157: What if you couldn't tell anyone? 51:05

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The idea that they had plucked me from this terrible life that I probably would have been raised in, and it was all going to be sunflowers and rainbows and shit, like, I just view that as a fantasy. I was just put into a different circumstance that I had to survive. Welcome to the Permatemp Corporation. A presentation of the audio podcast, This Is Actually Happening. Episode 157, What If You Couldn't Tell Anyone?

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. Soon after I was born, my biological mother dropped my brother and I off at her sister's house. And she never came back.

She was an addict, a drug addict, and she was using prostitution as a way to finance that addiction. She also was sick. I believe that she had AIDS. So she was just really not in a place to take care of two small children. A biological mother had different aliases. She was in and out of jail. She would use different names. So it was really kind of hard to know what was true and what was real.

Her sister had her own kids, so she couldn't take on two more very small children. So she's the one who called Child Protective Services, and that's how we got put into the system. My biological brother and I were put into the foster care system, and we were separated.

I went to go live with an elderly couple who was in the same city. They fostered hundreds of kids over their lifetime, and they're still in my life to this day. So I stayed with them in their home until I got adopted. My brother was bounced around from different foster homes. I couldn't even tell you how many, but he had less consistency in the first few years of his life.

My foster family was looking to have me adopted within the same race. So they were looking at Black families to adopt the both of us. But with the separation that my brother and I had already experienced, she was very adamant on us being together, on us being adopted together. And I guess, you know, the family that ended up adopting both of us was the first one to kind of check all those boxes. So I was about two and a half. My brother was, I guess, about three and a half.

When we got adopted, we got adopted by a white family, two parents and a son, and he's about six years older than I am. We got adopted into the family, into like a typical middle class suburban area. The population is majority white. I was one of a handful of black kids in my class.

you know, coming into the house and they had our rooms decorated. And my bedroom they had decorated as Minnie Mouse. It was like baby blue and had like pink. You know, I was excited. At a very young age, before first grade, my brother was put in and out of hospitals. My memories as a child were a lot of arguments between him and my adoptive mother.

I mean, it would be screaming matches and fights and then it escalated. Doors being slammed. I mean, it was chaotic. So I don't have a lot of memories of it being peaceful and I'm not really sure when it changed, but I do remember a lot of animosity between like us and our mother.

I think that his life up to that point had just been a lot of movement and moving around, and he hadn't really been consistently shown affection or placed anywhere. And so he would be sent to what must have been a psychiatric ward for children, and he would be there for a weekend or a few days or maybe a week at a time. I remember going in there and hating the smell of the hospital.

And, you know, I'm visiting my brother in a hospital. I don't understand why. And so that was a huge point of confusion for me as a kid. But, you know, we'd go pick my brother up from the hospital and we'd come back and no one would talk about it. No one would explain why he went, why he was coming back, how long he'd be gone for if he left again.

After a couple times of going in and out of the hospital, the next memory I have of him leaving the home was in the airport, and we were putting him on the plane. My grandparents are there, my mother, my father, my other brother, we're all there, and Brent has a suitcase. He's giving everybody hugs. I just remember being very confused. I remember crying. I don't want him to go.

He was sent to a Christian ranch in Montana. I guess it's a place for kind of behavior reform. They have a lot of religious ideologies that they instill in these children, maybe a month, maybe a couple months, maybe a year. And then they come back home to their families and they're supposed to be rehabilitated or have like a better, better behavior.

To my recollection, there was no conversation. There was no family meeting. There was no precursor. There was no explanation for a very long time. He was sent to the ranch out in Montana for probably about a year.

And then he came back. And I remember thinking, like, that was weird as hell. But I'm glad to have him home. And we just kind of picked up where we left off. But, you know, things quickly kind of became the same as far as, you know, the arguments and her screaming at my brother and my brother screaming at her, crying, doors slamming. It was very uncomfortable for me as a child, especially when a lot of the time it wasn't anything that I was...

I was doing. I usually, you know, was just crying. Of course, she never took ownership for her part in that as well. He probably wasn't home for more than a year before they sent him back and he was there for 12 years after that. There was never any explicit racism within the household or anything like that. But, you know, we also, there wasn't a very strong attempt for me to connect with my culture either.

I got teased a lot, a lot in school. I got teased a lot. That subtle racism or like those subtle things that kids say or that people say about the differences between black people and white people.

