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Judy Wright

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

https://justholdher.com

Genre

Memoir, Biography, Nonfiction

Member Since

March 2026

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/judy-wright

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Judy Wright is a foster mother and caregiver whose life has been shaped by the demanding, ordinary work of staying.

She met her husband, John, through aviation. He was a flight instructor, a Vietnam veteran, and later a corporate pilot whose career took him around the world. What bound them most deeply, from the beginning of their marriage, was a shared conviction that children mattered not abstractly, but concretely, in the daily decisions of a household. Over thirty-seven years of marriage, that conviction became the center of their life together.

They raised four children while navigating years of relocations tied to John’s flying career. When their youngest was sixteen and still in high school, Judy and John made the decision to begin fos Judy Wright is a foster mother and caregiver whose life has been shaped by the demanding, ordinary work of staying.

She met her husband, John, through aviation. He was a flight instructor, a Vietnam veteran, and later a corporate pilot whose career took him around the world. What bound them most deeply, from the beginning of their marriage, was a shared conviction that children mattered not abstractly, but concretely, in the daily decisions of a household. Over thirty-seven years of marriage, that conviction became the center of their life together.

They raised four children while navigating years of relocations tied to John’s flying career. When their youngest was sixteen and still in high school, Judy and John made the decision to begin fostering. What started as short-term adoption placements grew into long-term work inside Michigan’s foster care system, caring for infants and toddlers whose lives had already been marked by instability, medical trauma, and loss. Over twelve years, they fostered fifty-five children, many of them medically fragile.

Their home became a place of readiness. Bins were labeled by size and season. Bassinets were carried up from the basement in the middle of the night. Doctor visits, parent visits, and court hearings were woven into daily routines. Judy learned to advocate inside systems that often failed to see children clearly, asking the same questions again and again, showing up when others did not, and loving without guarantees.

In 2012, Judy and John were recognized as Oakland County Foster Parents of the Year by the Oakland County Board of Commissioners, receiving the Honorable Joan E. Young Award for Commitment to Children through the county’s Circle of Light recognition. That same year, they were also named Michigan’s Foster Parents of the Year by the Michigan Supreme Court. Their work helped inspire the John and Judy Wright Scholarship for Foster Children (opens in new tab), established in collaboration with the Ennis Center for Children to support foster youth pursuing higher education.

That pattern of showing up had shaped Judy’s life long before fostering began. During the years she was raising her own children, she was the parent who stayed late, said yes, and did the behind-the-scenes work that keeps school communities running, especially in music and arts programs. That commitment later inspired the Judy Wright Volunteer of the Year Award at Muskego High School, presented by the school’s music parent community to honor outstanding parental and community support.

After John’s death, Judy turned to writing, not to explain foster care or defend it, but to bear witness to what it costs and what it gives. Her debut memoir, Just Hold Her, is drawn from the spiral notebooks she kept during a two-year vigil caring for a medically fragile infant. It is not a story about saving. It is a story about staying, about the limits of authority when lived care says otherwise, and about the quiet labor that keeps a child alive long enough for anything else to be possible.

Her essay “They Asked Me To Hold Her Until She Died. Today, She Turns 17.” appeared in HuffPost Personal in October 2026.

Judy speaks to foster care, medical, and caregiving communities about presence, caregiving, and the courage required to remain available. She lives with the conviction that while children may not remember every face that held them, they remember what it felt like to be held. ...more

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Average rating: 4.95 · 20 ratings · 9 reviews · 1 distinct work • Similar authors

Just Hold Her: A Foster Mother's Memoir of Medicine, Caregiving, and the Long Nights Together

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