Saturday Night Smarts

Lincoln the baby, and Hope, always the 1st Baby.

My friend mentioned in a call last week when I asked what her weekend plans were, that she had to go to a school event Saturday night. National Honor Society Inductions...well come to find out the day of, so did I. A lot of times I am told things, events, dates, things that are going on, and unless I write it down on the kitchen calendar...I probably will show up at the dentist office for our eye appointments. Regardless, I made it, teething baby on hip...and on time. My lovely thoughtful friend Cheryl saved us a seat, handed over diaper coupons and gushed over slobbery Lincoln. It was quite awesome to watch my oldest daughter's accomplishments be recognized as she was inducted into The National Honor Society, while watching the baby play "how many times can we throw the program on the cafeteria floor" with Cheryl.

Our days don't always go according to plan, and that is OK...life doesn't either.

“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring, roaring, diving. And then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?”
― Virginia Woolf

Help for aging out foster kids... Florida's Foster Care Bill (SB 1036)

Came across this on twitter, and really worth sharing. It is way too common for foster children to age out of the system, completely lost and unsure of their path. These leads to dire consequences, often involving heartache, homelessness and the prison system.

Eighteen and out.

Good to be a Floridian.  If this bill was in place here in Indiana, twenty years ago, I just may have had a little more sense to know what I was doing, and cents to do it with. At least I have my collection of Dead Tye-dyes to hold on to.


Foster Care Bill SB 1036

 “Don't you find it odd," she continued, "that when you're a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you're older, somehow they act offended if you even try.”
― Ethan Hawke

Living in the Shadows

My Shadow

By Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (1947)

Prison of Children

Three children were found in a crack house on the east side of town. It was across the tracks, in the poorest part of the hood.

Police discovered the 7, 5 and 6 year old's on a urine soaked mattress when they stormed the second floor. The were only in their underwear. Mom was working a corner some streets away, to buy her addiction and maybe have something left for bread and milk.

Two of the children's fathers were in prison, one for molestation charges the other grand larceny.  The third father was listed as "Unknown" on the Indiana birth certificate.

These unseen, abandoned children, "rescued"; bounced from foster home to miserable foster home. Usually three or four months at a time, then packed up hastily and moved somewhere else that may be able to handle their acting out and tantrums.  Growing  up "unwanted",  misplaced and labeled, who could thrive?  A sibling group in foster care is an automatic hard to place placement, and they were left to fend for themselves eventually aging out clueless from a clueless system. 

These children lingered. They grew cold. They learned to protect themselves, both physically and mentally. School was a world where they were set up for failure. The brother fought, they were ostracized for being worthless, dirty foster kids.

Brother had enough and dropped out of high school, trying to find his own shadow on the path of life. He was left in the dark despair of depression, giving up all hopes of a family, committing suicide swallowing a box of pills at only at nineteen.

The sisters had a hard time overcoming neglect, abandonment of their mother, and their past abuses as well. Continuing the circle, one has given her child away to state custody to continue the life of partying, the other trying to forget her brother's death with an Oxycontin daily ten pill addiction.

What if the world had cared to intervene. What if the world protected, and screamed "We are here!"?  Where could they be today?  Where would they be today? Who could they be? What passions could they give back to the world? We don't know.

The power of  unconditional love can reach the darkness abyss being a springboard for trust, self-worth and self-respect. Children of abuse have the right to conquer and  champion, for themselves.

Look at the Penal System today. It would be an interesting experience to talk to some prisoners incarcerated about their time as children in foster care. Bumbling out my yellow college ruled note pad and searching my over-size silver bag for a Bic, I'd ask if they believe a home would have kept them from being locked behind bars today?

I would Imagine, the responses to be unanimously just "Hell, yes."

“Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

A Prison of Children

As a victim, you can awkwardly try to carry the burden of fault. Children learn the word why as toddlers, and many of these kids in foster care are still asking today...why? Why me? Why was I hit? Why did they leave me in a crack house? Why didn't my mother come back for me? Why am I in this prison? Let me go.

EJI

Children say goodbye to their childhoods and linger while waiting on a direly slow system. As, they wait, they are often re victimized only adding more trauma to their psyches. The belief that they are to blame, that they are nothing, that they are worthless, all of these only solidify with time. 

The mind is magnificent. A child who built walls to the sky, can be helped over them with unconditional love and support.  Love and caring are great healers. While there are things abused kids will never forget, you can become a needed guide on their life's path. A burning bright path full of sunshine and opportunity.

We hold the key to change in our own worlds. Continuing to fail protecting our children would be a brutal mistake, leading from one prison to the next.


 

Prison Statistics

Prison Population

• Over 2 million prisoners are held in federal and state prisons or local jails which gives the U.S. one-quarter of the world’s 8 million prisoners
• Currently, there are almost 1.6 million people being held under State or Federal Jurisdiction
• Justice Policy Institute released that the jail population has nearly doubled in less than 2 decades, and last year the prison population grew by 25,000
• More than 1 in 100 American adults is behind bars
• As of June 2006, 203,100 women were in state or federal prisons or local jails which is a 64% increase from 1995
• In 2006, there were more than 1.3 million women inmates, parolees, and probationers in the U.S.

