Imagine then that one day some police officers and other adults show up to your home and separate you from your parents and your siblings. You are just a small child and you don’t really understand what is happening. All you know is that you are scared and have been taken from the only world you know. You may have been abused and neglected, but as a small child, you didn’t know it could...

Motivational Speaker and Trainer Derek Clark recently delivered inspiring keynotes for the World Foster Care/Child Welfare Conference (30 countries represented), Future Business Leaders of America and Phi Beta Lambda Conference,  National Federal Bureau of Prisons Conference, National Foster Parent Conference, Dept. of Mental Health,  Dept. of Education, Children’s Institute, Canadian Child Welfare...

As a child, I, Derek Clark, was “labeled and misdiagnosed” in almost every psychological evaluation in existence. As a helpless child, I was nearly institutionalized due to severe erratic behavioral problems and violent tendencies. Having suffered brutal child abuse and abandonment, I was prone to severe anxiety, distress and lashing out in anger. At 6 years old, I was diagnosed as mentally handicapped...

“This is the true story of my life… A life in which abuse, loneliness, and dark nights of despair rattled the very bones of my body, drained the tears of my spirit, shattered my mind into a million fragments, and left me for awhile plodding through life as an empty shell, a lost and helpless soul. I have breathed the air of the unloved, and suffered deep psychological and spiritual wounds...