Chapter One: The Day the World Ended
My name is Taran Mitchell, and I was nine years old when my parents told me, without ever saying the words directly, that I was a curse. They didn’t just say it—they proved it. One cold, gray autumn afternoon in late October, they loaded me into the back of their aging Honda Civic with nothing more than a small, worn backpack and drove away from the only home I had ever known.
They left me on a doorstep, slammed the car door with a sound that was as final and as brutal as a gunshot, and they never, ever looked back. Not for birthdays. Not for school milestones. Not for graduations or awards ceremonies. Not even when I, the girl they had so easily erased from their lives, clawed my way into building a life they had never, ever believed I could have.
I don’t remember the exact date of that day—my mind has mercifully blurred some of the details—but I will never, ever forget the chill. It was the kind of insidious, biting cold that didn’t just cling to your skin like morning frost; it slipped inside, quiet and invasive, and it made a permanent home in your bones, a cold that no amount of blankets or hot tea could ever quite drive away.
That morning had started like any other morning in our small, cramped house on Elm Street. I woke up early, careful to be quiet, and I dressed myself in the jeans and t-shirt I’d laid out the night before. I made my own breakfast—a bowl of generic corn flakes with milk I had to shake because it was starting to separate—and I ate it standing at the counter so I wouldn’t leave crumbs on the table that might upset my mother.
I had learned, very early in my young life, to take up as little space as possible. To be quiet, to be invisible, to anticipate needs before they were spoken, to apologize before I’d even done anything wrong. These were survival skills in our house, where the atmosphere was always tense, always on the edge of erupting into shouting matches or cold, punishing silence.
After breakfast, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor, coloring in a picture of a smiling, happy family I’d drawn in art class the day before. A mother, a father, a daughter, all holding hands under a bright yellow sun. I was trying my best to stay out of the way while my parents argued in the kitchen, their voices carrying through the thin walls of our house.
I had learned that lesson very early on: silence was always safer. Don’t draw attention. Don’t ask questions. Don’t need anything.
But this time, their words were sharper, more venomous, than usual. And then, cutting through the angry hiss of their argument, I heard my name.
“She brings nothing but bad luck, Arless,” my mother snapped, her voice as sharp and as brittle as shattered glass. “Ever since she was born, it’s been one disaster after another. You lost your job three months after she came. The car broke down. The house needed repairs we couldn’t afford. It’s like she carries a storm cloud with her wherever she goes.”
“She was never meant to be here in the first place,” my father growled back, his voice a low, angry rumble that made the floorboards vibrate beneath me. “We should have—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the implication hung in the air like poison.
At nine years old, I didn’t understand everything they were saying. I didn’t know about birth control failures or the resentment that could grow when an unplanned pregnancy derails a couple’s plans. But I understood enough. I understood that, in their eyes, I was the problem. The source of all their difficulties. The reason their lives hadn’t turned out the way they’d hoped.
I wasn’t wanted.
I clutched my crayon tighter, the bright red one I’d been using to color the mother’s dress in my picture, and I felt something crack inside my chest. Not break—breaking implies something sudden and dramatic. This was slower, like ice forming over a pond, one degree at a time until everything underneath is sealed away, frozen and unreachable.
That afternoon, my mother came into my room, her face a cold, unreadable mask, and she told me, her voice flat and devoid of any emotion, “Pack your things. Just what you need. One backpack.”
I looked up at her, confused. “Where are we going?”
“Just pack,” she repeated, already turning away.
I thought, with a child’s naive hope, that maybe we were going on a trip. A surprise visit to my aunt in Pennsylvania, or maybe to my other grandparents in Ohio, the ones I’d only met twice. Maybe, I told myself, this was a good thing. Maybe they just needed a break, and we were going somewhere fun.
But she never answered my questions. She just stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching me with cold, impatient eyes as I pulled my small, faded blue backpack from the closet.
I carefully folded my favorite pair of jeans—the ones with the embroidered flowers on the pockets that Grandma Rose had given me for my birthday. I tucked in a worn, comfortable hoodie, two t-shirts, three pairs of underwear, and my pajamas with the little stars on them. And at the very bottom of the bag, like a secret treasure, I slipped my beloved, one-eyed stuffed rabbit, Penny, deep into the remaining space.
Penny had been with me since I was a baby. She was threadbare and faded, her original pink color now a grayish mauve, and she’d lost one of her button eyes years ago. But she was mine, the one thing in my life that had always been constant, always comforting.
“Is that everything?” my mother asked, her tone suggesting I’d taken too long.
I nodded, shouldering the backpack. It wasn’t heavy—the entirety of what I was allowed to take from my nine years of life barely weighed ten pounds.
“Good. Let’s go.”
The ride was completely silent. My father drove, his hands tight on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched. My mother sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window, her arms folded across her chest in a gesture that seemed both defensive and final. The only sound was the soft, rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers against the light, drizzling rain that had started to fall.
I sat in the back seat, my backpack on my lap like a shield, and I watched the colorful autumn leaves swirl outside the window as I counted the turns, trying to guess where we were going. Left on Main Street. Right on Prospect. Straight through the intersection with the broken traffic light.
The neighborhoods grew less familiar. The houses changed from the modest working-class homes of our area to something older, smaller. And then, suddenly, I recognized where we were.
When the car finally stopped, it was in front of my grandparents’ small, familiar house on Fletcher Avenue. My mother’s parents—Grandma Rose and Grandpa Frank. I felt a surge of relief. We were visiting! Of course. Why hadn’t they just said so?
