Bea, 20 years old, VA | 5 DAYS WAITING

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Bea remembers everyone’s order, their name, and how their week is going. As a barista at a neighborhood coffee shop, she has a way of making regulars feel like they’ve walked into a room where they are expected, and some of them have stopped by just to talk to her. Bea learned to read people’s moods because she had to. After being removed from her home as a child, she moved through one placement after another, always watching, always adapting, always trying to make herself easy to keep. She became the kind of person who puts everyone else first. Somewhere along the way, she rarely allowed herself to be cared for, and softness became a luxury she couldn’t afford. Bea works long hours while taking classes toward a counseling degree. She dreams of becoming a therapist who sits with young people in foster care and says the words she needed to hear: you are not too much, and you are worth the time. She is warm, patient, and brave, and she is finally learning that she deserves some tenderness too.

Bea works while taking counseling classes, and after a double shift on her feet and a night of studying, what she wants most is to feel wrapped up and safe. A plush bathrobe would give her a soft, warm hug at the end of every exhausting day, a signal to her body and mind that it is finally time to rest. She spends so much energy caring for others, and this would be a simple, gentle way for her to care for herself. Slipping into something thick, cozy, and entirely her own is a quiet way of telling her she has done enough for today.