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Carrying It Forward: A Reflective Companion Workbook for Dreamer’s Trash Bag
Carrying It A Reflective Companion Workbook for Dreamer's Trash Bag
A companion workbook to Dreamer's Trash Bag, James B. Smith's memoir of foster care, Ameslan identity, and the long work of becoming who he was always going to be.
Built around eleven themes drawn directly from the memoir, Carrying It Forward invites readers into the kind of slow, honest reflection these stories ask for but rarely make space for. It does not lecture. It does not diagnose. It does not assume the reader needs to be fixed. It simply sits down beside you and asks some questions worth answering.
Each theme opens with a piece of James's story — the trash bag handed to an eight-year-old with minutes to pack a life. Ameslan as a way of knowing the world through eyes and hands, and the classrooms that were never built to hold it. The family he tried to hold on to. The words that were used about him. The body that learned to read danger before his mind could name it. The brothers the system pulled apart. The faith that never made anything easier and kept finding him anyway. The family secrets that surfaced years later, and what a person actually needs when they do. The word dreamer, used to manage him, taken back. The house where someone signed WELCOME HOME and meant it.
And finally, the letter — the one the memoir ends on, and the one this workbook asks you to to the child you were, standing in the doorway on the day everything came apart.
Each theme offers questions to sit with, a private reflection prompt, and an activity that asks you to put something on paper that was previously only in your head. Most include one reader's response, so you can see what the work looks like in someone else's hands. There is no pace requirement — only the pace your life can hold.
This is the workbook James wished he'd the one that met him where he was instead of asking him to translate himself first.
For foster youth and the people who walk alongside them. For anyone carrying trauma, whatever its source — a hard childhood, a family secret, a label that stuck, dreams managed down to a size others could handle. For book clubs, classrooms, faith communities, agencies, trauma-informed programs, and anyone moving from a hard place toward a more hopeful one.
The trash bag does not get the final word. The final word is yours.
A companion workbook to Dreamer's Trash Bag, James B. Smith's memoir of foster care, Ameslan identity, and the long work of becoming who he was always going to be.
Built around eleven themes drawn directly from the memoir, Carrying It Forward invites readers into the kind of slow, honest reflection these stories ask for but rarely make space for. It does not lecture. It does not diagnose. It does not assume the reader needs to be fixed. It simply sits down beside you and asks some questions worth answering.
Each theme opens with a piece of James's story — the trash bag handed to an eight-year-old with minutes to pack a life. Ameslan as a way of knowing the world through eyes and hands, and the classrooms that were never built to hold it. The family he tried to hold on to. The words that were used about him. The body that learned to read danger before his mind could name it. The brothers the system pulled apart. The faith that never made anything easier and kept finding him anyway. The family secrets that surfaced years later, and what a person actually needs when they do. The word dreamer, used to manage him, taken back. The house where someone signed WELCOME HOME and meant it.
And finally, the letter — the one the memoir ends on, and the one this workbook asks you to to the child you were, standing in the doorway on the day everything came apart.
Each theme offers questions to sit with, a private reflection prompt, and an activity that asks you to put something on paper that was previously only in your head. Most include one reader's response, so you can see what the work looks like in someone else's hands. There is no pace requirement — only the pace your life can hold.
This is the workbook James wished he'd the one that met him where he was instead of asking him to translate himself first.
For foster youth and the people who walk alongside them. For anyone carrying trauma, whatever its source — a hard childhood, a family secret, a label that stuck, dreams managed down to a size others could handle. For book clubs, classrooms, faith communities, agencies, trauma-informed programs, and anyone moving from a hard place toward a more hopeful one.
The trash bag does not get the final word. The final word is yours.
94 pages, Paperback
Published July 29, 2026
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