But then I noticed my mother didn’t unbuckle her seatbelt. My father didn’t shut off the engine.
“Get out,” my mother said, her eyes fixed on a point in the distance, her voice a cold, final command.
“But—” I started.
“Get. Out.”
I fumbled with my seatbelt, my small fingers suddenly clumsy with confusion and a dawning, terrible fear. I pulled the backpack onto my shoulders and opened the car door, stepping out onto the sidewalk. The light rain immediately began to soak through my hoodie.
“Mom?” I said, my voice small and uncertain. “Aren’t you coming?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at me. My father reached over and pulled the car door shut, and before I could say anything else, before I could ask what was happening or why they looked so angry or when they were coming back, the car pulled away from the curb.
I stood there, frozen, watching the Honda’s taillights disappear around the corner. They didn’t wave. They didn’t look back. They just… left.
I stood on my grandparents’ porch for a long moment, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Maybe my parents needed to run an errand? Maybe they’d be back soon? Maybe this was some kind of test?
My small heart pounding with a mixture of confusion and that terrible, growing fear, I finally reached up and rang the doorbell, waiting for this strange, surreal nightmare to finally make sense.
Footsteps inside. The door opened. My grandfather, a kind, gentle man with tired, sad lines etched across his weathered face, stood there in his cardigan and slippers, clearly not expecting visitors.
“Taran? Honey, what are you doing here?” His eyes widened as he took in my soaked hoodie, my backpack, my small figure standing alone on his porch. “Where are your parents?”
I looked back over my shoulder at the empty street, the place where the car had been just moments ago. “They… they left me here. They said to get out, and then they drove away.”
Grandpa Frank’s face changed. The surprise gave way to something else—a deep, weary sadness, and maybe a hint of anger, though not directed at me. He sighed, a deep, defeated sound that seemed to come from somewhere ancient inside him.
He disappeared for a moment and came back with a thin, scratchy wool blanket, which he pressed into my small, cold hands. For a moment, I thought he was going to invite me inside, to say that everything would be okay, that I could stay with them.
Instead, he crouched down to my level, his eyes full of a helpless, sorrowful pity. “We can’t go against your parents, little one,” he whispered. “They made their decision. I’m sorry, but… we can’t.”
“But—” My voice cracked. “Where am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Then, gently but firmly, he closed the door. I heard the lock click. The porch light stayed on, at least—a small mercy—but the door remained closed.
I stood there on that porch, the thin blanket wrapped around my shoulders, as the sun sank lower in the sky and the temperature dropped. The drizzle turned to a steadier rain. I sat down on the wooden porch swing, my backpack beside me, and I waited.
I waited for my parents to come back. I waited for my grandparents to change their minds. I waited for someone to realize that this was all a mistake, that nine-year-old children couldn’t just be left on doorsteps like unwanted packages.
But no one came.
As the sky turned from gray to dark purple to black, and the streetlights flickered on one by one, I hugged Penny to my chest and I cried. Quietly, because even in my abandonment, I’d learned not to make a scene, not to draw attention.
And that’s when a soft, kind voice called my name from the sidewalk.
“Taran? Honey, is that you?”
I looked up through my tears to see a woman I vaguely recognized—Mrs. Lenora Blackwell, an older Black woman with silver-streaked hair and warm, concerned eyes. She’d been our neighbor on Elm Street, back before we’d moved to this smaller, cheaper house two years ago.
“Mrs. Lenora?” My voice was barely a whisper.
She climbed the porch steps quickly despite her age, her face full of alarm. “What on earth are you doing out here? Where are your parents?”
I couldn’t answer. I just shook my head, fresh tears streaming down my face.
She didn’t ask any more questions. She just reached down, took my hand in hers—warm and steady and real—and said, “Come with me, baby. You’re not staying out here in the cold.”
She picked up my backpack with her other hand, wrapped the blanket more securely around my shoulders, and led me down the porch steps, down the sidewalk, to her own small house three doors down. I’d walked past it a hundred times during our old neighborhood visits but had never been inside.
Her house smelled of cinnamon and vanilla, of old, well-loved books with their pages gone soft, and of a simple, human kindness I had never known in my own home. The warmth hit me like a wave after the cold porch, and I started shivering uncontrollably as my body realized how frozen I’d become.
She gave me a warm, woolen sweater that was so big the sleeves completely swallowed my hands, and she sat me on her comfortable, overstuffed couch in front of a small fireplace where a real fire crackled and popped. She brought me hot chocolate in a mug with cats on it, and she didn’t ask me to explain or to talk. She just sat close by, her presence steady and comforting, as she quietly, calmly, began to make a series of phone calls.
I heard snatches of her conversations: “…just a child… abandoned on her grandparents’ porch… parents drove away… need someone from CPS…”
That night, wrapped in Mrs. Lenora’s too-big sweater and holding that warm mug, surrounded by the soft yellow light of her lamps and the gentle crackling of the fire, I felt safe for the first time in hours.
Maybe, I thought, for the first time in my whole life.
Chapter Two: The Years of Silence
In the years that followed, I carried the memory of that night—of that cold, hard, and final closed door at my grandparents’ house—with me everywhere I went. It became the lens through which I saw the world, the weight I carried in every interaction, the ghost that sat beside me in every empty chair.
Mrs. Lenora Blackwell became, by default and by grace, my guardian. The legal process was complicated—my parents had to be located and served with papers, had to sign away their parental rights—but through it all, Lenora was patient and steadfast. She’d been a social worker herself, years ago, before retiring, and she knew how to navigate the system.
