Meet Carly Souza

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carly Souza. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carly below.

Carly, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

I work in a field where almost everyone is highly educated. I grew up in a private school but never went to college. Not because I wasn’t smart or didn’t have the resources, I just didn’t have the desire. When I finished high school, I was already working in a customer service field that I loved, and a degree wouldn’t have been beneficial to my current line of work. I decided that if I ever wanted to pursue a career change, I would evaluate if going to college at that point would make sense.

Fast forward a few years after becoming a mother and choosing to be a stay-at-home mom, I started a passion project of supporting foster families, As a foster parent myself, I quickly learned the importance of surrounding yourself with others who understood the struggles. This passion project that was started more than 15 years ago, has grown into an organization that supports 500+ families in my city who all have a background of foster care, adoption, or kinship care. There are many times I sit in rooms with many doctorate degrees and in the earlier days, when asked where I graduated from, I was so embarrassed to share that I didn’t go to college. The look on the face of the person across from me was always shock. I often felt like I didn’t belong. Over the years I have come to realize that lived experience is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than formal education. I have the ability to connect with others based on what I have experienced first-hand, not just what I have been taught.

When I decided not to go to college, I had no idea where my life would lead. I didn’t know that my future held foster care, adoption, or an unending world of early childhood trauma. I would have never chosen to go into a field that would have even made sense to my future self. I’m thankful I didn’t go into a field that would have made sense at 18 because at 39 life is so much more full because I followed a passion rather than a status quo.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

My husband and I began our foster care journey as a means to step into the stories of others for a short period of time and the journey we thought we were starting on was not the journey we ended up taking. In August of 2008, less than five months after getting married, we brought home a sibling group of four through foster care. The goal for foster care is always reunification when it is safe and healthy. We expected those four kids to be with us for a few months and next week will be 16 years since they walked in our front door and into our hearts. When a child in foster care is unable to be reunified with their family, adoption is the best option. Those first four kids were in our home for two years before their case turned into adoption. In the years since, we have fostered, adopted, had biological children, and fictive kinship placements (kinship is foster care but for a relative, fictive kin is someone with a preexisting relationship but not a relative by blood or marriage). We live in Las Vegas and both my family and my husband’s family live here also. We have so much support. But we quickly realized that even with all the support we had, if someone hadn’t engaged in foster care, our lives seemed so foreign to them. We started a support group in our living room to try and fill the gaps of needing to be in relationships with others experiencing the same thing we were. That group grew and eventually transitioned to our church campus and 15 years later, is now serving 500+ foster, adoptive, and kinship families in Las Vegas.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I think people skills are often undervalued. You can teach someone to do almost anything but being able to interact with people is a gift. If you have the gift of connecting with people, us it! When people feel seen, there is almost nothing better.

Utilize existing resources. If you, like me, didn’t go to college, that doesn’t mean there isn’t unending learning tools available to you. So much of my knowledge of trauma and healing have come from reading books, listening to podcasts, and sitting with others who have lived experience. If you have access to the internet, you can learn anything.

Assess what already exists. If you have an idea for a “new” thing, look around first and see if someone locally is already doing the same thing. If someone is already doing what you had planned to launch, see if there is a way to collaborate rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

From as far back as I can remember, my parents have taught me to love and serve people. Hardly ever by what they said, but always by what they did. I want my kids to grow up and do the same. We say in our house that “Souzas serve”. They get to pick a spot and jump in. Whether that’s in our church, in a local organization, or even in Fostering Hope, I want serving to be in their DNA just like it was built into mine.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: team.souza

Image Credits

Family photo credit to L.Rush.Photos