Breaking the cycle

At nine years old my sisters and I were taken away from our mother and placed into foster care for the fourth and final time.

When the police showed up at our house and told us to pack what we could into our trash bags, this was not new.

We knew the drill and the dreadful feeling that came with leaving what we were used to.

I think the two of them were just as comfortable in the chaos as I was.

We were comfortable with stealing dinner from the corner grocery store to eat and rummaging through the neighborhood dumpsters when we wore holes in our shoes.

We knew not to mention to school staff that our permission slips weren’t signed because mom hadn’t been home in days, and we didn’t have the money to go on field trips anyway.

We knew which alleyways were safe to travel at night and to immediately turn and walk the other way when Cecil, the neighborhood crackhead was in sight.

I knew the smell of dirty clothes and what head lice and bed bugs bites looked like.

I knew that when I smelled alcohol on a man’s breathe that no good would come of it but if the smell was coming from mom, she was less likely to beat up on my sisters.

I also became very familiar with the look on her face when she was not herself anymore, that was my cue to hide.

I was comfortable in the neglectful environment that I was created in.

It was the shame and confusion that was felt when in foster care that I never was able to become comfortable with.

Ten different foster homes before I was ten.

Ten different families.

Ten different sets of rules with each home.

Usually, a new school with a new set of classmates that would, no doubt, be assholes because I was different.

Ten different sets of expectations.

Ten different occasions of rejection.

No matter how hard I tried, I was never good enough to be kept in a home for long.

I found comfort in packing my trash bag and moving on.

At ten years old, after my mother signed her parental rights over to the state of Oklahoma, I met a very successful businessman and his beautiful wife who was a special education teacher at a local school while attending a “waiting child” event for children who were eligible for adoption. They were a very well-off couple who had adopted a set of siblings previously and had a child of their own. They were a very affluent family who owned a beautiful home in Country Club and carpooled to school every day.

And just like that, I became part of that family. It was early summer when I moved in. I spent the next three months pretending to be a mermaid in the swimming pool in the backyard and was mesmerized as I watched the maid come and clean the house twice weekly. I didn’t know that these things happened in real life. Before now I had to sneak into the crowded community pool and fistfight for a corner in the deep end and the only time our house was clean was if mom was on a weeklong bender.

I was in complete culture shock.

But the Taylor’s grew frustrated with me quickly, as I had no idea how to live the way they did. I would often get in trouble for turning on the water in the shower and sitting underneath it for thirty minutes rather than washing my hair or body. I would hide my dirty clothes when the maid came because the smell was comforting to me.

It reminded me of home.

My hair was always ratty and I refused to brush it because my sister had always done it for me.

I remember rounding the corner of the kitchen one day and hearing my new mother talking on the phone about how gross she felt to have me in her home and how she was at her wit’s end with me.

“I guess you can take the girl out of the ghetto, but can’t take the ghetto out of the girl”

I heard her say, with a heavy sigh and a slight giggle.

When my new family sat me down, shortly after moving to a new state and beginning the process of adoption and changing my name, to tell me that I would no longer be able to be in contact with my sisters, the only people who had consistently been in my life, because they were part of my old life that I shouldn’t revisit, my “rebellious” behavior began to reach an all-time high as I had very big emotions and no clue how to properly express them.

So, they decided they no longer wanted me. They discontinued the adoption process and sent me back to Oklahoma where I was placed in another foster home with my sisters.

Over the next seven years, the extreme mental and emotional abuse from my foster mother created severe self-esteem issues and introduced me to the hidden mental illness that my biological mother had gifted me.

Depression.

Anxiety.

Self-harm.

Eating disorders.

Co-dependency.

Suicidal ideations.

All wrapped up and packaged in the genetically inherited diagnosis of “Manic Depression”

I am, to this day convinced that the doctors are absolute quacks and it was simply a physical manifestation of the constant emotional stress and PTSD from the horrific emotional abuse I was suffering from at the hands of the woman the State Of Oklahoma Department Of Human Services had certified as a suitable foster parent.

At sixteen years old I found my way into the heart and home of a beautiful soul.

She helped me to develop the most basic transitional and independent living skills that were needed to survive. In her care I found a love for work and developed a fantastic work ethic, I learned to balance a checkbook, I learned how to drive a car, how to shop for and cook a meal. I learned how to properly clean a home and how to be a gracious host.

On my eighteenth birthday, I started my senior year of high school and aged out of the foster care system.

She sat me down and laid out all my options moving forward and encouraged me to sign myself back into foster care and finish my school year there, with her.