I did have, you know, a neighborhood kid call me the N-word once, and I didn't know what to do. You know, I had never been sat down and talked to about, you know, how there'll be racist people in the world and how people will treat you differently because of the color of your skin. And this is how you react, or this is what you say, or this is, like, the way of life.

Into the world, you know, this black child with her white family and everyone was trying, you know, and my family was trying to pretend that that wasn't a thing to be discussed, you know, that my color wasn't a thing to even acknowledge, right?

family reunions also not only was I the only black person there but also a lot of my family you know extended family was very kind of from country country Kentucky okay Kentucky is country as it is so yes I am the only black person in this room no one acknowledges that but everyone knows it right but no one's going to speak on it no one's going to have a conversation with me about that

It was something that everyone saw, but no one acknowledged. No one spoke about. No one, literally, it was never said. But the silence just made it that much more noticeable for me. The older I got, the louder it got. The more intense it got and the more I noticed it everywhere I went.

I couldn't really figure out what my blackness meant for me, how to navigate in a white world. Kids would be like, you know, oh, you're an Oreo. Like, you're black on the outside and white on the inside. And I didn't know how to deal with those.

I had so many fighting feelings within myself, right? So like, obviously this is the family that has raised me. Like I've got clothes on my back. I've got food on the table. Like they're taking care of me. But also like, you know, this larger element of, okay, I'm different from them.

I was very embarrassed as a kid. I remember I would be embarrassed. I would be hyper aware that, you know, I'm a black child in this room full of white people. When I would see like other black families, I did get a sense of embarrassment or and also a sense of like I was missing out on something.

on a culture, on a conversation that I never felt comfortable enough to bring up to my parents because I didn't want to make them feel bad or I didn't want to make them feel as hyper aware of race as I felt. But I also just never knew how to articulate the words. We need to talk about it. Like, I need to know more about my heritage. I need to know more about my blackness and I need my blackness to be celebrated.

Sometimes people say that they're colorblind and I have such an issue with that because I am black and that needs to be seen and it needs to be respected just as anyone else's race needs to be respected. But to say that you're colorblind just makes my blackness feel invisible. Conversations with my parents were difficult in general. Just about anything that could have been...

Especially for my mom's sake, it was almost like she didn't know how to talk to me about some serious conversations or conversations about my feelings and emotions without turning back on to me about what I'm not doing right or a lot of gaslighting. They kind of operated under an idea that if you don't speak about it, it's not an issue. So much like, you know, my brother being sent to Montana, why he was there, how long he was there. We never talked about it.

So same thing, like, you know, if we don't talk about it, it'll just go away. Sweep it under the rug. We never had a good relationship, my mom and I. And I definitely think that after my brother had left or was sent away to Montana, she still needed someone to pick on.

You know, I was a very good student. You know, in school, I was always put into advanced classes. And at home, it was just very tedious things that I would get in trouble for. A lot of them revolved around chores and what wasn't done to my mom's liking. So if I cleaned my room and I was supposed to, like, vacuum dust and, I don't know, make my bed, maybe I would forget to, like, dust.

And if it wasn't to her liking, she would make it seem like I was intentionally disobeying her. And so, you know, whoopings. I got things taken away from me a lot. Just getting in trouble for like very small stuff. There was never anything that I did that I feel like warranted like a very serious punishment, you know. And so I started to lie. I was just so afraid of getting in trouble because I was always getting in trouble.

Very rarely did I ever see my oldest brother get into trouble. I never saw them discipline him, chastise him for any reason. It was usually always me. And my dad, my dad was a quiet man. And I had a very, you know, I was very close with my dad. I loved him. He was nice to me. So she started using kind of my dad as a form of punishment. So, you know, if I was getting in trouble, she'd make him give me my whoopings.

Religion was pretty big in the household. You know, I was raised Christian, non-denominational. When I was younger, you know, they definitely were more prominent in their faith. They would go on mission trips to Haiti. They were both in the medical profession, so they were very active in the church and kind of, you know, so was I. Definitely when I would get in trouble, it would be unchristian-like what I did. It was not, you know, it was not christian-like.

For a long time, I was very active in the church. It was a social setting for me, and I had a pretty strong faith. Honestly, my religion kind of got me through a lot of my years. Those very intimate feelings that I had, I didn't feel like I could talk to anybody besides God.

to be able to talk to someone, cry to somebody, and not be punished for it, not be invalidated for it. So for a long time, my faith in God was kind of a comfort for me that I wasn't getting from my family.