“You’re mine now,” she told me one night as we sat at her kitchen table, doing my homework together. “Not legally yet, but in all the ways that matter. And I promise you, Taran, I will never, ever leave you on a porch.”
I believed her. And more importantly, she proved it true, day after day, year after year.
At school, I became the quiet, solitary student who won the spelling bees and the poetry contests, who earned straight A’s year after year with a determination that bordered on obsession. School became my refuge, a place where achievement was measured and rewarded, where I could prove my worth through concrete metrics.
But the applause, for me, was always thin. When my name was called at awards ceremonies—”Taran Mitchell, first place in the district writing competition”—there was never a parent standing proudly in the crowd, no one waving from the back row with tears in their eyes.
Well, that’s not quite true. Lenora was always there, always in the front row, always beaming with pride. But the teachers, after a while, stopped asking about “your parents.” They saw the older Black woman with the warm smile sitting beside the thin white girl with haunted eyes, and they understood, or they thought they did.
That single empty chair—the metaphorical one where my biological parents should have been—was always there, a ghost of absence that followed me through every achievement.
And yet, I kept writing them letters.
I don’t know why. Some desperate, pathetic hope that they’d realize their mistake? Some childish belief that if I could just be good enough, accomplished enough, they’d want me back?
On holidays, on my birthdays, I’d write small, hopeful notes about my grades, about my life with Lenora, about the new library that had opened downtown. I’d slip them into the old, blue mailbox outside Lenora’s house, addressing them to my parents’ last known address, believing with a child’s unshakable and foolish faith that they would somehow feel them, would somehow respond, even if they never had before.
Until the day Lenora, her own face a mask of gentle, sorrowful pity, showed me a thick stack of returned envelopes. My own childish, hopeful handwriting stared back at me from each one, and stamped across every single envelope in brutal, red ink were the words: RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN.
They’d moved. They’d left no forwarding address. And every letter I’d sent for the past three years had been bouncing back, accumulating in Lenora’s mail pile, which she’d been quietly collecting, waiting for the right moment to show me.
That was the day I finally stopped writing. Not out of anger, but out of a quiet, heartbreaking understanding. They didn’t want to be found. They didn’t want my letters. They didn’t want me.
I was eleven years old, and I was beginning to understand what it meant to be truly unwanted.
Chapter Three: The Stolen Savings
Years later, when I was fifteen, something happened that transformed my grief into something harder, sharper, more fuel than wound.
I was looking for a folder for a school project in Lenora’s home office, and I stumbled across a thick, manila envelope tucked away in the back of her filing cabinet. It was labeled “Taran—Important Documents.”
Curious, I opened it. Inside were various papers related to my case—CPS reports, court documents granting Lenora guardianship, medical records. But at the bottom was a stack of bank statements from an account I’d never known existed.
“Taran Rose Mitchell—Savings Account”
The earliest statement was dated just a few weeks after my birth. My grandmother Rose had opened it for me, depositing $500 to start. Over the years, she’d made small, regular contributions—$25 here, $50 there. Birthday money. Christmas money. “Just because” money.
By the time I was eight years old, the account had grown to $12,487.63. Not a fortune, but a significant amount. Enough for college textbooks. Enough for a used car. Enough for a security deposit on a first apartment.
But the most recent statement, dated just two weeks after my parents had abandoned me on that porch, showed a balance of zero dollars and zero cents.
They had emptied it. Every last cent. The account had been in my name, but apparently, as my legal guardians at the time, they’d had access. And they’d drained it.
Even the one single thing that had been meant to protect me, to give me a small fighting chance in the world, had been taken from me.
I sat there on the floor of Lenora’s office, clutching those bank statements, feeling something shift inside me. The grief I’d been carrying transformed into something else—not quite anger, but close to it. A cold, clarifying rage that burned slow and steady, a fuel I could use.
In a box of my old belongings that Lenora had saved, I found an old crayon drawing I’d made when I was six or seven—a picture of our family, all four of us holding hands and smiling under a bright, yellow sun. And I remembered then, with sudden, painful clarity, how my mother had, on that final cold autumn morning before she drove me away, torn that very same drawing in two right in front of me.
I’d been showing it to her, proud of my work, asking if we could hang it on the refrigerator. She’d taken it from my hands, looked at it for a long moment, and then—almost casually, as if it meant nothing—ripped it down the middle, separating me from the rest of them.
“We don’t need this anymore,” she’d said, throwing both halves in the trash.
At the time, I hadn’t understood. Now, holding those bank statements, I understood perfectly. That drawing had been prophetic. I’d already been removed from their picture, erased from their family narrative.
The pain of it all no longer cut like a shard of glass. It now burned, a steady, low, and fueling flame of a new and powerful resolve.
Chapter Four: Start Here
The next day, I did something that would change the trajectory of my entire life. I took out a fresh piece of paper, and I drew that picture again. But this time, there were only two figures in it: me and Lenora. Underneath it, I wrote in big, bold, block letters: START HERE.
That was the moment I decided to stop waiting for my parents to come back, to stop hoping they’d realize their mistake, to stop defining myself by their rejection.
I was going to rebuild. And I was going to start from exactly where I was.
I walked to the local café downtown—Bean & Brew, a cozy place that always smelled of coffee and fresh-baked pastries—and I asked for a job application. The woman behind the counter, a kind-faced woman in her forties named Sarah, looked at me skeptically.