Literacy

• More than 60% of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate
• 85% of all juveniles who go through the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate
• Penal institution records show that inmates have a 16% chance of returning to prison if they receive literacy help, as opposed to 70% who receive no help
• The Department of Justice stated, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure."

Race and Ethnicity

• A report, from the Pew Center on the States, found that only 1 in 355 white women between the ages of 35-39 are incarcerated, but that 1 in 100 black women is behind bars
• African Americans are nearly 5 times as likely to be incarcerated in jails as whites and almost 3 times as likely as Latinos
• Based on Justice Department statistics for 2006, 1 in 15 black adults and 1 in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars
• One in 9 black men between the ages of 20-34 is in prison

Single Mothers

• 78% of the nation's jail and prison inmates grew up in a fatherless household, even though only 15% of today's adult population grew up without a father
• 77% of women in prisons or jails are single mothers
• Nationally, nearly 8.7 million children have parents under correctional supervision (either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole).  Almost 1.8 million children have parents in state or federal prison
• More than 65% of women and 55% of men in state prisons report being parents of children under 18.  64% of mothers in state prisons report living with their children before prison.  One-third of mothers lived alone with their children in the month prior to arrest.  One in 5 children of incarcerated mothers witnessed their mother’s arrest.
• 88% of fathers in New York State prisons report that their children live with their mothers, while only 20% of incarcerated mothers in New York report that their children live with their fathers.  More than 74% of incarcerated mothers report that their children live with a grandparent or other relative and 18% report that their children live in foster homes or agencies.
• African American children are nearly 9 times more likely to have a parent in prison than white children.  Latino children are 3 times more likely than white children to have an incarcerated parent.

Sexual Abuse

• About 80% of women prisoners have been sexually or physically abused before being incarcerated
• 87% of female inmates who spent their childhood in foster care or institutions report that they had been abused at some point in their lives
• In some facilities, 1 in 4 women are sexually abused while in prison
• Women inmates in New Jersey's prisons are twice as likely to be raped and nearly 6 times more likely to be otherwise sexually abused by other inmates than their male counterparts

Physical Abuse and Retaliation

• Battering is the single major cause of injury to women, more frequent than auto accidents, muggings and rapes combined
• An act of adult domestic violence occurs every 15 seconds, more frequently than any other crime in the U.S.
• FBI data indicate that 30% of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or boyfriends
• Research shows that when victims kill it is much more likely to be in self-defense than when abusers perpetrate homicide.  Victims who resort to homicide have often tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to obtain protection from their abusers. 
• A Police Foundation study in Detroit and Kansas City found that in 85-90% of "partner" homicides, police had been called to the home at least once during the 2 years preceding the incident; in more than half of these cases they had been called 5 times or more.
• A Cook County (Illinois) Dept. of Corrections study of the Chicago women's prison found that 40 percent of inmates incarcerated for murder or manslaughter had killed partners who repeatedly assaulted them.  These women had sought police protection at least five 5 before resorting to homicide. 

  
 "JUST LISTEN

“When your mind is quiet and you listen closely, you will hear the children weeping silently. If you can’t quite hear their cries, then listen with your eyes. These are the children of the streets, who have learned pain and suffering before they ever had a chance to experience life. Do not ignore their cries for help, for all they wish is that you will rescue them. They do not have a family that wants them, they don’t know how it feels to be loved and they’ve never lived anywhere that felt like home…the streets are where they find their voice and relief from all of the suffering.

Just listen and you’ll see them."
— Paige Dearth (When Smiles Fade)

 
 

The Good, The Bad and The Daddy

It isn't any easy thing to write about bad things. It can however be a good thing in the long process of healing. Writing can be brutal, it can bring you back to a past time and memories you would rather not remember so clear.

You can also lose people with honesty. People will talk about you, trying to diminish and dismiss you. The only thing is to keep trucking on, with the power of truths to set you free.

I have written about being a mother to ten, finding my five adopted children  who had been in foster care like I was as a teen. How I came to have the passion to mother, after never having my own there while I was growing up.

What is the hardest for every kid of abuse to talk about, is the actual abuse. April in National Child Abuse Prevention Month. So I am trying to be more actively aware exposing my hurt for all the world to read.

From three on I was with my dad until I was taken out of the home at 17. While, there is not a whole lot I can actually remember before the age of ten, I learned through my life that much of what was, was abuse. Then it was just how it was. My self esteem was terrible, no one wants to be called a bitch as a kid, oogled at through puberty and described as thunder thighs. The actual sexual abuse was the summer before my freshman year in high school. I remember the shame, and the burning tears. Standing before my father in his locked room, naked so he could stare. His hands on my body, cutting off my pubic hair for some weird trophy.

