The “Cliff-notes” Version of My Life:
(If you want to read my whole story, you’ll have to buy my book!)
Introduction:
This is the very first time I have written my story down in a public forum. Whenever I speak about my childhood, the fear chokes me up, and I’m stuck in a strange place where I am for the most part, terrified to speak.
I’m afraid of three things: I’m afraid of retribution, mostly (from my parents, or foster mother). There is also a fear of not being believed, which happens a lot. Lastly, there is a fear of being assumed to be crazy. I mean, how could so many bad things happen to one person in a period of three decades?
I would like to take a second and answer that question. I believe, earnestly, that so many bad things happened in my lifetime because so many good things were going to happen as a result of those difficulties. This blog is a place to highlight these amazing, incredibly things, as well as the hard, hurtful things as well. Had I to do it all over again, while I wish some things would have been different, I am eternally grateful for the good things in my life, and I try to make the bad things — the harder times — count for something brilliant. Hopefully my book will be the beginning of healing for a lot of people.
Chapter One: The Sad and Early Days
I was born in the eighties. My father was an up-and-coming businessman in a small town, and my mother worked in a small office locally. My younger brother was born two years after I was born, and when I was four (and my younger brother was two) my mother left, leaving us with our father, who quickly remarried. From that point on, things went downhill: I was always misunderstood, and I remember being quite sad during these years. Things intensified when my stepsister was born, and a few years later, my parents elected to place me in a foster home.
It was an easy out for them, I know this much. I’m sure they would say that they were out of options (really?) and that I was trouble. I don’t claim to have been a perfect child, but I was, nonetheless, just a child. The fact that they placed me in the most abusive foster home imaginable, under the guise of “therapy”, and that my foster father would later wind up in federal prison for those abuses (and his wife would get away with practically murder as he took the fall), simply validates my claims. We lived in a house where we were deprived of food, locked in closets, and subjected to abusive “treatments” that our foster mother — whom, by the way, barely finished high school, so she could not possibly have any formal training in the areas of children with difficulties or disabilities — tormented us with. We were abused physically, sexually, emotionally, and most notably psychologically. The impact of this abuse haunts me to this very day. The nightmares haunt me to this very day.
My parents might have known this was going on if (a) they decided to occasionally check on me (which they did not), or if (b) they read the letters I would write to them. See, we were not allowed to leave the house. We lived 45 minutes away from the nearest town, over a mile away from the neighbors’ house, in the mountains of Northern California. We were not allowed to attend school, and we had no contact with the outside world. Our education was largely taking scriptures from the Bible out of context, and using said scripture to abuse us. There were always 15 or 16 children in this home, a total of 88 children transferred through this home, many were private placements like myself — kids that nobody wanted, either we were more trouble than we were worth, or we had been adoptions that resulted in adoption-buyers-remorse. Since our abuse was so constant, our foster mother was constantly afraid of one of us talking to the wrong person, and so she limited our exposure to outsiders. Our weekly outing was church, and at church everyone knew about us before we got there. My attempts at telling the truth were ignored, or worse, tattled on back to our foster parents. Nobody believed us. Even on church-related outings, I would try to tell someone what was happening at our home, and we were ignored. In my mind, those who ignored me are almost as guilty as those who physically tortured me. I was determined to get away, so every few days I would steal an envelope, a stamp, and I would write a letter to my parents. In these letters I begged them to come and save me, to transfer me anywhere else — somewhere where I could at least attend school. I specifically listed the circumstances that I was living in.
But those letters must have been too painful for them. They opened the first 2, maybe 3, then they stopped opening them. They put them in a pile, in a plastic bag, unsure what to do with them. They never read them, and instead, they gave them back to my foster mother, who was delighted to find that (a) they hadn’t written my words, and (b) they had been stupid enough to bring them back to her — what could have been great evidence against her — and (c) that she had evidence that I had been stealing from her, and sneaking letters in the mail. The punishments for this went on for the rest of my time there. At one point I owed her 55,000 pushups, and I spent 12+ hours a day in the push-up position for three months (how long it took me to reasonably accomplish most of them – admittedly I skipped a lot of numbers when our foster mother was out of earshot. Call me a rebel.
