Tess McCleary: The Child They Couldn’t Break
Beyond The Story With Andrea
Stories of Resilience
Written by Andrea Benitez
THE CHILD THEY COULDN’T BREAK
Written by Andrea Benitez
There are childhoods remembered through birthday parties, family dinners and the comfort of knowing someone will be there when morning comes.
Tess McCleary remembers something different.
She remembers wanting what every child should be able to expect: to feel safe, loved and wanted. She wanted consistency. She wanted an adult who meant what they said, someone who stayed, someone who listened.
Instead, Tess learned responsibility far too young. When her mother was struggling with alcohol or drugs, Tess cared for her baby brother, feeding him, changing him and bringing him into her room where she knew he would be safe. She dressed her younger sister, fixed her hair and made sure the other children had food.
In her own words:
“I was a child taking care of children.”
When Survival Becomes Normal
Foster care brought another kind of uncertainty.
Tess describes it as feeling as though your life belongs to everyone except you. Adults hold meetings, paperwork moves from place to place, and decisions are made about where you will live and what is best for you, sometimes while you are standing right there, unheard.
Eventually, she learned not to become too comfortable anywhere because she never knew how long anything would last.
By approximately sixteen, Tess was homeless on and off. At times, there was no five-year plan or dream for the future. The question was much more immediate:
Where am I going to sleep tonight?
Yet some of the people Tess remembers most were not people with impressive titles. They were ordinary human beings who chose to notice her.
An IHOP manager quietly gave her bus passes, food tickets and once fifty dollars. While Tess was sleeping outside during an Indianapolis winter, someone at Goodwill helped her obtain clothing.
They may have considered their actions small.
Tess remembers them for the rest of her life.
Her story reminds us that changing someone's life does not always require a grand gesture. Sometimes it is a meal. A coat. A bus pass.
Sometimes it is simply seeing the human being everyone else has stopped seeing.
The Woman They Couldn’t Define
Survival did not disappear overnight.
Tess carried pieces of those experiences into adulthood. She learned to read rooms, anticipate danger and depend heavily upon herself. But some of those survival skills eventually became strengths: resourcefulness, determination, protectiveness and an ability to notice people others overlook.
Her life would include further exploitation and abuse before freedom gradually became something she could build for herself. Tess does not describe one dramatic moment when surviving suddenly became living.
Instead, it happened little by little—through independence, learning, relationships and eventually creating a family of her own.
She describes it beautifully:
“Maybe I just kept building enough life around it that survival was no longer the biggest thing in the room.”
Today, Tess is the founder of Tereo AI Technologies, but when I asked what she is proudest of, she did not name her company or an invention.
She named her family.
She is proud that after everything she endured, she can still love people.
That may be one of the greatest victories in her entire story.
Hardship can make a person hard. Tess chose another path.
Turning Pain Into Purpose
Tess has also taken what she learned through lived experience and turned it toward children who may be experiencing what she once did.
Through Tereo AI Technologies, she is developing COMPASS, a project inspired directly by her foster-care experience. Its purpose is to help the adults surrounding a child recognize meaningful changes and communicate more effectively while keeping the child—not paperwork, not bureaucracy, not the system—at the center.
For Tess, one principle matters deeply:
Foster children need to be believed.
Behavior has a story behind it. The angry child may be terrified. The child who hoards food may remember hunger. The child who refuses to attach may have learned that people leave.
Instead of asking:
“What’s wrong with this child?”
Tess challenges adults to ask:
“What happened to this child, and what does this child need from us now?”
That is the heart behind COMPASS. Technology should never replace listening to children. It should help adults listen better.
What She Would Tell Little Tess
I asked Tess what she would say if she could sit beside the little girl she once was.
She would never tell that child her suffering was necessary. The people who hurt her do not deserve credit for the woman she became.
Instead, she would sit beside her and say:
“You’re going to make it.”
And then perhaps the most beautiful words in her questionnaire:
“You have no idea who is waiting for you in your future. Hold on long enough to meet them.”
To the Child Reading This
Tess has another message for the foster child who may someday find this story during one of the loneliest nights of their life.
You are allowed to be sad.
You are allowed to hurt.
You are allowed to wonder why.
But do not confuse what someone did to you with who you are.
The shame created by another person's actions does not belong to the child who endured them. Being overlooked does not make you invisible. Being abandoned does not make you unworthy of love. And having your belongings placed into a garbage bag does not make you disposable.
There are people you have not met yet.
There are places where you have not yet felt safe.
There are friends who may become family, dreams you have not discovered and a future version of yourself you have not had the opportunity to meet.
Tess knows because she once was that child.
Today, she has built a family, a future and a purpose that reaches back toward the children coming behind her.
Her beginning did not get to write her ending.
They wounded the child. They challenged her. But they did not get to define the woman.
They couldn’t break her.
Beyond The Story With Andrea celebrates the human being beyond the circumstances the courage to survive, the strength to rebuild and the humanity that remains.
We Celebrate Humanity.
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