.

Hill wanted to provide a way to tell these children that they – and their belongings – matter, while also serving a physical need. Hill recalls when she first moved from Michigan to Georgia with nothing but a suitcase. “I didn’t know what would happen,” she says.

“It was just me and my suitcase, but at least I had that.”

Hill’s organization began accepting donated suitcases with the hope of giving them to foster children to take with them wherever they might move, but that goal began to evolve beyond what Hill ever could have imagined.

“Simone Biles ended up hearing about us, and she donated a suitcase that she signed with the words ‘Never stop dreaming,’” says Hill. Biles, the most decorated gymnast in American history, spent her childhood in and out of the foster care system with her siblings.

“Simone was the one who started the ‘Never stop dreaming’ slogan, and now we write it on all of our suitcases,” says Hill.

A Suitcase and a Dream also accepts donations for materials to go inside the suitcases. From blankets to clothes, from feminine hygiene products to nonperishable food items, Hill wants to guarantee that these children and young adults have what they need.

“When I first moved to Georgia, I was homeless for a little while. I had everything I needed in my suitcase except for food. I want to make sure that we’re thinking of everything,” says Hill. “When I was in foster care, I felt so alone. I just want these kids to know that we see them and they matter.”

A Suitcase and a Dream has become about more than helping children and young adults in foster care, however. In seeking therapy and processing her trauma, Hill has discovered a deep passion for helping other people do the same, and she uses the metaphor of the suitcase to do just that.

“When we do events, I bring my suitcase with me, and it’s full of my different traumas. I have depression, rape, abandonment and others, and I open the suitcase and start unpacking it in front of everyone,” says Hill.

Her hope is that through this visualization, people will recognize that working through trauma brings freedom. “It’s like when you go to the airport, but your bag is too heavy to fit on the plane,” she explains. “As you empty some things out of your bag, it gives you room to add new, better things to it later.”

Hill doesn’t just talk about healing, though. She is actively pursuing it for herself and those around her. “Since getting sick, my hair has fallen out,” says Hill. “I tell you, I’m healing from head to toe! I just don’t think A Suitcase and a Dream can be all it’s meant to be if I’m not healing, being vulnerable and being fully who God has called me to be.”

Hill is working for more than her own healing. She is confronting her pain so that others can have hope. “It’s not always easy,” says Hill. “I have moments where I’ll just sit there and cry, but I get back up because I know there are other people rooting for me and foster kids coming up behind me who need hope, who need to dream.”

Though constant challenges seem to arise for Hill, she is not deterred by them. Instead, she has leveraged the story of her past – of pain, loneliness and confusion – into a story of redemption, healing and grace. Her life is a testimony of the faithfulness of God in the worst of circumstances, and he continues to use her for his glory.

Hill is certainly only getting started. Her suitcase is full of countless more dreams that have yet to be fulfilled.