I guess from the outside looking in, you know, I got to do all the things that kids want to do when they're young. You know, I was on different sports teams. You know, we went on family vacations. But from the inside and seeing just the behaviors and the scrutiny that I was under as opposed to my oldest brother, it just wasn't comparable at all. So I felt that there might have been a disconnect in the way that she cared and loved me if she did.

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This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

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He had this dream of becoming a firefighter. So we had like this fire hose in the backyard. And so he'd make me do like drills, like rolling up the fire hose and like picking it up and carrying it, just like reenact certain scenarios. So when my parents weren't home, sometimes he'd make me play house. And if he'd make me play house, I knew like what was coming.

He had a room in the basement and it used to be a family room, but I guess once Josh got older, they converted it into his bedroom. You know, when my parents weren't there, he'd call me down and he'd, you know, say he wants to play. If I wasn't wearing shorts, he'd make me go upstairs and change into shorts.

And then it would just be, you know, him touching me, him touching himself. He would kiss me and just kind of rub himself on me. But it was always like with his clothes on. I just remember feeling very confused and feeling wrong, feeling like what we were doing was wrong. But I was terrified of getting in trouble with my mom. And I knew that he was their golden boy. You know, anything that he said went wrong.

And he would threaten me by saying, you know, if you don't do this, then I'll tell mom that you weren't being good. I'll tell her that you were disobeying me. You're going to get in a lot of trouble. And so I wouldn't say anything. And then he'd get up and he'd go to the bathroom. And I wouldn't move because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to move. And then he'd be like, you know, you can leave now. And I'd go upstairs and change and just feel just disgusted.

I was pretty young, you know, it probably started when I was about six and it happened on and off for about six years.

It wouldn't always be when people were gone. You know, him having the whole basement to himself, my parents wouldn't think anything about me going down there. But I was just terrified. And once that started happening, it would definitely be something that was done frequently. And I felt a lot of shame, a lot of just discomfort, just with myself, with having been used that way. And...

I was always, I felt like I lived my childhood on the brink of telling someone. I just never did. I definitely compartmentalized what was happening behind closed doors and what was happening out in the open with everybody.

In front of everybody, we had a decent relationship. Like, we would play. I would talk to him. We would joke like siblings do. We weren't, you know, super close, but I wasn't distant from him. I wasn't mean or didn't lash out. I had this mindset that my brother Brent had already been sent to Montana. And if I do anything to disrupt that, I don't know where they're going to send me.

I had enough knowledge to know that there would be police involved, there would be court involved, I would be taken away from my friends and my school and the only semblance of family that I had. And I was scared to do that. I also was scared that my parents would hate him. I'm not quite sure, you know, why that was so important. I think it was the shame, I guess, that I felt and just the idea of that being out in the open and what people's reaction would be to that.

I didn't want the family structure, even if it wasn't a great family structure, I didn't want to not have a family at all. And I didn't want to be sent away like Brent was. A big part of it was that I thought I wasn't going to be believed. So I put on kind of a face.

For the most part, I tried to act like everything was normal, but there were sometimes certain points in my childhood where it would get to me more than others, and then I would kind of fall into myself, and I would be very quiet and kind of recluse. There was one instance, and it actually was the very last instance it ever happened, and this is probably the one that I remember the most.

So I was probably about 15, maybe. And as I got older, you know, they were more spread out. And so it hadn't happened for a long time. And he had asked me to come downstairs for whatever reason. So I went down there and the room was dark. He tells me, like, to pull the door open. And so I do. And then I realize what's going on. And I just have this, like, just this pit in my stomach. I guess I had convinced myself that it wasn't going to happen again.

I was just afraid. You know, I went over to him and that's when he took his pants off. And then at that point, I was just terrified that he was going to rape me. It was such a stark escalation from what I had been experiencing with him. Like, this isn't happening. This isn't happening. This can't be happening. I was almost frozen.

He had got me on the bed and he was like hovering over me. He had himself, you know, out and exposed. And I think I looked at him in his face and there was just a change in his eyes. I don't know. It's almost like he had seen something that he hadn't seen before. Like he kind of just like had this look in his in his face and then he stopped and he got up.

