Dear Oprah,

I am sure you will receive many responses to your website about those who have been in Foster Care.  The following is a brief synopsis of my life and experiences.

I was in twenty-one Foster Homes before the age of sixteen. That may seem excessive, and yet it is true.  I was raped at the age of four & five by my father, and first cousin.  In four of the homes I was placed, the so called protective Foster Fathers attempted the exact same thing. It is difficult to go to bed each night, and wonder if tonight will be the night you will be assaulted once more.  Hunger, physical abuse, clothes that were too small, humiliation, and degradation were the life I lived.  Kneeling beside your bed at night, your hands folded in prayer, begging for someone to take you away, to love you, to protect you.

I watched my brother being beaten so badly that bruises covered his body, and yet there was nothing I could do to protect him. How can a small child, prevent her father from beating him with a two by four, from one of his wives dressing him up as a girl, with lipstick and a dress, making him spend the day outside, the children in the neighborhood mocking him. I am afraid he did not recover from the abuse he received as a child. He has been in three mental institutions that I am aware of, and I recently discovered that he is now in jail for twelve years for molesting a disabled child. How heartbreaking that whatever strength I was given in life, he was not. He repeated a pattern, which I suspect has occurred in my family for generations.  Is it genetics or is it just modeling the behavior you have witnessed?  I believe in my soul, it is a bit of both.

I also have a sister, whom has spent time in jail and lost custody of her children. I do not know where she is, and to be honest, I closed that chapter in my life many years ago and do not wish to know.  It is distressing that I am the only one who survived my childhood.

My natural grandmother, my father’s mother, admitted to me seven years ago that she knew what was occurring, but that (and I quote), “if it were your son, you would do the same thing.”  My response, no, I would pull the switch.  Needless to say, I have never spoken to her again, and never will.

Group homes were no better, it is sad when the Foster Family sits down to a dinner of Steak, and you clean while waiting to eat a bologna sandwich, only after first washing their dinner dishes and trying to grab a few scraps of their leftovers, going to bed hungry, filled with anger and resentment.  Christmases come and the present you receive is donated by a charitable society that presents you with a bra that even the most endowed woman would find large.

I was a precocious child who learned early in life to survive.  At the age of eleven, I went to the guidance counselor at school and reported what was happening to me.  Back in those days, the judges would place you back in the home, if the father received counseling. On a side note, my father was married five times (I consider it seven, as he married one of the women twice and had a common law wife.  Can you imagine my disgust and horror when my Social Worker told me my father had admitted to the (and she was not allowed to tell me, but hoped it would help) psychologist he had assaulted me and yet there was nothing they could do about it.

At the age of sixteen, I finally was placed in a home that showed loved and compassion, to this day; I still consider them my family.  Even though I became an emancipated adult at seventeen, I always knew that I had a place where I belonged.

You would think that I would have ended up disillusioned with life, however at a very early age, I learned to read.  It became my salvation; I found an escape from the horrors that had become my life.  I decided that nothing in life would stop me living like ‘White Trash’, a term I know most find offensive.  I made a list of things I would accomplish in life:  I would see the world, I would be a successful business woman, I would show compassion to all I met, I would become someone that I myself would be proud of, and my greatest dream, I would write a book, I would become the antithesis of everything I had witnessed. 

I persevered; I did all of those things.  I have traveled the world, and seen more countries than most will ever have the opportunity.  I became a successful business woman, I learned to love myself and my greatest dream, I wrote a novel.  My first, self-published novel, ‘Soul Travelers’, a Paranormal Thriller, shares many of my own experiences as a child.  The main character is a child who spends her life in Foster Care.

Did I make mistakes, yes, too many to name, but the point of my letter is that there is hope; you can make choices in life to help you become successful.

I salute everyone who has survived the horrors of bad foster homes