Fostering Fortitude

Stasa is now pursuing her Master of Public Administration at Western Michigan University. She is photographed here at Celery Flats in Portage, Michigan, near Kalamazoo. Photos by Mark Bugnaski

A glance at Isabel Stasa’s resume would catch the attention of any employer: head of community engagement and public affairs at a national nonprofit, Congressional intern, policy consultant. But, as Stasa shares, there is more than meets the eye.

Growing up in southern Michigan with seven of her siblings and a single parent, Stasa (A.B. ’23) never had a secure living environment. The family, which lost two children over the course of Stasa’s life, made temporary homes in tents, churches, and shelters. From a young age, Stasa took on the role of primary caretaker for her younger siblings, actively serving as a parent figure. 

The transient nature of their lives, as well as their experiences of poverty and homelessness, led social services to intervene when Stasa was 13. While her older siblings had already aged out of care programs, Stasa and her two younger siblings were separated and placed in different foster homes. The destabilization of separation and abuse within the foster network was exacerbated by four and a half years of no contact with her family. 

There were bright spots in Stasa’s life. While moving from home to home, Stasa found defenders in her teachers and case workers. One high school counselor was so dedicated to Stasa’s academic success that he burst into a room full of classmates crying to tell her that she had received an invitation to apply for the HAIL Scholarship at U-M. Her foster caseworker supported her through the tangle of financial aid forms, walking her through the convoluted FAFSA process and taking her on a tour of Ann Arbor.

While on campus, Stasa stopped to watch a student speaking outside of the Michigan Union. This was the moment she realized that she could see herself as a college student—a teenager who could feel excitement about their future without worrying about how it would happen. Miriam Connolly, then the director of the Blavin Scholars Program at U-M, gave her the final push. “Put your worries aside,” Connolly told her. “You have to trust me.” 

Still, worries abounded. A scholarship would solve some of Stasa’s problems, but not all. She was still living in her car, still fully entrenched in the survival mode that had stayed with her since she entered the foster care system. Her experience made her feel isolated, and she yearned for the opportunity to be with her siblings—particularly the one with whom she had been closest in her childhood. 

By the time they were able to reach each other again in January 2020, Stasa was about to start college as a first-generation student and they knew nothing of each other’s lives. Her sibling saw her successes—a dorm, a car, an internationally renowned higher education—and felt resentment. “You abandoned me,” they said.

“I can’t even call you my sister anymore. I never want to see you again.” Devastated, Stasa told them that the door was always open to communicate. She understood that though she was grieving their estrangement, her sibling had never fully understood why they had been separated as children.

As is the case with many stories of trauma and insecurity, the path to resolution and healing was not linear. Shortly after Stasa started her first semester of college, COVID forced students out of their dorms, and she was unhoused again. She wrestled with pernicious feelings of heartbreak due to the estrangement of her sibling. “When you lose someone who’s still alive,” she says, “you forget who they are or what their laugh sounds like. You know that they’re too far away to reach and they’re making memories with someone else. That’s a much more difficult kind of grief.”

Stasa has worked several prestigious internships, including one in the United States Senate, in which her duties included a briefing at the White House.

At U-M, Stasa was equipped with the resilience, adaptability, and efficiency of a young trauma survivor, and filled her time accordingly. She collaborated with the Program on Intergroup Relations and won multiple university honors for academic achievement by her senior year. She landed several prestigious internships, including one in the United States Senate and another in the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Though her professional career was ramping up and she was beginning to heal and discover her own power, she continued to feel isolated in her success. Outsiders, she wrote in a blog post, thought she had “made it,” like she had “written the happy ending of a must-read novel.” They never stopped to consider the “pain, grief, loss, and loneliness that comes with having ‘made it,’” and only focused on her “triumphs in the face of adversity.” 

“Making it” continues to be an evolution in Stasa’s life. Now a Master of Public Administration student at Western Michigan University, Stasa has ambitions to work in policy at the federal level after graduation. She has started trauma therapy for individuals with complex PTSD. And a few months ago, she looked down at her phone and was surprised to see a missed call from her estranged sibling, who had not been in contact for years. Panicking, she called them back, asking if something was wrong. “No,” they said. “I’m just in a fight with my parents right now, and I needed someone to talk to.” 

Flooded with relief, Stasa thought: My whole world. I was who they thought of when they were going through something hard. There’s a chance for us to feel like siblings again. It wasn’t “making it.” But it was a triumph.

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