I'm not sure if something was coming into focus for him as far as like what he was actually doing. I don't know if it was just a matter of like he was actually seeing me as a person, as his sister for the first time. But it definitely was a change in his expression. And he got up and he left.

I didn't understand what had happened. I didn't understand any of it. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I hopped up, grabbed my stuff, and ran up the stairs. Everything was running through my mind. I mean, I was just like, holy shit. Like, what the fuck was that? I don't know what that was. There must have been someone looking out for me because it just felt like a very close call.

I consider myself lucky, I guess, that he hadn't gone through with whatever he was intending to do when he called me down there. But I was actually even more afraid after that that he would actually try to do it again.

It fueled so much anger in me that I was the problem child and that I was just this pariah in a sense when they didn't even know. Your golden child is doing this to me, but here I am on punishment for some really minuscule shit. I prayed a lot and I wrote a lot.

I just wrote about my anger, my sadness, just the secrets, you know, that I couldn't tell anybody. I wrote letters. I wrote letters to my parents. I wrote letters to him. I wrote letters to my brother out in Montana. Not all about, you know, the abuse, but just about life in general, about the things. I was a very introspective child.

So I was very aware of my emotions. I was very articulate with my emotions and what they meant, how I was interacting with my parents and how I was developing a sense of resentment for them because I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel protected. I felt like all the things that they were giving Josh, my oldest brother who was abusing me, should have been given towards me.

The fact that I didn't feel comfortable enough to come to them with the truth, I resented them for having fostered an environment in which I didn't feel comfortable. And so I would write. I would write a lot. I felt like I had to be honest with myself because that's the only place that my truth would be acknowledged.

I felt so much shame. I would get so triggered by conversations about abuse and about telling someone.

And in my mind, I'd be like, it's not that easy. Like, you know, you guys are saying like, just tell someone if someone's hurting you or someone's doing something that they shouldn't be. But, you know, when you go home and you think about those, those lessons in class or, um, you know, that speaker at the church or what have you, like it doesn't translate because in my mind, I'm like, you, you guys don't know my family. You don't know my mom. You don't know how invalidated I've been this whole time. And

And so I had to, I wouldn't say heal from it because the healing process happened much later in my life, but I definitely had to be the one to carry myself through it. I just wouldn't allow myself to let it take over my, my entire being. There were times when it was much more difficult. There was almost an entire summer, probably for an entire month. I didn't say anything. I didn't speak.

I had gone to a church trip. It's one of those conferences where they have like the guest preachers and they have like a certain topic throughout the entire week.

One aspect of this conference was about abuse. So I guess just having heard that on such a grand scale, it was a pretty big conference, triggered a lot for me. So after I got back from that conference, I was staying for about a month with my grandparents.

And I was so in my head and so just full of emotion and full of so many things. And so I didn't speak.

They kept asking me if I was okay, and I would stay in the bedroom and just watch movies all summer and think about what my life was and about the secret that was just weighing on me. And so sometimes it was too heavy for me to pretend like nothing was wrong, but I also wasn't going to speak on what exactly was wrong with me.

I was silenced a lot. And I learned very quickly that there were some things I just couldn't speak on because it would always get twisted. So I started being quiet.

What exactly do I say to my parents? You know, I feel like you all aren't seeing me. I feel like my blackness doesn't matter. Like I had those feelings and thoughts within myself, but I didn't speak about any of that because I had seen what happens when I did speak.

Then, you know, my feelings about my mom, that was probably the one thing I was more vocal about to a degree because I got tired of being picked on. I got tired of being the focus of her wrath, to be honest. Like I just got tired. And so there were times where I just like kind of erupted.

I don't know why you're picking on me. I don't do anything to deserve this. I do everything that you ask of me. I don't understand. Somehow it would still be my fault.

Those conversations kind of got less and less, and I just started to be more independent. Because I figured if I don't bother anybody, then everybody will just kind of leave me alone. But that too was, that was also a source of discontent with my mom because it became a, well, why are you in your room all the time? Why are you not spending time with us? Why are you not, you know, present? You don't speak to anybody. And so I really couldn't win. I think I was just trying to survive.

After he graduated, he was probably living at the house for an extra year or so after he graduated high school, and then he moved out. So once he was gone, the threat was gone. Him not being in the house was the relief that I needed. I still had a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and a lot of pain from that happening. At this point, I still hadn't told anybody. My abuse, it felt like it was in the past.