There was one time my parents came to “visit.” But it wasn’t much of a visit at all. First they showed up one month to drop off my brother, as they didn’t want him, either. Six months later, they could not afford both of us, so they made me — at 16 — choose which of us was to stay at Pat’s, and which of us would go home. Now I would be wrong to say life at home was healthy, happy, and not abusive: but it was by far heaven compared to the foster hell we lived in. It took me about ten seconds to make my decision: the decision to send my baby brother back to them, so that he wouldn’t be abused as badly by our foster family, but in doing so, I would continue to endure the torment that had become my life for 5 years. It was — absolutely — the biggest sacrifice I’ve ever made in my whole entire life. As my parents left, my step-mother ran out to the car, and handed my foster mother a sack full of letters, handwritten and mailed by my thieving hand. “Make sure she stops sending us these,” she instructed my foster mother.
The punishments I received for sneaking off several letters a month during the five years leading up to this meeting are too gruesome and horrific to list here. Lets just say it was not pretty, and the second I turned 17, I started looking for a way out.
Chapter 2: Early Adulthood – A Learning Place
Two months before my 18th birthday, I discovered it. I found someone who believed me, a Navy recruiter, who was either really desperate for recruits, or just an angel in a Navy Uniform (I believe the later). He helped me enlist in the Navy despite the fact I had never attended high school — I never even finished middle school! Desperate to leave, I took any job possible, and despite my foster mothers’ objections and fighting the process (she wanted to continue getting paid for having me in her custody), I left for the Navy a few weeks later.
Boot camp was a lot of fun. It was one of the best things that I could have ever done. I was blessed with a team of Recruit Division Commanders who believed in me, and saw something in me that I didn’t even know existed. I was convinced that there was something wrong with me, that is why nobody loved me. They not only proved that wrong, they placed me in a leadership position in our division. I argued this, and told them I didn’t feel brave or strong enough. At this point, I was so brainwashed by my foster parents that I didn’t know that what I had actually endured was years of horrible abuse that I did not deserve.
I invited my parents as well as my foster parents to boot camp, but during my 13 weeks at boot camp, someone finally listened to one of the little girls, and the police got involved with my old foster home. Our foster father went to federal prison, but our foster mother completely got away with everything — she let him take the fall and claimed absolutely no knowledge of the abuse that was ongoing in her home. My father and step-mother did not show up for my boot camp graduation, although they told me that they were going to attend. I still am unsure why this is. I sent my foster mother the appropriate funding ($800) to fly to my graduation: she used the funds to fly her and her new boyfriend to the northeast.
It was after boot camp I met my first, best, and only true friend. And yes, I married him a few months later. He was the first person to do the math on my foster parents, and realized that my foster mother and father were making between $25,000 and $32,000 dollars a month between all the different private placement kids and the few foster kids. He was the first one to point out to me that I wasn’t crazy. He was the first to tell me that my parents complaints of me was that of *every* parents complaints. And that what my parents had done — from my mother’s leaving at four, to my father’s sending me to my foster home, all of it was horrible, terrible, and inexcusable.
He was the first person to see that I had value in my whole entire life.
We were stationed in Japan, and we moved there once we both had finished our training. I was very unprepared for adult life, mostly because I had never been allowed to be a child. I was unprepared for adult interactions, and consequently landed myself in countless bad situations that have haunted me ever since. One such situation resulted in my rape by a senior officer, and the consequent cover-up by the captain of our ship. The resulting threats and harassment had me terrified for my life and my safety, both of me and my husband, so I didn’t tell anyone. Once the captain threw the rape kit overboard, I knew I had lost. I quit fighting, and stopped talking. I started trying to do whatever I could to get transferred away from this command. Months later when I found out I was pregnant I was more than relieved.