I graduated high school because she cared enough about me to tell me I was worth it and continued to give me a roof over my head and a table to study at.

I swear to you, she was the loudest person in the whole auditorium the day I walked across that stage, shook hands with my principal, and obtained my high school diploma.

Two weeks later I was packed and ready to move out into the world.

This time in boxes, not trash bags.

At nineteen years old I found myself pregnant with my first child and had no clue how to keep myself alive, I sure didn’t know how to keep another human alive.

For the next fifteen years of my life, I worked extremely hard in the most co-dependent of ways to build a life with the first man to show me a crumb of attention to which I equated to love. I wanted to be loved so badly that I buried all the parts of me that made him feel small. I buried them so deep that I forgot they existed. I became everything I swore I would never be.

I stole from my place of employment to feed my family.

I hovered over my children afraid to allow them to make mistakes and grow into their own personalities.

I let my own fear of failure dictate who I pushed my children to become.

I put on a fake smile for the world to see because I felt like I was failing miserably, and I didn’t want people to judge me in the way I was judging myself.

I allowed abuse.

I abused others.

I numbed my pain with poison that had no business being in my body.

I neglected myself.

I neglected my partner.

Somedays I neglected my children.

I lost every ounce of the sparkle I ever had to please others.

I was completely co-dependent.

I allowed myself to slip right back into the things I grew up in. The vicious cycle was playing out in my own life and I didn’t even realize it. In the few fleeting moments that I did look around me and think “What the fuck am I doing with my life?” didn’t last long as my fear of being alone would creep right up and remind me that we knew what to expect here and being comfortable with someone was much better than struggling alone.

Truth is, I hated myself. I hated life, and I had given every ounce of God-given sunshine away.

I fought myself for my life, daily.

I wanted to die.

I wanted to curl up in a hole and disappear, most days, for fifteen years straight.

At thirty-three years old I sat in the garage of the house I had worked so hard to make a home and listened to my other half tell me about how he was going to fuck another woman. I sat and listened as he told he told me he didn’t love me and that she was what he wanted. I sat and cried as the lie I built and forced myself to believe shattered into a million pieces and I still tried to cling to the hope that I was dreaming. I sat and tried to think of a way to keep things intact because the thought of living life as an individual was the scariest thing I could think to do.

The last two years have been one helluva journey.

Today, at thirty-five years old I stand tall and proud on my own.

I support myself and my kids because I had no choice but to believe that I could.

My home is a place of peace of tranquility, and I make it a habit to put boundaries around what I allow into it.

I speak kindly to myself and others, so I no longer allow others to speak to me in any other way.

My children are given space to grow freely into their own individuality and they feel safe to be able to explore themselves because I do everything I can to set that example.

In our home, we pray when we are scared, we apologize when we lose our shit and we ask for clarification when it is needed.

We give each other space to make mistakes and we help each other learn from them.

This is what breaking generational trauma looks like.

It is possible.

I promise you.

I wish I could give you a step-by-step guide to how the hell to get through realizing that everything you built your life around was not what YOU truly believe and letting it crumble.

I wish I could write you a to-do list on how to build yourself back up after you hit rock bottom.

I wish there were a “How to” that walks you through the phases of transformation.

I can sit here all day long and tell you that when your deepest fears come to the surface and all you want to shove them back down, crying is the quickest way to move through them because there comes a time that your soul will force you to deal with it.

I can tell you that you will get real comfortable hitting your knees and having those honest conversations with God because you are tired of fighting to stay alive and you’re ready to live.

I can tell you that mirror work is extremely uncomfortable at first, but eventually, if you look yourself deadass in the eyes and speak positivity into yourself long enough, it becomes a habit.

I can tell you that self-care and self-love are the foundation of learning to set firm boundaries and that boundaries will save you every single time.

I can tell you that once you learn to listen to yourself and learn to trust that you know the answer, making decisions for yourself will get a hell of a lot easier.

I can tell you all the things that work and don’t work for me.

But.. ultimately, you have to find your own voice and follow it.

Really, that is what the journey is about.

Finding yourself.

Unlearning who the world told you that you were, finding who you are at the core, falling in love with that you, and sharing your light with the world.

You were given the obstacles you were given with a purpose, and you were given the strength to overcome and lead by example with reason.

Remember that.

On your worst days.

When getting out of bed seems like the hardest thing to do.

Remember that God chose YOU. There is no mountain top that you can’t reach when you have him walking beside you.

Now.

Go be great.