So when I was a sophomore in college, I went and I visited my best friend. She was at a neighboring college a few hours away from me. We ended up going to a Starbucks near her campus. And she had been my best friend since first grade. So she had been there, you know, she had been right up the street. I just never told her.

We were just talking about family dynamics and I had just told her, I was like, you know, Josh sexually abused me for years growing up. She looked at me and she said, you know, I had a weird incident with him as well. And I think at that moment, I felt devastated.

Up until that point, you know, I had to handle this the way that I had to handle this to survive, to be okay. And I hadn't thought about him hurting anybody or touching anybody else or anything like that or making anyone even feel uncomfortable. Like, I had never had that thought. And I just felt so guilty, like, you know, if I would have spoken up sooner, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to make her feel like that. You know, he wouldn't have who knows who else that he's done that to.

Just being able to get that out of me and into the air, into the universe and into the ears of someone who loved me was just such a huge moment. To have kept that from her did feel like I was withholding part of myself from her.

I couldn't even describe the relief I felt and the immediate support I felt. Just the love and the safety that I felt within her. It's hard to describe. Releasing that was just releasing that bondage I had to the secrecy and the bondage I had to that pain. Okay, it's not all yours. You don't have to hold it anymore. That was a huge moment for me.

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After that initial conversation I had with my best friend, I kind of owned it a little bit more. Instead of it being something I had shoved to the back of my mind and the back of my being to, like, you know, survive, this is my experience, this is part of my life story.

When I talk to some of my other friends who are close to me and I feel, you know, comfortable and safe enough to, like, tell them, it sheds such a light onto how big of an issue this is and how common it is, you know, because it's one thing to read statistics, but

But to actually, you know, have a sleepover full of girls and we're all telling these stories and, you know, five or six of us have had similar experiences. It's just appalling and eye-opening and freeing, you know, to know that there are people who understand how you feel and kind of heal together from that. But it's insane to know that that is the reality of so many people.

The more I talked about it, the more I had open conversations about it, the more I felt like it wasn't just mine to carry. I felt like we are all survivors. We are all here.

It was kind of just changing that narrative and actually accepting that there was a narrative to be had, but that it wasn't one that had to put blame on me or put the guilt on me or put the shame on me. And, you know, it's something that I'm still healing through today. I got pregnant in 2015 and I had a daughter.

After I had her, I actually moved to South Carolina for a few years. The goal was to be closer with her father, kind of build a whole family dynamic, and I also really needed a change of scenery. Since I was living out in South Carolina, it always had to be a planned trip to come back home for holidays, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas.

And during that time, you know, when she was born, I was just thinking about my life and I was thinking about the things that, you know, I had gone through and all the ways I wanted to protect her and all the ways I wanted to be a better mother for her than both the ones I had growing up. So, yeah.

The one that was really tugging with me is that I can't even allow her to be around this person. I can't allow her to be in the same room as this person, as a known predator. And that made me confront the idea of telling my mom. My mom was actually planning to come visit me in South Carolina.

And she had made a mention that she wanted to bring Josh and his kids. So at this time, I think he has two stepkids, I believe. And she wanted it to be a whole family affair. So I reached out to him and I hadn't talked to him about this at all. I said, mom wants to come visit me in Charleston. And she mentioned seeing if you wanted to come too. And I said, you're not welcome here.

You know, he made a whole very naive, like, well, why not? Like, what's going on? And he's like, I have to work anyway, so I wouldn't be able to come. And so then I confronted him and I was like, I remember everything. You know, I remember all the, you know, the abuse. You know, I remember all of it.

And he played dumb. He had to like, you know, he had no idea what I was talking about. And he was like, you know, I would never hurt you. I'm so sorry if I ever did anything to make you feel like, you know, I was hurting you or made you feel uncomfortable or anything. And I was just like, I can't even do this right now. Like, I can't just don't come. And so he, you know, he didn't. She came back.

We actually were having a good time, which was rare. And I didn't want to ruin it. I didn't want to spoil it. So I decided to tell her when I would come back for Christmas. So I probably was in Kentucky for about a week. I brought my daughter. So it's just me and my daughter. I was in her house and she had asked me something about my brother and my relationship.

After that conversation I had with him, I had just completely blocked every aspect of communication. So she had asked me, like, you know, what was going on between the two of us. And...

