I am 20-years-old and I have a three-year-old daughter and a baby on the way. My life has not been easy, but I have tried to learn from each experience along the way.

It kind of started before I was even born. My grandfather burned down a house with his family in it. Only my grandmother and my mother survived. My grandmother became mentally ill and began blaming my mother. My mother started drinking to deal with it all.

My mother met my father when he was in a band and eventually they got married. By the time that I was born, my mother was suicidal and drinking heavily. They divorced when I was three months old because of her drinking. Then she would leave me and my two sisters alone to fend for ourselves. I was an infant, and my sisters were six and three. Eventually my father took us. He was in his early twenties and raising three little girls all by himself. When I was five-years-old, he remarried and my step-mother had a son two years older than I was. When I was six, my step-brother molested me. My father and step-mother were fighting a lot. I was having trouble in school already. It was shortly after that when I started a mild form of self-mutilation. I would slap my arms until the blood vessels appeared. I had always had eating problems resulting from the neglect that I had endured from my mother, but it was around this time that I realized how much control I had over food. I began starving myself and throwing up what I did eat. My self-mutilation also increased to scratching my arms until they bled. By the time I was twelve I was drinking and by the next year had progressed to cutting my skin with a knife. I got kicked off of the cheerleading squad because of the drugs and alcohol. My parents would punish me, but not as badly as I punished myself.

At thirteen, things actually got worse. I was molested again, this time by an adult. My father was electrocuted on the job. My self-destructive behavior got worse, and my step-mother’s punishment became abusive. I was raped by an eighteen-year-old. My step-mother told me that I was a whore and that it was my own fault. I tried to kill myself several times. I was punished continually and taken to therapy where I didn’t trust anyone. My mother died of alcoholism when I was fifteen.

At sixteen, my boyfriend and I decided that the way to escape my step-mother was to get me pregnant. When I conceived, he left me. My step-mother hated me even more now and her abuse got worse. I was afraid of her. That was when I was sent by the Department of Children’s Services to The Florence Crittenton Agency. I stayed there until my daughter was three months old and I was eighteen.

Then I went to shelters. I was involved with AA, but there I met an older man and we led each other to drugs and alcohol. I lost custody of my daughter when she was fourteen months old. My life truly fell apart then. It is just a haze of drugs, alcohol and abuse from strangers and so-called friends. Finally, doctors realized that I was bi-polar. This time I began an honest recovery. I worked so hard and regained joint custody of my daughter. I am married now and I have attended three semesters in college and plan to go to LPN school. I am also expecting my second child. For the first time ever in my life, I am safe and happy. I chose to attend the parenting and prenatal classes at FCA this time because, I realized that when I lived there . . .they gave me the tools for a good future - and I can use all of the help I can get.