“Your story is yours to reclaim. Whether you’re seeking records, reconnection, or simply clarity, our Story Guides walk beside you—not to shape your narrative, but to help you access what’s always been yours.”
🛤️ What Is a Story Guide?
A Story Guide is not a caseworker, therapist or a documenter. They’re a collaborative navigator—trained to:
- Help fosters identify what they want to recover (foster care records, photos, DNA results, medical files, connections, etc.)
- Cut through bureaucratic red tape and silence
- Advocate for access to personal history with persistence and care
- Hold space for emotional complexity and choice in the process
📝 How to Begin
Fosters enter the program by: Setting the pace—whether it’s one document at a time or a full-scale search.
🧭 Guiding Principles
- You lead. We follow your priorities, your timeline, your voice.
- No one-size-fits-all. There’s no template or final product unless you want one.
- Restoration over documentation. This is about reclaiming—not recording—your truth.
- Emotional safety matters. Story Guides are trained in trauma-informed support and advocacy.
Across Minnesota, young people who’ve experienced foster care have told us: the systems meant to help often feel impersonal, rigid, or incomplete. We believe your story deserves more than a file or a form—it deserves care, clarity, and choice.
That’s why we’re offering a new way in.
When you sign up, you’ll be paired with a Story Guide—someone who walks beside you as you reclaim what’s yours. Whether you’re searching for foster care records, medical files, DNA results, or long-lost relatives, your Story Guide helps cut through red tape and silence to access the truth.
This isn’t about creating a keepsake. It’s about restoring what was taken. It’s about knowing who you are, where you’ve been, and who you’re connected to.
🛠️ What You Can Expect
- A trauma-informed, you-led process
- Support navigating bureaucracy and accessing records
- Space to decide what you want to find—and what you don’t
- Optional tools for storytelling, memory mapping, or visual keepsakes, including Lifebook’s
🧭 How to Begin
You can sign up to work with a Story Guide anytime. No deadlines. No pressure. Just a quiet invitation to begin when you’re ready.
Filling out a short intake form that asks:
- What are you hoping to find or reclaim?
- What barriers have you faced?
- How do you want to be supported?
I think completing a Lifebook, “could be a big help for you if there’s questions you may have about yourself and your history.
20-year-old in MN Foster Care
I felt heard.
I felt comfortable right away.
Went above and beyond.
“Coleman, 20, of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, craves details that remain elusive about her heritage, extended family, medical history and photos of her classmates and favorite pets. “We need this,” she said of foster children like herself who lack personal archives. “This would’ve helped me a long time ago.”
From a recent Imprint Article written about Power of Story
Power of Story 