I was just so scared. It was almost like, you know, that seven-year-old in me who just couldn't speak up. But she kept pressing, and I was like, you're going to need to sit down. And then I told her, I was like, I don't want him around my daughter. He used to molest me when we were younger. Her eyes got wide. Once it came out, it was almost like word vomit. I was just, you know, telling her, you know,

He used to bring me down to his room and open that door, and he would threaten me with getting into trouble with you, and he would threaten to say that I wasn't obeying him and all this stuff. And I was like, it went on for years. But when it comes to my daughter, I can't willingly have her around him.

you know, then she started crying. You know, she was very apologetic. She said that she was sorry and that, you know, if I would have told her, they would have protected me. And she just didn't understand, like, how I could go through and, like, actually have a relationship with him, like, out in the open. And that was happening behind closed doors. And so I explained to her, you know, you already sent Brent away. I was young. I was scared. And

And I knew that speaking up would change everything. And I was scared of what that meant. And so she was very apologetic and very, you know, there's a lot of tears. There's a lot of just hugs and just apologizing for not knowing. She said she fully understood. She understood if I don't want to be around him for the holiday or whatever. That was her initial response. But that changed as time went on.

Fast forwarding a little bit, after I went back home to South Carolina, that next year was really rough for me. I was hitting a lot of road bumps and a lot of obstacles, and I was just kind of in a really tight spot. I was really strapped for money. It was a mess.

So one day my mom calls me and she says, why don't you and your baby move back home? You can move in the house. Your necessities will be met and you can kind of just rebuild. And I was definitely hesitant about it. But honestly, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place because it didn't look like I had any other option. I decided to move. And she had said something to me that I probably should have taken more heed with.

I had mentioned, you know, our conversation back around Christmas time. This point, you know, she was very close with him. She's very close with him, very close with his kids. So I knew like I had to say that. And then she had said this to me and she said, well, I hope that you're not asking me to choose between you and him because I'm just not going to do that.

I was just like, you know, I'm not asking you to choose. I'm just telling you about what my decisions are going to be when it comes to protecting my child. So I move in with her and it's a complete shit show. It's insane. It's the worst, just a terrible experience because she would question me.

She would argue with me about it. Thanksgiving would come up and she would be like, oh, you're not going to come. You're not going to spend time with the family. And I was like, you're going to his house. I already told you what my stipulations are. Well, I just don't understand. What do you think is going to happen to her if we all have eyes on her? It would just be an argument.

You all had eyes on me and I still ended up getting hurt. And I was like, you know, why are you arguing with me about the way that I protect my child? Well, I just don't understand. Well, if he did this, well, how did you still interact with him? You know, if he did this to you, then how are you still like laughing and playing with him and doing all these things?

And there was no getting through to her. There was no explaining it. I felt sick that I even had to argue with my mother about her child molesting son. It just baffled me. And she was just...

pretty much caping for him just like well I just I just know that he hasn't he's not the same person he would never do that again and he would never do that to anybody now and I was just like you hope and I'm protecting my child in ways that you failed me so a lot of the time I would stay in the city with my friends my daughter would be there too and we would just have a really good time

One of the times that I was up there, my car just kind of completely went to shit. So I was kind of stuck with the position of having to buy a new car. It was just toast. It was done. There was nothing more I could have done for it. There was no more money I could have put into it. I traded the car in for a little sedan, and I was actually very nervous about driving home because I knew there was going to be an argument. I mean, all hell broke loose.

She basically gave me an ultimatum. She said, if you can afford to buy a new car, then you can afford to start paying me X amount of money in rent. And I started packing my bags because I was like, if I'm going to start paying for rent, like I don't need to be here in this house. Like not only do you invalidate me at every turn, I don't feel welcome. I don't feel loved. So what am I doing here?

At that moment, I packed up all my clothes, all my laundry, put it in the car, and I drove back out to the city. I had gone down probably a few weeks later to pick up the rest of my stuff, and I have not spoken to her since. I couldn't stand being invalidated, just constantly made to feel inferior and made to feel like my truth wasn't being heard.

She sent me a letter. I had left the letter there with her. There's just a lot of things I was unable to say that she would never allow me the space for. So I had written it on a letter.

