Simply Neglect

Redemption Beyond Poverty and Foster Care

By: Lainie Hartley

Narrated by: Lainie Hartley

Three-year-old Lainie kicks and screams as she tightly grips the leg of her older sister, pleading to stay with her family as she’s surrendered to the foster care system. Lainie, a year later, is reunited with her family, only to live another five tumultuous years hungry, neglected, and desperate for love and attention. Houseless again, Lainie’s mother breaks her promise of forever when she gives her away again, this time, in a motel parking lot, never to live with her or her family again.

Plagued with trauma, and consumed by the effects of abandonment and shame, fifteen-year-old Lainie escapes her living situation, and embarks on a naive and lonesome journey that feels similar to her mother’s. Desperate for change, Lainie enters a transformative Christ-centered recovery program and months later, falls in love with Levi, a pillar of unyielding love, her rock in the storm.

Lainie naively believes marriage and motherhood will heal her childhood wounds. Instead, she is ravaged by the years of neglect from her mother, which fuels an insatiable desire to understand her past. Investigating her foster care file, she reads the words, “No abuse – Simply Neglect.” Lainie realizes the system meant to protect her, neglected her too.

Aware of the injustice affecting today’s foster children, and the urgent need for foster and adoptive homes, Levi and Lainie become licensed and open their home to several children, including their forever son through adoption. Lainie’s story is a testament to faith, forgiveness, and the resilience of the human spirit.

©2024 Lainie Hartley (P)2025 Lainie Hartley

A story of redemption against all odds

As I listened to Lainie Hartley read her memoir, I found myself near tears multiple times while also smiling often. Statistically, abandonment and neglect should have stolen her life, but hers is one that shines with beauty out of ashes. As an adoptee through foster care, I could relate to pieces of her story and I appreciated her honesty with the reader. Thank you, Lainie, for the emotional labor you spent to share this meaningful memoir with us.