Don’t sugarcoat this success story

He isn’t looking for rainbows and ponies. Nothing sugarcoated. No Hallmark card with messages like “Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.”

I can’t help it. When I hear an inspiring story like John Paul Horn’s, I want to sugarcoat it, whitewash it and place it in a picture frame Thomas Kinkade might have chosen.

Tell me I’m wrong: The 34-year-old Horn, who goes by J.P., lived in 18 different foster homes from ages 8 to 18. His mom had substance abuse problems and his dad was MIA.

It wasn’t so much Horn wondered where his next meal was coming from but with whom he would be eating and what address would be on the mailbox.

“There is no predicting what the future may hold for him, but I will always remember him as my most unique student,” wrote Helen Venosdel, who taught Horn at Earl Warren Junior High School. Venosdel was on point about her student’s promise. Horn graduated from Stockdale High School (he’d already made an appearance on the “Dr. Phil” show talking about foster care), became a passionate advocate for foster teens, lobbied in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., earned his bachelor’s from Cal State Bakersfield, a master’s from the University of Iowa, was awarded a PH.D. in sociology from Boston University and was recently hired as a professor at Cal State East Bay.

Sounds pretty good to me. TACKLING TRAUMA

“Nobody has awesome moments for 16 years in a row,” Horn said.

Venosdel saw the edges, but she and her fellow teachers focused on his potential rather than the wreckage of a life lived in the system.

“As he entered the classroom door, he announced loudly to everyone, ‘I have anger management issues. I am in foster care. I’ve read most everything you are going to teach this year,’” Venosdel recalled.

This was the kid who would arrive at school wearing his backpack on his head, give himself a haircut with school scissors and announce he had no intention of participating that day. He was an arrow looking for a target. Horn was also street-smart, book-smart and driven to succeed.

None of it was easy, however, not today and probably not tomorrow either. Horn has crashed and burned at every stage, gotten up and dusted himself off only to do it again. He has lived to tell about it and made his challenges into his life’s work in order to help kids like himself who have gone through the foster care system.

After graduating from CSUB, Horn struck out on his own and called his efforts “a miserable failure.” “I didn’t have a job and I didn’t know how to live with people.”

Horn was fired from an internship with the House Ways and Means Committee in Washington for refusing to do something he considered unethical. He also had a serious relationship that ended badly and struggled to make friends. He felt isolated and had no idea how to integrate into society.

Turns out, Horn has residual trauma based in abandonment.

“In group homes, hard conversations always happen before getting abandoned,” Horn said.

Critiques in school (academia is not short on rejection) caused an intense response because he was reexperiencing the trauma again.

“Trauma is an awful beast because you have to accept it to work through it,” Horn said. “You have to be strong enough to accept something that is messy and stigmatizing.” WORK AND PLAY

Help came from an “amazing” counselor in the university counseling service in Iowa and before that his “adopted” mom, who he met through a friend he made in his senior year of high school. (“They are still an important part of my life,” Horn said of his friend’s family. “I stay with them whenever I come home to Bakersfield, call them when I’m not feeling great and call them when I’m celebrating.”)

Work has included teaching classes in ethics for social work, child welfare policy and organization, and community practice at Boston University for the last three years, but Horn also mentors former foster care youth and is working on a startup project to help connect them to graduate education. MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Sometimes, good things start with a teacher or teachers.

Venosdel and the staff at Warren Junior High gave Horn a special pass when life was overwhelming, provided him with books that transported him to other places, visited him at juvenile hall and kept in touch with him after he left junior high.

“Our proudest moment came as we sat in the stands and cried as he graduated from Stockdale High School,” Venosdel said.

Horn wants to keep it real because he thinks his story can be of more service to people if it doesn’t “sound too fantastical and reflects the difficult transition from foster care to adulthood.”

If Horn won’t say it, we will. Most people earn (and keep earning) their stripes. Adversity, while not fun, has proved a worthy polish.