Well, she had sent me a return letter and it was a very, very, very nasty letter just kind of about how much of a fuck up I was and how all the ways I had failed, all the ways that I had disappointed my father who had passed by this time, you know, how it was no longer in her will. I mean, it was a whole bunch of just ugly, ugly stuff.

So, you know, after, you know, driving away from her house with all my stuff in the car, initially it was like a high. It was like I kind of stuck it to her, you know, like I finally got my last word in. But then, you know, receiving that letter, all those things started kind of haunting me. You know, I thought that she was going to locate me. I thought she was going to find me and kind of like try to make my life a living hell like she had been. I just thought that it wasn't the end.

You know, I had moved, I had blocked her number, I had blocked all communication with her. It took me a long time to actually feel like I was free. But once I did, oh man, it was such a freeing feeling, especially when I looked around at all the people who love me and all the people in my circle and realized that these are all just positive relationships that I have.

And I really had to sit with myself and, you know, talk with, you know, my close circle about it and just had to come to terms with everything that had happened and how putting myself first was also going to enable me to be a better mother for my child. No matter kind of where my life took me, that decision had to be made. It had to be made.

I never thought about talking to her again. I was angry. For a long time, I was angry. I just, I was just angry. Like, I was angry that I even had to do that in the first place. But, you know, the mother that I wanted to have, I just never did. As much as I wanted her to be the type of mother I needed, I knew she wasn't going to be.

Most of my healing has come from just conversations I've had with, you know, the people closest to me and just being able to be completely vulnerable with them and understanding, like, I may not have had conventionally what a family looks like or what a conventional family, you know, sounds like, but I am surrounded by family. I'm surrounded by people who love me and, you know, I love and I'm building a relationship with my child and

in the way that she deserves, in the way that I've always wanted. And I can be that mother for her. Like, I can be that person.

I used to always kind of just hate the fact that this is the family that chose me. The idea that they were supposed to come in and save me and then I've put into yet another traumatic experience the idea that they had plucked me from this terrible life that I probably would have been raised in and it was all going to be sunflowers and rainbows and shit. I just view that as a fantasy.

I was just put into a different circumstance that I had to survive. I would not be the person I was without having gone through that. I'm not happy that I went through it. I'm not... If I could choose a different path, I would have gladly chosen a path that...

had less trauma. But here I am and I'm so proud of who I am. I'm so happy with the person that I've become. I'm not perfect by any means and I wrestle with those imperfections. But to have gone through the things I've gone through and still came out this person...

It's amazing to me. The universe really protected me in ways that allowed me to still succeed and still be positive and still find love and be able to give love.

I do feel sad for the child, for 7-year-old me, for 14-year-old me. I do feel sad, but, you know, I think I stopped expecting or stopped wishing that things were different, stopped wishing that they actually had saved me. The reality is they didn't.

She was supposed to be my second chance. I kind of just had to rearrange the narrative and be like, okay, well, I have to be that mother, you know? I have to be that person that gives love in the way that I've always wanted to receive it. It's a strange feeling to walk through the world with no roots. As positive as I try to be, it's very painful. You know, I don't have any connection with my biological family.

My biological brother, our relationship is a work in progress. But when I cut my mother off, I cut the entire adoptive family off as well. Seeing people with what seems to be normal family dynamics or even roots and ancestors and extended family and people in different places and different spaces and time that they can call family together.

It's a very painful journey sometimes to understand that that won't ever be my reality. And to know that, you know, I'm kind of the beginning of my own family tree, which is kind of a heavy thought for me. It feels a little bit like a burden I didn't want. But the family that I create, that I'm creating right now is beautiful.

It's full of love. It's full of all the things that I needed as a child and didn't get. So I'm excited, I guess, to see the type of family this grows into. This Is Actually Happening is brought to you by me, Witt Misseldein. If you love what we do, you can join the community on our official Instagram page at Actually Happening. You can also rate and review the show on iTunes, which helps tremendously to boost visibility to a larger community of listeners.

Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay tuned.

Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast, Against the Odds. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who live to tell the tale. In our next season, it's July 6th, 1988, and workers are settling into the night shift aboard Piper Alpha, the world's largest offshore oil rig.

Home to 226 men, the rig is stationed in the stormy North Sea off the coast of Scotland. At around 10 p.m., workers accidentally trigger a gas leak that leads to an explosion and a fire. As they wait to be rescued, the workers soon realize that Piper Alpha has transformed into a death trap. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.