“How old are you, honey?”
“Fifteen. I can work limited hours under the youth employment laws. I’ve already checked.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows, surprised by my preparation. “And why do you want to work here?”
I met her eyes directly. “Because I need to save money for college. Because I need to learn how businesses work. And because I mean business.”
Something in my tone, in my determination, must have convinced her. “Come back with your guardian’s permission, and we’ll talk.”
Lenora signed the permission forms without hesitation. “I’m proud of you,” she said simply.
I started the following week, working after school and on weekends. I learned how to make cappuccinos and lattes, how to handle difficult customers with grace, how to balance a cash register. But more importantly, I learned that I could be reliable, could be valued, could be seen as an asset rather than a burden.
The work was hard, but I was good at it. Within six months, Sarah was trusting me to open the café on weekend mornings. Within a year, I was training new employees.
And every single paycheck, I divided carefully: 60% into savings, 30% for Lenora to help with household expenses (which she tried to refuse but I insisted), and 10% for myself—small rewards for hitting goals, motivation to keep going.
High school became a strategic campaign. I didn’t just want good grades—I wanted perfect grades. I didn’t just want to graduate—I wanted scholarships. I researched everything: which activities looked best on college applications, which competitions offered cash prizes, which programs offered mentorship opportunities.
I joined the debate team and won regional championships. I became editor of the school newspaper. I tutored other students for $15 an hour, adding to my college fund. I applied for every scholarship I could find, writing essay after essay about overcoming adversity, about resilience, about the kindness of strangers who become family.
Teachers began to notice. “Taran, have you thought about applying to—” and they’d mention schools like Stanford, Columbia, schools I’d only seen in movies about privileged kids whose parents drove them to campus in luxury cars packed with new bedding and expensive laptops.
“I can’t afford schools like that,” I’d say.
“That’s what financial aid is for,” they’d respond. “With your story, your grades, your test scores? You’d have a very strong application.”
So I applied. To all of them. To every reach school and safety school and everything in between. And I wrote about that day on the porch, about Lenora’s kindness, about building a life from scratch.
The acceptances started coming in the spring of my senior year. Stanford. Columbia. Northwestern. UChicago. All with generous financial aid packages that would make attendance possible.
I stood in Lenora’s kitchen, acceptance letters spread across the table, and I cried. Not from sadness, but from the overwhelming realization that I’d done it. I’d built something from nothing.
“I’m so proud of you,” Lenora said, hugging me tight. “Your grandmother Rose would have been so proud.”
“I wish she’d lived to see this,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” Lenora said softly. “She sees it. I have no doubt.”
Chapter Five: The Birth of OpenVest
I chose Northwestern—close enough to Chicago that I could visit Lenora regularly, far enough that it felt like a real new beginning. I majored in computer science and business, a combination that raised eyebrows but made perfect sense to me.
“Why both?” my advisor asked during freshman orientation.
“Because I want to build something that matters and actually sustains itself,” I replied.
During my sophomore year, something crystallized. I was sitting in the campus library, helping another student—a former foster kid named Marcus—figure out how to navigate the FAFSA renewal process. His case worker had aged out of the system with him, and he was lost in a sea of bureaucratic forms and confusing financial aid jargon.
“How did you figure all this out?” he asked, frustrated tears in his eyes.
“Trial and error,” I admitted. “A lot of late nights Googling things. A lot of mistakes. A lot of kind people who helped when they didn’t have to.”
“I wish there was just… a place. A website or something. Where all this information was just laid out clearly for people like us.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Marcus’s words. I wish there was just a place.
Why wasn’t there?
I started researching. There were resources for foster youth, sure, but they were scattered, often outdated, and almost always created by people who’d never experienced the system themselves. They were clinical, bureaucratic, missing the actual texture of what it felt like to age out at eighteen with no family support and no idea how to function in the adult world.
So I decided to build it. A comprehensive digital resource, a non-profit platform, for kids like me and Marcus. Kids who’d been thrown away, who didn’t have anyone to explain the complexities of financial aid, or how to get their first apartment when you have no credit history and no one to co-sign a lease, or which banks don’t require a permanent address to open an account.
I called it OpenVest. A play on “open invest”—investing in young people’s futures by opening doors—and also a vest being something that protects your core, your heart.
I coded in the quiet, anonymous sanctuary of public libraries between classes. I worked on it in the computer labs late at night when the campus was quiet. I interviewed dozens of former foster youth, social workers, nonprofit leaders, getting their insights on what young people actually needed to know.
And I kept working at Bean & Brew during summers and breaks, now managing the café, learning about business operations from the ground up. Sarah, who’d given me my first job, became a mentor, teaching me about inventory management, customer relations, employee scheduling.
The site started simple: step-by-step guides for common challenges faced by youth aging out of the system. How to fill out your FAFSA when you don’t have parents. How to apply for a state ID when you don’t have a permanent address. How to build credit from zero. How to interview for jobs. How to find safe, affordable housing.
But it grew. I added a forum where young people could ask questions and get answers from peers who’d been through it. I added a mentor matching system, connecting young people with volunteers who could offer guidance. I added a scholarship database specifically for foster youth and other at-risk populations.
I poured every ounce of my being, every waking moment I could spare from my coursework and my job, into making OpenVest real. My world smelled of lemon-scented library cleaner and the strong coffee I mainlined to stay awake for all-nighters. But slowly, painstakingly, the site began to take shape.
