Fostering Strength 2022 – Janiva Magness

On May 19, 2022, the Junior League of Cedar Rapids hosted the 8th Fostering Strength event at the Doubletree Hotel downtown Cedar Rapids, featuring a keynote address from Janiva Magness.

Janiva Magness’ music success stands as just one facet of her miraculous, nearly unbelievable, life-story. In Weeds Like Us, readers discover the many difficult battles Magness fought before her music career blossomed. She talks about how she lost both parents to suicide as a child and was placed in a dozen foster homes. How her childhood traversed violence, bullying, incest, addiction and alcoholism, rape, clinical depression, and the death of her parents. “By the time I was a 14-year-old runaway,” Magness admits, “I felt in many ways not only a prisoner of my past, but hypnotized by it.”

 

Past Fostering Strength Events:

2013: Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of Language of Flowers and founder of Camellia Network

2014: Leigh Anne Tuohy, the mom featured in The Blind Side movie

2015: Dr. Jennifer Arnold from TLC’s docu-drama The Little Couple

2016: Travis Lloyd, author of Overcoming Emotional Trauma

2017: Gigi Edwards Bryant, Texas Foster Care Alum and Speaker

2018: Charell Star, Foster Care Alum, Journalist and Media Personality

2019: Steve Pemberton, Business Leader, and author of A Change in the World