Bella Villazon-Sanchez is ready to share her story.
It begins with a past that cannot be changed: She and her brother survived years of abuse, neglect and abandonment, Villazon-Sanchez recounted. By the time they were removed from their biological parents’ care, she said, they were malnourished, bruised, limping and “flinching at everything.”
She was just 8 years old. Today, she’s 18 and she just started her freshman year at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, where she plans to study psychology. Through years of hard work and her adoptive mother’s unwavering love – and with therapeutic support from Brightpoint – Villazon-Sanchez has learned to navigate her past trauma.
It still isn’t easy, but she’s learned to trust other people again – and to believe in her own future. Now, she wants to become an adoption therapist to help other kids who have endured similar pain and hardship.
“I want to be an example for kids that I went through some dark moments and I’m not letting it consume me,” Villazon-Sanchez said. “I want them to grow without their past defining who they are.”
Rylan, her brother, is 11 months younger. They were taken into foster care by their aunt and uncle, who adopted them both four years later in 2020. And though her aunt and uncle have since divorced, Hannah Sanchez, their aunt-turned-adoptive-mother, has continued to care for them both as their custodial parent, along with their younger brother, Cruz, who is 5.
So it’s complicated. And it hasn’t come easy. Through therapy, they strengthened their bond. What they have now is a home and a family by any definition.
Hannah is now simply mom – and a proud one at that.
“I’m just so proud of her,” said Hannah Sanchez. “Her hard work, her passion, her goals – that’s what have pushed her to do what she’s doing now. It’s easy to say, oh well, my life sucks. But she doesn’t want that.”
‘Trust the world again’
Bella and her brother Rylan were adopted during the pandemic, so they didn’t experience Adoption Day – a festive day in courthouses across the state when families adopting children are given priority and warm wishes. In some counties, all the kids receive teddy bears on Adoption Day.
Instead, their adoption occurred over a virtual call on a computer screen. They all dressed up to look nice anyway. It was, after all, a special day.
“It definitely meant something to me,” said Bella, who was 12 at the time. “That my home is permanent. That I’m always welcome here.”
Every adoption begins with a loss – that’s a common aphorism among those who work in the field. Beyond the trauma – which often includes neglect and sometimes abuse – and the loss of childhood, there’s also the termination of parental rights.
And though adoption can represent a hopeful new beginning, the post-adoption period is often difficult for parents and children, alike. That’s when Brightpoint’s Adoption Support & Preservation (ASAP) program can prove especially helpful in keeping families together. The program blends mental health therapy with mentoring, working with the whole family to positively reinforce progress and help build trusting relationships.
When Villazon-Sanchez began working with Brightpoint therapist Katie Merlock in 2023, at age 14, she was ready to dive into trauma therapy. But it took a while for her to believe that Merlock wouldn’t leave or otherwise break her fragile trust.
“I had a mask on when I met her,” Villazon-Sanchez recalled.
From Merlock’s perspective: “She was ready to talk about her trauma. But it was more like, ‘Are you going to stick around? Or are you going to just disappear?’”
Merlock stuck around. Through working with Merlock, Villazon-Sanchez learned more about how her trauma affected her mental health and her relationships with other people, including her adoptive parents.
“For her to be able to accept that it wasn’t her fault took a long time,” Merlock said.
And then entered Jamie Summers, a respite outreach worker for Brightpoint, who provides positive mentorship to children and youth through social and sometimes educational activities, while also giving caregivers a needed break.
Merlock and Summers work in close partnership with each other – and they present a useful contrast in approach. Summers is “the cool aunt” of the duo – fun, outgoing, casual and ready to hit the nail salon or get a boba tea. Merlock, by contrast, is quieter and more introverted by nature, and it’s her job to untangle complex trauma through difficult conversations.
Through her relationships with them, Villazon-Sanchez has flourished, she said.
“Jamie with the social aspect and Katie with the emotional aspect – they really helped me a lot with looking at the future and how I can help people rather than feeling sorry for myself in the present,” she said “I want to do the exact same thing they do.”
Importantly, the program treats the whole family – not just the child – by building a shared language and cultivating trust, said Melinda Squires, clinical supervisor who oversees the ASAP program out of Brightpoint’s Herrin office.
“That’s essentially how we heal relational trauma,” Squires said. “Just through relationships, the context of relationships. And that helps them kind of learn that they can trust the world again.”
Starting anew
On a recent late summer morning, just before Villazon-Sanchez left for college, a slow cooker of chili simmered on the kitchen counter, fragrant spices filling the air. Throughout the house, there were family photos, board games and bouquets of Lego flowers lovingly assembled.
Hannah Sanchez sat at the dining room table, reflecting on their life together as a family. She paused intermittently to tell the three kids to stop rough-housing.
As with many kinship caregivers, Sanchez and her ex-husband weren’t planning to become foster parents. They received a call. They had room in their home. They stepped up. Sanchez was only 25 at the time.
“There was no not taking care of them,” Sanchez said. “I’ve been in mom mode ever since.”
Last November, Bella Villazon-Sanchez finally got her Adoption Day event. She tagged along with Summers to the local courthouse to help promote Brightpoint’s adoption therapy services. Bella handed out teddy bears to children being adopted.
It was, she said, the highlight of her year.
“I will cherish it forever,” she said.
“They would light up and be like, yay, teddy bears!” she said. “And I knelt down to them and said: ‘You’re going to have the best time with your new family. You’re going to grow up and this is all going to be a memory. And you’re going to have the best life you can possibly have.’”
The goal of Brightpoint’s ASAP program isn’t for all of the kids to go to college and earn degrees, Squires said. The mission is about getting them to believe in themselves, to have hope and healthy relationships.
Asked what it means to them that Bella wants to do similar work helping kids, both Merlock and Summers fought back tears.
“It’s everything,” Summers said. “In this work, you don’t always know that you’re making a difference.”
Bella Villazon-Sanchez is ready to share her story, but she’s still in the process of writing it.
As she finds her way through her first year of college and beyond, she’ll have a whole team of people back home rooting mightily for her success – her mom and brothers, her grandparents next door, and her friends at Brightpoint, among others. She’ll also meet new people who know nothing about what she’s been through.
The past is the past.
The last words are hers.
“There’s a whole world out there,” Bella said. “I just need to explore it on my own and, you know, I’ll change as I go. And I’m not afraid of that anymore. I’m not afraid of the future.”