When it finally launched publicly at the end of my junior year, I held my breath. Would anyone actually use it? Would it help anyone?
The very first comment that appeared on the site, posted within hours of launch, read: “I wish this had existed two years ago when I aged out of the system. This is exactly what I needed and didn’t have. Thank you for making this.”
I cried when I read it. Lenora found me at her kitchen table, my laptop open to that comment, tears streaming down my face.
“Happy tears?” she asked gently.
“Very happy tears,” I confirmed.
Within a week, the site had a thousand users. Within a month, five thousand. A small local tech blog picked up the story: “Northwestern Student Creates Lifeline for Foster Youth.” Then came the Chicago Tribune. Then national coverage.
The headlines were surreal: “The Founder Who Built Herself from Nothing.” “From Abandoned Child to Tech Entrepreneur.” “How One Woman is Changing the System That Failed Her.”
Suddenly, I was being invited to speak at conferences, to consult with nonprofits and government agencies, to share my story on podcasts and in interviews.
Through it all, there was only a deep, profound, and unwavering silence from my family. No email. No phone call. Nothing acknowledging that they’d seen the articles with my name, my face, my story—our story.
Lenora, my rock, my true north, just smiled and said, her voice full of a quiet, fierce pride, “You weren’t made to be clapped for by them, my dear. You were made for so much more.”
Chapter Six: The Hospital
One night during my senior year, I was in a hospital. Lenora had been admitted for a minor surgery—a hip replacement that she’d been putting off for years because she was too busy taking care of everyone else. I’d insisted she finally get it done, and I’d taken a week off from classes to be there with her.
I was walking down the sterile, antiseptic hallway of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, heading back from the cafeteria with two terrible cups of coffee, when I saw her.
My mother.
She was in the waiting area near the elevators, comforting a young woman who was crying. My mother’s hand was on the woman’s shoulder, her touch as tender and as gentle as I had ever seen it—more tender than I ever remembered her being with me.
Our eyes met across the crowded, bustling hallway. For a brief, heart-stopping moment, the world seemed to freeze. I saw recognition flash across her face. I saw something else too—surprise? Discomfort? Guilt?
And then, deliberately, she turned away. She leaned in closer to the crying woman, murmuring something soothing, and she walked with her toward the elevators. She walked right past me—close enough that I could have reached out and touched her—as if I were a complete and utter stranger.
Not even a nod. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment.
I stood there in that hallway, holding two cups of coffee that were going cold in my hands, and I felt the last fragile thread that had connected us finally snap. That day, the small, hopeful nine-year-old child inside of me—the one who had been waiting all these years for her mother to come back, to realize her mistake, to choose me—finally, and completely, went quiet.
I walked back to Lenora’s room in a daze. She was sitting up in bed, looking tired but cheerful, trying to adjust her pillows.
“Did you get lost?” she asked, then saw my face. “Taran? Honey, what’s wrong?”
“I saw her,” I said quietly, setting down the coffee cups. “My mother. In the hallway. She looked right at me, and she walked away.”
Lenora’s face tightened with anger—a rare expression on her usually gentle features. “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m okay,” I said, and I was surprised to realize it was true. “Actually, I think I’m better than okay. I think I’m finally free.”
That night, lying in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair in Lenora’s hospital room, listening to her gentle snoring, I made a decision. I was done waiting for them to acknowledge me. I was done carrying the weight of their rejection. I was going to live my life as if they didn’t exist, because functionally, they didn’t.
They were strangers now. And I was going to treat them as such.
Chapter Seven: The Audacity of Family
OpenVest continued to grow after graduation. I got accepted into Y Combinator’s startup accelerator program—a huge validation of the concept. We secured our first significant grant funding. I hired my first employees, all people with lived experience in the foster care system.
The organization moved from a scrappy website I’d built in my dorm room to a real nonprofit with office space in downtown Chicago, with a board of directors, with strategic plans and measurable impact metrics.
We helped thousands of young people navigate systems that had been designed without them in mind. We became a trusted resource cited by social workers, foster parents, policy makers. We expanded beyond just information to direct services—emergency funds for youth in crisis, a hotline staffed by peers who understood, partnerships with companies willing to hire young people from foster care backgrounds.
I was twenty-six years old, and I was the executive director of a nationally recognized organization. I was featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30. I was invited to speak at the White House about improving outcomes for foster youth.
And through it all, my parents remained silent. I never looked for them, never tried to find out where they were or what they were doing. They were ghosts of a past I’d outgrown.
Until the day they decided they needed something from me.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I was in my office preparing for a board meeting, when my assistant knocked on my door.
“Taran? There’s a letter here for you. It came via a law firm—looks official.”
The envelope was thick, expensive paper, from Hamilton & Chase LLP, a high-end law firm in the suburbs. Inside was a formal letter, typed on crisp letterhead:
Dear Ms. Mitchell,
We represent Mr. Arless Mitchell and Mrs. Rebecca Mitchell, your biological parents. They have asked us to contact you on their behalf regarding a family matter of some urgency.
Your parents are writing to request financial assistance with educational expenses for your younger brother, Michael, who will be attending Northwestern University this fall. Given your current financial success and their understanding that they supported you during your formative years, they hope you will be willing to contribute to Michael’s education as a way of repaying them for their investment in your upbringing.
They are requesting $50,000 annually for four years to cover tuition, housing, and expenses not covered by financial aid.
Please contact our office at your earliest convenience to discuss arrangements.
