From My Resiliency to HER Resiliency
Dreading life, I pulled myself together for another day of fifth grade. I put on the same shirt that I had worn four of seven days that week without washing. It was a white button-up with fake pearl beads on the collar and when I wore it, I felt close to my mom. While dreading my existence and having to move through another day, I made it to the kitchen window to wait for the school bus with my sister.
“What’s that smell?” my dad asked as he walked by.
The three of us looked at each other. My sister and I froze terrified, and my dad quizzically stared waiting for an answer. It felt like an eternity but finally, he recognized it was me, and more specifically my shirt.
The beads on it had started to come loose and I was afraid that they would fall off in the wash. If I lost that shirt, I would lose the item that made me believe my mom loved me. My shirt was no longer white. It had started to turn a dingy yellow from all the cheap canned perfume I sprayed on it.
After berating me for smelling, my father demanded I run to catch the bus.
It was cold and windy outside which provided me some excuse for wearing my big puffy winter coat the entire day, too self-conscious to take it off. My sister frequently reminds me, “We were the smelly kids at school.”
Let me explain.
I grew up poor. I do not mean poor as in there was not enough money to buy me new shoes, but the kind where my mom said she could not afford to take care of me, so she sent me to live with my physically abusive, drug-addicted father.
I guess she thought he could do better.
I took cold baths when the hot water was turned off. When the bottom of my step-mom’s car caught fire, we just piled out and pushed it out of the street. And in elementary school when I would get toothpaste on my night shirt, I would immediately change it because of fear that the ants would eat me while I slept.
Being poor was hard as a young person — I couldn’t really comprehend it at the time. But I wasn’t just poor. I was exposed to violence and drugs at a very early age, so the odds of me excelling in this world were virtually zero.
I was beaten or threatened to be beaten regularly. The hard part was not knowing which it would be. I never knew when it would happen; that scene in which my dad would hold his breath, make his face turn red and hit the table with a closed fist and then hit me. The one constant I could rely on was being dismissed or ignored. I knew that my mom was not coming for me. Instead, she told my father to stop using drugs in front of me and my sister. This did not stop him from using. Instead he forced us outside for hours, or sent us to our bedroom while he got high.
By my late teens, I was a terror and my mom couldn’t stand being around me. Neither could my sister nor my step-father. And my dad? Well, I had moved out of his house. I only felt anger toward him. At 15 years old stopped considering him a parent.
How could my own family not stand me? I was angry at the world, filled with emotion and trauma from my childhood that came out in self-destruction such as promiscuous behavior, lying, suicide attempts and manipulation. I realize now that my behaviors were an attempt for getting my needs met.
I was ready to escape my life through any means so at age 20, I packed a bag and moved to Washington, DC. It was as close as I could get to New York, and I had always been drawn to politics. I did not yet have the maturity to live on my own. I was 20 but because of all of the trauma and violence I had endured, I had the cognitive function of a 16- or 17-year-old.
After only a few weeks in DC, it felt like everyone could see a big sign on my back that said, “VULNERABLE.” My brain’s best thinking was “ok” when someone suggested I start working as an escort, or prostitute, as a means to make money; and “why not?” when someone suggested I smoke crack. This was my life at 20: chronologically old enough that society saw me as an adult yet still mentally a child.
I fell into a life of alcohol, drugs and prostitution and it almost killed me. It did not take long for me to start looking for a way to escape. I was ready to die.
Ironically, hitting bottom with drugs and alcohol ended up saving my life. It was because of excessive substance abuse that I stumbled into a 12-step recovery program, and it was there that I established the principles that led me to where I am today.
After years of living with shame and hiding from my past, I transitioned to service by using my experiences to help others. Last April, I came home from work and said, “I’m quitting my job and starting an organization for women.” My partner, who looked concerned and unsure of what to say, just stared at me. “I wouldn’t have gone through everything I did not to use it to help someone else,” I told him. I wanted to use my experience to protect other women from ever having to endure the same pain I experienced. Overcoming that terrible time in my life led me to create HER Resiliency Center.
While I am forever grateful for 12-step recovery and my 14+ years of sobriety, that is not where I am going. It is the women I met during all my years of attending meetings that I want to focus on. They are the ones to which I dedicate HER Resiliency Center, for helping me grow into the person who can now help others.
The transition from childhood to adulthood is never easy. For me, lacking positive support and guidance made it feel almost impossible. Leaving any kind of home life as a youth, whether it was loving or not, and becoming completely independent at 18 years old will bring challenges. When you are not prepared in advance, it can be devastating.
That is how I knew exactly the women I want to serve; young women that are vulnerable to “falling through the cracks” without anyone noticing. More specifically, young women ages 18 to 25 years old. I was most vulnerable at that age. I wanted to use this experience to protect other women from ever feeling the pains I did during that time.
I have always known, but during a call with my sister last week where she said, “they [our parents] left us to fend on our own in the world” that it really sank in. I was left to figure things out on my own.
I was fortunate to have found a supportive community. During my years of attending 12-step meetings, I have met women who taught me how to live. They showed me how to change my life, and through their guidance and support, I have seen my life flourish and thrive. They helped me grow into a person who can now help others. I’ve dedicated HER Resiliency Center to them.
It is because of those women that I now have the tools to show other young women how to cope with life’s greatest challenges, how to rise above terrible odds, and how to thrive.
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