This article provides a personal account of childhood loss and trauma. Using vignettes from her memoir, City of One, the author recounts the deaths of her father, grandfather, and mother and her subsequent placement into foster care. The writer, a psychiatrist, then reflects on these childhood events from the perspective of insights gained during a lengthy adult psychoanalysis. Childhood bereavement is discussed from the perspectives of attachment, development, and loyalty conflicts. The implications for helping children who are bereaved as a result of foster care placement are then described. Most adults are able to empathize with children who have lost a parent through death, whereas foster children's bereavement reactions, which exert a negative effect on the stability of placements, often go unnoticed.