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Introduction to the girl and woman telling the story.

I would like to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Jen, I am writing this book in hopes of finding a place to house the memories of my life.

 

I grew up with a single mother. My mother was an alcoholic growing up. I have 5 brothers and sisters. We all have the same mother but I share the same father with only 2 of my siblings, however, I do not know the siblings as they were given up for adoption at birth and I have never been able to locate them.

 

My father is in prison and has been since the year I was born, 1970. I never met him and only found out who he was when I was 18 years old. I exchanged a few calls (collect of course) with him from Prison and a few letters before discovering he only wanted money and had no interest in me or my life. It was nice to get a photograph of him, I look much more like my father than my mother or any of my siblings. It was nice to see where my curly hair and body frame came from.

 

My sisters all had blonde hair and blue eyes, I felt like the odd ball with my curly brown hair and green eyes. I never knew of my father growing up because my mother knew he was in prison for murder and the memories were too painful to keep so she created a lie and I lived it for 18 years.

 

My mother grew up in a very stable, respectable family that was well to do, unfortunatly, she did not create that same enviornment for her own children. My mother was the black sheep in her family, the same way I am the black sheep in my own family. Kind of odd that she was the "Worst" of hers and I can honestly say, I feel I am on the flip side of that in my own family. I wouldn't want to be like any of my siblings, in my own opinion, I am the "Best" of my family.

 

At the age of 11, my mother gave me to foster care. In the 80's, foster care was not what it is today. People were allowed to adopt babies if they were foster parents and parental rights were severed. Foster care was kind of like a way to bipass adoption agencies and fees. No one wanted an 11 year old girl.

 

I moved around from state hospital to state hospital due to lack of foster parents wanting to house an 11 year old girl. There wasn't really a great set up for children in my position. I had to go to places that were like holding tanks. I could stay as long as I was being "Evaluated" but the evaluations were 30, 60 or 90 day evaluations.

 

I would go and stay for the evaluation period and then move again to be evaluated again until there would be an opening for someplace long term. I finally landed a foster family at about 13, could have been 14, my memory does not serve me well when it comes to time lines.

 

The family that agreed to let me in was a foster family that was well known in their community as well as to the State of Kansas foster care system. The family was known for taking in "Problem" children, which I guess I kind of was after moving around from place to place so many times. I began running away and was labled as a "Runner" so that's what finally got me in a family and out of state hospitals.

 

My hope of having a family was quickly crushed when I realized I was not living in a home, I was living in hell!

 

Author's Note

Please ignore grammar. This is a work in progress, the content will change and the order of things will change. I am journaling until i have what i want and then i will put it all together to create a book.