On the day I am born, I am still someone’s daughter by Amata Iman Nisrin Pommeranz

To who I became on December 17th, 2009
For you are never a foster child from the very start.
I wish to dedicate this piece to every person who got lost in the foster
care system and more so the ones who never found their way out.
There is a way for you and you are not alone. You will not die here.

Hello,

I hope this letter finds you well.
Somebody will need to read and translate this for you, since you haven’t quite learned English (or
reading). Yet. But don’t worry, you will become an eloquent girl.
I’d say you’ll become a smart girl, but that’s something you’ve always been.

Regardless. It’s me.
While I’m writing this, you are five years old.
By the time I’m finished writing this, you will be me.
For you, it’s the 17th of December, 2009.
You will fall asleep crying and wake up when it‘s dark.
You will spend today in apathy, an emotion foreign and cold.
The day will feel like January, because this year, there is no Christmas.
For me, today is the 14th of November of 2025.
You will spend many days just hoping for this day,
any day in the future, far from your winter morning, to be the day you wake up.

So on your cold winter morning, I want to let you know how loved you are, because from today
onward, things will feel different.
And I know that I can’t change that, because a retrospective letter doesn’t change your life.
No letter will, nothing will.
Your mother will send many, but not many of them will ever cross your eyes.
She is not well. And you are not allowed to read what unwell minds produce.
You are still growing, like a fetus in the womb, darkness will surround you for many years to come.
There will be no context, only uncomfortable explanations as to with whom you live and that the lady
isn’t your mother, and a sense of estrangement from all the other children in the class. You will be the
one whose backpack is emptied first when someone steals, you will watch the other children in your
home steal, you will steal – but not from school. You will be the one that parents don’t want to spend
time with their child. You will be touched before you know what touching means, you will not
remember that until you graduate high school, more than a decade later. You will be a great student. It
won’t matter. You will be locked in your room, yelled at, hit, what is good about you will not define
you. You will be a bad child. This will follow you, for a long time. You will grow in darkness, the
way a microorganism might. But in darkness, you will need light.

So I will write to you, of hope.

Of you. Of me. Of everything I already know of you.
I will do so, and beg and pray that it makes you shine the brightest in those nights so dark you think
you’ve lost your way.
In nights so dark you forget you are someone, anyone, this is my reminder, my promise of how far
you’ve come, of where you will be.
Because I’ve been where you have been, I have felt your shame.
I’ve seen you, I know you, there is nothing wrong with you.

When you wake up on that cold December morning, the day where it all ended, started, stopped, you
will do so from banging on the apartment door.
All the lights will already be on, blinding, disorienting your crinkled, little eyes.
You’ll get up, trip over the coat hanger in front of your room and even though you can’t read the time
yet, the kitchen clock will forever show 5 AM.
Your mother will tell you to go hide.
So you’ll grab your bunny, which I still kept until this day, and crawl under the bed.
You’ll hear shouting, someone is commanding your mother to open up, threatening to break the door.
You won’t be able to see anything, but you’ll hear the little Barbie birthday cake covering the spyhole
clack, followed by the impossibly large set of keys rustling in the door.
Big heavy boots will make the ground vibrate.
And you will hear your mother scream.
There is nothing in the future.
There is no risk and no context and your mother is on the floor and they are searching the apartment
for you. You are scared. But your mother is on the floor, and you can see her from under the bed, right
in the doorway in front of your apartment. A large shadow of a man, dressed in a dark blue is on her
back. She is struggling under his grip. And you are scared.
But you come out anyway, brave girl.

Truth is, you’ll be afraid and confused, and there will be a future. Deeply ingrained this memory is in
both of us, carved under our skin. From that day on, it always hurts a little, right behind the centre of
your sternum, when you think of it.

Whenever you see policemen all these years later, your chest will still contract.
You see them now, too, barefoot in the doorway.
Strong girl, stronger men.
They will show you that they’re stronger. Your mother will be on the floor.
They’ll hold her down on her chest, knee on her back,
And she’ll be screaming, crying, writhing.
Trying to reach for you like she did, the first time she got to hold you in her arms.
You don’t know yet, you don’t know anything, nothing about what’s going on, at all.

Like a warrior, you will stand in the door frame,
Four feet tall, with your little shoulders braced.
As if the men in the riot gear weren’t coming for you.
As if you were coming for them like the wrath of an ancient god.
But you won‘t. Truly, you have no power. You just stand there. You have a dotted bath robe and no
shoes on, and they will guide you down the four flights of stairs by the shoulders. There is a car
waiting. You will not talk. You will get in.

On a very profound level, you can understand it in your heart, that she will never hold you the same
way again.
This will be the darkest night.

Day will come.
Light will not.