When I started high school, I tried to forget. Parties, boys, drugs and drinking. I overdosed one night huffing, smoking pot and drinking. I ended up in a coma in the hospital for two days. I remember the phone being held up to my ear, and my mother telling me to wake up. The next morning I did. When taken to the psychologist from the hospital I mumbled about wishing things were better with my dad, and then nothing happened. I was released, finding further escape being away from home every second I could.

That's some bad stuff, lost kids usually go through a lot of it. They can overcome. While I am far from perfect today, I have a pretty content life raising my brood. I have seen my own adopted children, cry from their own nightmares, and grow stronger every day.

Today I am taking a tall stand for hurting children, and realizing in the process my own strength is something no one has the right to steal from me again.

"Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words."
— Rumi

Broken Goodbyes

One of the memories I have carried with me for years, was when I was about three or four. If you read my birthday post, approximately 35 years ago. The short semi foggy film in my head, is me sitting in the back of my Dad's green 70's Volkswagen Beetle, with yells for me to roll the damn window up.  As I did, my disheveled mother was pounding on it, crying uncontrollably. It wasn't until I was in my twenties I actually asked my mom about it.

I had assumed growing up, the dream was of the last day I saw my mother for five years. The day when my younger sister and I were taken from the Sunshine State to the Hoosier farmlands, states away from our drug using mother. She was tricked into believing we were actually in Arizona, as our dad had family there, sending letters to them for our mom, and them mailing them from Arizona to Florida. Why didn't she call the police? Was it because she was young and lost, using and being used? Was it because she thought she was a bad mom for reasons like my younger sister taking her pills, twice as a barely walking baby and getting her stomach pumped at the hospital? Why didn't someone notice and try to get my parents help? Many thoughts come to my mind as an adult, that I will never quite have the answers for.

The day I did not have the chance to say goodbye to my mother, was not the day we were "saved", maybe the day she decided to give me away to my father. Maybe just a day they had a lover's quarrel? Whatever it was, as a young child it helped shaped who I am today, the good and the bad.

Young minds with the amazing ability to overcome, and never truly say Goodbye.

"An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts."
— Albert Camus

Dreaming of a Mother

It's just a tad past eleven, the kids who are home mesmerized by The Avengers. Oh, and the baby is asleep. I should be there in my bed, with the blanket covering my head, next to his crib. I get pretty anxious, as he is almost one and yet up still every 3 hours at least to nurse. This is just about the only time I have to myself. Sharing an office, if I am alone for thirty minutes is a rare ecstasy. Here I am.

So what should I blog about? What we did today? Got one ready for prom, told boys who were out with their "bike gang" to tell me where they were riding in town, checked on my oldest who went to Chicago, fed the baby applesauce for the very first time?

I still managed to have to go Kroger for milk, and $75 worth of crap I didn't really need to buy. I am a sucker at the store, what can I say. Pretty funny, as with ten at home, the grocery store is one of our special times. This afternoon, I snuck up behind my son Gerald at the computer and asked if he wanted to go to the store. Whoever goes with me, usually gets a milkshake or fries, and I tell them to tell whoever asks that they bought it. By now, they all know that little ruse, but we still do it anyways. He enjoyed the ice cream, and Lincoln had someone along for the ride.

A good friend of mine came over to visit this week after her radiology shift at the hospital. My time is a little limited to be going out anymore, even to the coveted Mezcal of Rushville. What can I say I love Sol. It's been a while. My girlfriend told me about her last few weeks as she played with the baby. How she was helping a friend deal with her mother in a nursing home. The same where my best girlfriend had her mom a few years ago. I remember going into her mom's room, and talking in her ear. When she was healthy, we saw each other on the local road through town early every morning, as I drove my 15 passenger marshmallow dropping off the kids at three different schools, and she was meeting her friends at the local mom and pop coffee shop. Her wave became a part of my day for several months. Then one day she was just gone. Her jeep went for sale, and a friends mother was no longer there.

The Dream

Just having my birthday, I think now more about life with out my mother. We have pretty much been worlds away my entire life, having grown up in Indiana and her life in Florida. When I was only five, my younger sister of three and I were brought to Indiana to be with family, and we did not lay eyes on her again, until I was ten. She was always a mystery during those years, what she looked like, what her hair smelled like, I tried to hang onto her voice but I forgot how she sounded. I only knew her name, because I was called it whenever I messed up, it was a bad word.  I wonder what my life would have been like if she was always in it. If she had not given me to my father, when I was but three years old. If she had been more than sixteen when I forced her to enter adulthood. If she wanted me. Would my life be much different than it is today? Would I still have had the desire to help kids who were homeless, motherless, like I was? I don't know and it really does not do anything to dwell on it. My parents were not ready to parent. My kids parents weren't either. It doesn't mean they don't love them, and it does not mean she didn't love me.

I am glad my adopted children know their birth moms love them, even if they could not be there physically mothering them. I am thankful to know now, that the inescapable pain I encountered by the hands of those who were supposed to be protectors, was not in vain.

“There's a story behind everything..but behind all your stories is always your mother's story..because hers is where yours begins.”
― Mitch Albom