I read the letter three times, each time feeling a different emotion. First, shock. Then, a hot, burning anger. And finally, a cold, calm clarity.
They had a son. A younger son. Michael. I had a brother I’d never known about, never been told existed. They’d built a new family, had another child, raised him—apparently successfully enough that he’d gotten into Northwestern. And now they wanted me to pay for his college.
The audacity was breathtaking.
“Repaying them for their investment in my upbringing.” The words burned. What investment? The nine years of making me feel like a burden? The abandonment on a cold porch? The stolen savings account?
I didn’t respond to the letter.
Two days later, an email arrived, this time directly from an address I didn’t recognize: Robert Mitchell, with a subject line “Family Matters.”
Taran,
I know the lawyer’s letter probably came as a surprise. Your parents asked me to reach out personally. I’m your uncle—your father’s brother. I know you and your parents have had your differences, but family means doing things you don’t want to do sometimes. It’s your turn to step up and help your brother. He’s a good kid, and he deserves a chance at a good education.
Your parents made mistakes, sure, but they’re trying to do right by Michael now. You benefited from their support when you were young, even if things ended badly. Consider this a chance to be the bigger person.
Call me. Let’s talk this through like family.
I printed both the letter and the email. I took a yellow sticky note and wrote on it: “My silence is not an agreement. It’s a boundary.” I stuck it to the papers and filed them in a folder labeled “Biological Parents—Ignore.”
I wasn’t going to engage. I wasn’t going to explain or defend or justify. I was just going to live my life, and they could figure out their own finances without me.
But they weren’t done trying.
Chapter Eight: The Video
A week later, something arrived that I wasn’t expecting. A small, unmarked cardboard box appeared on my doorstep at my apartment. No return address, just my name written in an unfamiliar hand.
Inside, wrapped in bubble wrap, was a single old VHS tape in a case. No label, no note.
I hadn’t owned a VCR in years—who did anymore?—but there was a thrift store a few blocks away where I knew they sold old electronics. I bought a VCR for $15, brought it home, and hooked it up to my TV.
The tape was grainy and shaky, clearly filmed on a handheld camcorder. The footage was of a small, familiar house, shot from across the street. The timestamp in the corner read October 14, 2008—seventeen years ago.
My stomach dropped.
The camera zoomed in on the porch. And there I was. Nine years old, small and scared, clutching a backpack. Penny’s one eye was just visible sticking out of the unzipped pocket.
I watched myself ring the doorbell. Watched my grandfather open the door, his face full of sorrow. Watched him hand me the blanket and then close the door, leaving me alone on that porch.
Then the camera panned to the street, where a Honda Civic was pulling away. My father’s voice, clear and cold, rang out from off-camera, talking to my mother:
“You don’t think she’ll tell anyone, do you?”
“Who would she tell? She’s nine.” My mother’s voice, dismissive.
“What if your parents call CPS?”
“They won’t. They know better than to go against us.”
Then, the sharp, final slam of a car door as the camera jerked, like the person filming had been startled.
The video continued for another few minutes, showing me sitting on that porch, small and alone, as the light faded. Then it cut off.
A neighbor had recorded it. Someone had witnessed my abandonment, had documented it, and had kept the tape all these years. And now, somehow, they’d found me and sent it to me.
There was a slip of paper at the bottom of the box that I’d missed initially:
Ms. Mitchell,
I’m Ellen Pritchard. I lived across the street from your grandparents. I saw what happened that night. I called CPS, but by the time they arrived, you were already gone—that nice woman from down the street had taken you in.
I kept this tape, not knowing what to do with it. When I saw your articles about OpenVest, I realized you might want to have it. I’m sorry for what you went through. I should have done more.
I hope you’re well.
I sat on my couch, staring at the frozen image on my TV screen, and I felt something shift. This wasn’t just my memory anymore, subject to the usual distortions and doubts that plague all memories. This was proof. Documented evidence.
Evidence of what they’d done.
I called my friend Marcus, the former foster kid I’d met in college who now worked as a journalist for the Chicago Tribune.
“Marcus, I need your advice. And maybe your help.”
When I showed him the tape, his face went dark with anger. “Taran, this is… this is criminal child abandonment. This is documentation of a crime.”
“I know.”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“I want people to know what happens to kids in this system. I want people to see what abandonment looks like. And I want a record, something public and permanent, so that if they ever try to claim they were good parents, there’s evidence to the contrary.”
We worked together to produce a short video piece. Not exploitative, not dramatic—just me, sitting in my simple office, telling my story calmly and clearly, with the VHS footage as documentation.
“This isn’t about revenge,” I said to the camera, my voice steady and clear. “This is about keeping a record, about bearing witness. This is for every single child who has ever been told that they were the problem, that they were bad luck, that they were unwanted. You weren’t the problem. The adults who failed you were the problem.”
The video was published on the Tribune’s website with the headline: “Tech Founder Shares Proof of Childhood Abandonment: ‘This Is For Every Child Who Was Told They Were the Problem.'”
It went viral. Within hours, it had a million views. By the end of the week, it had been viewed more than ten million times. The comments section filled with thousands of other stories, other voices of abandonment and resilience.
People shared their own experiences. Adult children of neglect. Former foster youth. Social workers. Therapists. All of them bearing witness to the reality that the story I’d told wasn’t unique—it was horrifyingly common.
OpenVest’s donation page crashed from the traffic. Our phone lines were overwhelmed with people wanting to volunteer, to donate, to help. The visibility translated into funding—major foundations reached out with grant offers, corporations offered partnerships and sponsorships.