I know, by the time the sun rises on this cold December morning, you will be all alone in the world,
wearing nothing but the dotted bath robe and a night dress. And the binky you’re 4 years too old for.
You’ll outgrow that too, brave girl.
You will be in a stranger’s car, on the way to a strange city, far away, where you know no one and the
air feels colder. You will walk barefoot down the sidewalk to the door, get in and sit down. The
kitchen is made of dark, ashy wood and it repels all sense of comfort and intimacy.
The hot cocoa, from the strange lady in the big house, will not warm the icy feeling in your chest.
Neither will the blanket on the mattress in the nursery room.
You will cry yourself to sleep, your favourite bunny in your hand, and I know, you won’t even
understand why.
On this cold winter morning, you don’t know yet that you won’t see your mother for years to come.
I’ll keep that bunny forever, even when it starts falling apart.
Just for you, I promise you, brave girl, I’ll keep it. It’ll be proof of your resilience, of all the places
you’ve been, seen, stayed, proof of the darkness you’ve endured.

But I came here not to tell your story, you will live it just the same.
I came to tell you of hope.
I am going to tell you of who you’ll become, brave girl.

I am going to tell you, you’ll be loud.
You’ll have so many people who will call you a nuisance, a bother, that you’re a bad influence, too
talkative, annoying, too bossy. Too demanding for a girl.
But you’ll be loud. What you learned on that dark December night, the last thing you learned to trust
your mother about, was to never go out quietly. You had done so, then.
And mistake or not, things changed, there and then and always.

I’m here to tell you, that will be your greatest strength, the light in you.
Loud girl, talking girl, vocal girl. Angry girl, emotional girl, explosive girl.
They will tell you, shrink, do not trust them. Don’t be less.
You are supposed to be this way, you are supposed to be loud.
And just as lovely you will be, you will be loud.

You will bloom like a flower after rain. You will make your colours screech and scream and vibrate
and blow up.
You know it’s this, or it’s withering and dying quietly.
But I promise, you‘re right, be, brave girl.
Be brave, and I will stand at the end of every tunnel,
I will be daylight at the end of a dark December night.
I will try my best to shine and glow for you, to make you forget there was ever darkness to begin with.
I will make things work out, even if things don’t always work out for you. If no one does, I promise
you, with all I have, I will find a way for you.

Be brave, again and again and again.
I will be on the other side, waiting for you.
When you think there is no one and nothing out there waiting for you,
I am.

I will always wait for you.
I will be anything for you,
I will rip myself apart and put myself back together if you need me to.
Before you even know who I am,
I will become everything you have ever needed.
I will love you forever, just the way you are,
I will be different, I will be there when you need me,
I will change for you. I will be better, not worse,
I will change for you, I will change and change and change
I will not stop changing until the shape of my hands can hold you just like your mother did before the
world ended.
I will become the mould that holds you, the vessel that channels you, the torch for your night.
So I beg of you, girl, be brave.
So I can show you to the world.
So they can feel the way I do, when I think of you.

After what must feel like a lifetime of begging for it, you will find people just like you, people brave
and beautiful, people gentle and strong, because you will be.
I will think, I sound egotistical, saying all this about you,
Someone reading this will think we are the same.
But we are not. You are a child and you are just supposed to be yourself. I am here to understand who
you are, I am here to protect you, I am here to pave a way for you because no one else would.
You are the painting, I am the coating.
You are the artist, I am the gallery, the building, the roof.
I am the house, you are the home.
You are the universe, I am just earth.
I may hold everything one imagines as your life, but you are everything I have been, will be and
could’ve been. You are the window to complexity and the context of all which there is and could be.
You are possibility,
To be anything at all,
To be at all.
You were there before I could’ve ever been.
I am nothing without you,
I am nothing but a consequence of your resilience.
I would be but a shell moving through currents, without your life within me.
I would be nothing but a rotting cadaver, without your heart pulsing through me.

You are a ball of energy, of light.
I am just your container, the hand that holds you, and I will learn, all my life, to hold you better, an
apology for when I was not there, when I could not, when I didn’t, when I wasn’t there to hold you.
When no one else would.
Now, I can, I want to, I will.

I will wait for you at the end of the tunnel, and one of these days, I will not be the light.
It will be yourself you step into, brave, bright, girl.

The sun will rise on another morning, month after month and year after year.
One day, then, you will wake up, and suddenly you will look at yourself in the mirror and see me. You
will hope and hope, and your hope will have been an action.
You will build homes in people and places, you will tear them down and build them back up, And as
you move, they will move you toward a brighter day. There is no context without the people. You will
not know this or move towards it so very consciously. But it will move you.

One morning, you will wake up
and day will have come.

And things will have gotten better without you even noticing.
It will all have been worth it.
You were always worth it.

About the Author

Amata is a 21-year-old German-Moroccan student and writer from Berlin. Growing up in foster care, she moved frequently, developing a deep awareness of belonging and resilience. Grounded in lived experience, her work, politics and identity are rooted in community, which remains the most defining and guiding force in her life.