“Three More Words” — The Encouraging Follow-up to “Three Little Words”

“Three Little Words” is a triumphant, incredibly motivating and thought provoking memoir that should be on every required reading list for foster and adoptive parents. It explores the turmoil inflicted upon foster children while highlighting the mindset of a child who is experiencing it all. After the success and ample positivity that came from her first memoir, author Ashley Rhodes-Courter wrote a highly encouraging follow-up titled “Three More Words.” Defying the odds goes further than simply making it through foster care, and Ashley writes about the experience of a former foster youth transitioning into adulthood and continuing her fight for foster children and making their voices heard.

A lot of the time, there’s a huge focus on children in foster care (as there should be), but youth transitioning out of care and former foster youth can face difficulties they weren’t previously warned about or prepared for. Things that become exceptionally difficult can include enrolling in college, staying in college, getting their own place, and even finding a way to incorporate their birth family into their new adult life in a healthy way. In this new memoir, Ashley goes through her time in college, defying the odds and negative statistics once again by proving that with encouragement, love, and the drive to be better, foster kids can undoubtedly succeed. We also get to see her incredible journey back into the foster care system both as a guardian ad litem and a foster parent. It’s the perfect addition to the original story of her life, and a necessary read for all who felt touched and inspired by her time in foster care as a child.