The thing my parents had done in darkness was now documented in light.
And I knew they would see it.
Chapter Nine: The Confrontation
They didn’t make me wait long. One Friday evening, as I was leaving the OpenVest office building, walking toward my car in the parking garage, I found her waiting for me by my car.
My mother.
My father lingered a few feet behind her, a ghost from a past I had long since buried. He looked older, grayer, diminished somehow. She looked the same—blonde hair now with threads of silver, the same sharp features I remembered, the same cold eyes.
She stepped forward, her arms lifting in a hesitant, hopeful gesture, and I instinctively took a step back.
“Taran,” she said, and hearing my name in her voice after so many years was jarring, wrong. “Please. We need to talk.”
“No,” I said simply. “We don’t.”
“You’re my daughter,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes now—real or performed, I couldn’t tell. “You will always be my daughter.”
I held up a hand, a quiet, unbreachable wall, and I took another small step back. “I stopped being your daughter the day you left me on a porch and drove away.”
Her face, which had been arranged in a mask of desperate, pleading sorrow, crumbled. My father stepped forward.
“We made mistakes,” he said gruffly. “We were young, we were struggling, we—”
“You were thirty-four and thirty-two,” I interrupted. “You weren’t that young. And you weren’t struggling any more than millions of other parents who manage not to abandon their children.”
“We didn’t know what else to do,” my mother tried. “We were drowning, and you were—”
“I was a child,” I said, my voice sharp now. “A nine-year-old child. I was your responsibility. Your problem to solve. And your solution was to erase me.”
A long silence. Other people were leaving the building, walking past us toward their cars. Some of them glanced over, recognizing me from the video, from the news coverage. A few pulled out their phones—filming, probably. I didn’t care.
“We saw your video,” my father said finally. “That wasn’t fair, airing our private family business like that—”
I laughed, a short, bitter sound. “Fair? You want to talk to me about fair? You stole my college fund. You abandoned me on a porch in the rain. You had another child and never told me I had a brother. You only contacted me when you wanted money. And I’m the one being unfair?”
“Your brother is a good kid,” my mother said, changing tactics. “He doesn’t deserve to suffer because of our past mistakes. He needs help paying for college—”
“Then help him,” I said. “Get second jobs. Take out loans. Do what I did. What millions of other parents do. Don’t come to the daughter you threw away and ask her to fund the child you kept.”
“You think your success means you don’t need your family anymore?” my mother asked, her voice now sharp with accusation, with that familiar cutting tone. “You think you’re better than us now?”
This was the moment. The moment I’d been unconsciously preparing for through years of therapy, through building my own life, through finding my own strength.
I took a deep breath, the cool evening air filling my lungs, and I answered, my voice quiet but firm:
“No. My success means that I finally, and completely, know what a family is. And what it isn’t.”
I paused, letting the words sink in.
“Family isn’t biology. It isn’t obligation. It isn’t keeping score of debts and repayments. Family is the woman who took me in when you left me in the cold. Family is showing up, day after day, whether it’s convenient or not. Family is caring about someone’s wellbeing even when there’s nothing in it for you.”
My mother’s face was red now, whether from shame or anger I couldn’t tell.
“You had eighteen years to be my family,” I continued. “You had nine years to be parents. Instead, you made me feel like a burden, like bad luck personified, and then you erased me from your lives. And now, seventeen years later, you want to play the family card because you need something? No. That’s not how this works.”
“So that’s it?” my father said, his voice hard. “You’re just going to turn your back on us? On your brother?”
“I don’t know my brother,” I said. “I hope he has a good life. I hope he never knows what it feels like to be unwanted by his parents. But his college education is not my responsibility. His parents’ choices are not my burden to fix.”
I walked around them toward my car, unlocking it with my key fob. As I opened the door, my mother called out one more time.
“Please, Taran. We’re sorry. We’re so sorry for everything. Please.”
I turned back and looked at them—really looked at them. Two aging people who had made terrible choices and were now facing the consequences. I felt… nothing. No anger, no satisfaction, no triumph. Just a quiet, settled peace.
“I believe you’re sorry,” I said. “Sorry that your choices caught up with you. Sorry that you need money and I’m not giving it to you. Sorry that your abandonment of me is now public record. But sorry for what you did to a nine-year-old child? Sorry for the years of trauma you caused? I don’t think you are. I don’t think you’re capable of understanding what you took from me.”
I got in my car and closed the door. Through the window, I could see my mother crying, my father standing stiffly beside her. I started the engine, and I drove away.
And this time, I was the one who didn’t look back.
Epilogue: Building Something True
Five years have passed since that confrontation in the parking garage. OpenVest has grown beyond anything I could have imagined. We now operate in forty-two states, have helped over 100,000 young people navigate systems that were designed without them in mind, and have leveraged over $50 million in grants and scholarships for foster youth.
We’ve expanded our services to include direct advocacy—working with state legislatures to change policies, partnering with corporations to create hiring pipelines, building transitional housing programs. The work is endless, exhausting, and deeply fulfilling.
I still think about my parents sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. I wonder if Michael graduated, if he knows he has an older sister, if he’s seen the video. I wonder if my parents tell people about me, their successful daughter, or if they’ve erased me from their narrative as thoroughly as they tried to erase me from their lives.
I don’t reach out. I don’t follow them on social media or Google their names. I’ve built boundaries that protect my peace, and I maintain them carefully.