Chapter 3: The birth of and growth of our Angel ❤
Our son was born to two active duty military service members, in a Japanese birthing center, via a crazy emergency c-section (I do not recommend having a c-section in Japan!). When he was 3 months old I asked the navy if I could be discharged honorably due to parenthood, and that was granted. This was a good thing because he had a rough first and second year, requiring numerous surgeries on his ears. We were relieved when we were stationed back in the US when he was 2. It was about this time we began to notice that our son was not developing as quickly as the other children on base, but we initially attributed that to his poor health. We moved back to the states, and we were just getting settled in Gulfport, Mississippi, when Hurricane Katrina came through, and completely wiped us out, not just once, but twice. The military base shut down, and we were relocated to Mayport Naval Station, In Jacksonville, Florida.
In Jacksonville, my husband and I spent some time apart. During this time I attended nursing school and worked two jobs, but I was never too far from him. He was always my first call when I needed rescuing, which was more often than not. It was here in Jacksonville, during nursing school, when I was first diagnosed with and treated for Diffuse-B-Cell Non-Hodgkins’ Lymphoma, then I was in remission. I graduated nursing school, top of my class, in the 3rd most difficult nursing school in the country. Pretty impressive for a person whom had never graduated from middle nor high school and to this day does not even have a GED! I took a job about an hour away, and started my dream job in an ICU at the largest trauma center in the area.
Chapter 4: Living Life on Hospice
After I had been working for 18 months, the cancer came back, and a major surgery was done. I had most of my stomach and intestines operated on, and when I woke up from that surgery, I was unable to tolerate anything by mouth — anything. Within weeks, I was on a feeding tube. Within months, I was on hospice. I was in heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, and digestive failure. By the time I got to Mayo Clinic, I was 87 lbs. Mayo Clinic was able to operate and thankfully make it so I was able to tolerate the tube feeds, and the past few years has been focused on physical therapy, and slowly getting stronger, having survived — literally — the impossible. I am just now beginning to heal.
It is my husband and my son that has carried me through this ordeal to date. They are both my heroes. My husband, who didn’t have to take care of me as we were apart when I got ill, begged the Navy for orders to be near me, and then insisted on taking care of me even when I was being difficult, and my son — who has high functioning autism — was instrumental in taking care of me while I was sick. They were tender and kind, supportive and loving. My ASD son memorized all my medications, and knew what they were for, the correct doses and times. He managed my IV nutrition and my drips, and was unbelievably strong. My husband worked 80 plus hour weeks, and then came home and took care of me all night. I don’t think he slept a full night’s rest for the three years while I was the sickest.
When I initially was placed on hospice, I reached out to my biological family, of whom I didn’t have that great of a relationship. I knew that I was dying and I wanted to give them a chance to have some closure and not feel terribly guilty. They were kind and supportive — nice, even, taking my phone calls regularly — until Mayo Clinic fixed me. Then they disappeared back into the woodwork. It was as if they were disappointed that I didn’t die.
Chapter 5: Beating the Odds Today
Today I continue to get stronger, to continue to beat the odds, and I’m ready to share my story with the world. I have a unique opportunity here that most people don’t get: a second chance, a second opportunity, a second shot at life. All of these trials, heart breaks, and heart aches have made me a better person. In fact, in a way, my parent’s decisions actually saved my life.
See, when my son was born, I was terrified that I would be like my parents, that I would abandon him as they (all) had abandoned me. On the day when I held him and looked into his tiny little face, I whispered a promise to him: “I will never leave you.” While I was on hospice, and suffering beyond words, at one point my bones were literally breaking with each inspiration and expiration, the pain and suffering are beyond description, I had the means to euthanize myself, and the permission to do so. So many times I tried to do this, but in my mind, I would go back to that promise in my mind, and I could not do it. Then, my heart would go into a lethal heart rhythm, and in my mind, as the ER doctors coded me over and over again I would see my son’s face, and I knew that I couldn’t leave him just yet. So I didn’t die. I survived over two years on less than 100 calories/day. Medically speaking, as a nurse, I will tell you that is impossible.
But apparently, when a mother’s love is involved, there is no such thing as impossible.
I share this story with you apprehensively. There are people that would not want this story published, myself included. It scares me to push publish on this, but by pushing “publish” I am sending away all the nightmares and negativity and embracing the good in my life.
“Nobody ever said life was going to be easy: they just said it would be worth it.
The End… Or the Beginning. You decide!
Afterlife & Death: My Story of Survivorship 