Lenora is seventy-eight now, still sharp and loving and proud. She’s my emergency contact, my medical power of attorney, my real family. We have Sunday dinners every week at her house, and we’ve started a tradition of volunteering together at the local youth shelter once a month.
Last year, she was honored at an event for foster parents and guardians who’d made a difference. When they called her name and asked her to say a few words, she gestured for me to join her on stage.
“I didn’t do anything special,” she said into the microphone, her voice strong and clear. “I just did what anyone should do—I saw a child who needed help, and I helped. The remarkable thing is that people think this is remarkable. Every child deserves what I gave Taran: safety, stability, and unconditional love. That shouldn’t be exceptional. That should be the baseline.”
The room erupted in applause. I stood beside her, holding her hand, and I thought about how far we’d both come.
Recently, I was invited to speak at Northwestern’s graduation ceremony. Standing at that podium, looking out at the sea of young faces full of hope and possibility, I told them a version of my story. Not all of it—they didn’t need all the painful details—but enough.
“Some of you had families who drove you here, who packed your cars with new bedding and supplies, who cried proud tears when you walked across the stage today,” I said. “Some of you, like me, built your own support systems from scratch. Both journeys are valid. Both journeys are hard. What matters is that you’re here.”
I paused, scanning the crowd.
“The world will tell you that family is everything, that blood is thicker than water, that you owe your parents for giving you life. But here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t owe anyone anything for the circumstances of your birth. You owe yourself the chance to build a life worth living. You owe yourself the right to set boundaries that protect your peace. You owe yourself permission to define family on your own terms.”
More applause. In the front row, I saw Lenora, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, beaming with pride.
“Build something true,” I concluded. “Build something that reflects your values, your strengths, your vision for the world. Don’t waste your time trying to earn love from people who’ve shown you they’re incapable of giving it. Find your people—the ones who show up, who stay, who love you not despite your struggles but through them. And when you find them, hold on tight.”
After the ceremony, a young woman approached me. She was maybe twenty-two, dressed in her graduation gown, her eyes red from crying.
“I was left at a fire station when I was three days old,” she said quietly. “I aged out of foster care at eighteen. I almost didn’t make it to graduation—came so close to giving up so many times. Your story, OpenVest, knowing someone else understood… it kept me going. So thank you. Thank you for surviving, for building something, for showing people like me that we’re not broken.”
I hugged her, this stranger who wasn’t a stranger at all. “You’re not broken,” I told her. “You never were. You’re a survivor. You’re a fighter. And you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
That night, Lenora and I sat on her porch, drinking sweet tea and watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of orange and pink.
“Do you ever regret not reconciling with them?” she asked. “Your parents?”
I thought about it carefully. “No,” I said finally. “I don’t. Reconciliation would require them to acknowledge what they did, to take real responsibility, to show up consistently over time to rebuild trust. They just want access to my resources without accountability for their choices. That’s not reconciliation. That’s just them wanting something from me again.”
“You’ve built something beautiful from the ashes of what they did,” Lenora said. “That’s the best revenge there is.”
“It’s not even revenge,” I said. “Revenge would mean I was still thinking about them, still defining myself in relation to them. This is just… living. Building. Creating something that matters. They’re not part of the equation anymore.”
I looked at this woman who’d saved my life by simply being kind when kindness wasn’t required, who’d given me a home when no one else would, who’d shown me what real family looked like.
“You know what the funny thing is?” I said. “They thought I was bad luck. They thought I was the problem, the source of all their difficulties. But I wasn’t. I was just a child who needed parents, and they weren’t capable of being what I needed. Their problems were always their own—their choices, their failures, their limitations. I was never the curse they believed I was.”
Lenora squeezed my hand. “No, baby. You were never a curse. You were always a blessing. They just couldn’t see it.”
The sun dipped below the horizon, and the first stars began to appear in the darkening sky. Somewhere out there, my parents were living their lives, dealing with the consequences of their choices. Somewhere out there, thousands of young people were finding resources and support through OpenVest, building lives from difficult beginnings, learning that they weren’t broken or cursed or unlovable.
And here I was, on a porch with my real family, at peace.
I’d started on a different porch, seventeen years ago, abandoned and alone in the cold. But I’d built something from that beginning. Not in spite of what happened to me, but incorporating it, learning from it, transforming it into fuel for helping others.
The nine-year-old girl who’d been left behind would be proud of the woman I’d become. And that, more than any reconciliation with the people who’d abandoned her, more than any acknowledgment or apology, was what mattered.
I’d survived. I’d built a life. I’d found my people. And I’d helped others do the same.
That was enough.
That was everything.
THE END
For every child who was told they were the problem, for every person who rebuilt themselves from ashes, and for every chosen family that proved blood isn’t what makes us kin—this story is for you. You were never the curse. You were always the blessing, waiting to be seen.
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
Lila earned her degree in History and Archival Studies from the University of Edinburgh, where she cultivated her passion for documenting the past and preserving cultural heritage. Her expertise lies in combining traditional archival techniques with modern digital tools, allowing her to create comprehensive and engaging collections that resonate with audiences worldwide.
At TheArchivists, Lila is known for her meticulous attention to detail and her ability to uncover hidden gems within extensive archives. Her work is praised for its depth, authenticity, and contribution to the preservation of knowledge in the digital age.
Driven by a commitment to preserving stories that matter, Lila is passionate about exploring the intersection of history and technology. Her goal is to ensure that every piece of content she handles reflects the richness of human experiences and remains a source of inspiration for years to come.