Group -

My foster daughter called me today. She just recently got paroled from
prison for having tried to assault and rob a woman in downtown
Baltimore. She's been depressed since she was 13, because she was
repeatedly raped by her mother's boyfriend. Her mother knew about it
and did nothing to stop it - in fact, accused her of seducing the man.
When my foster daughter was 13, she herself reported the man to the
police. She was placed in a residential treatment facility until she
was 16, when she came to live with my family. She was a violent person,
thinking of nothing whatsoever except what she wanted, when she wanted
it. She once assaulted an 18-year-old boy because he had sex with a
16-year-old girl after my foster daughter (R) broke up with him. She
yelled, repeatedly, 'How could you do this to me?' and of course he had
no answer, since he wasn't even thinking of her while he and his new
girlfriend were doing their thing. In the years since, she's been
arrested for assault twice (in addition to the assault that finally sent
her to prison), she's been arrested for prostitution, for drug use
(cocaine and heroin), and for a variety of other things. Every
relationship she got into ended with her having a screaming fit because
the other person finally got tired of her having to have her way about
every little tiny thing in her life.

As I said, she was recently paroled from prison. She called me tonight
and told me that the light has finally dawned: she doesn't HAVE to be
her mother's daughter - she can be her own person. For the first time
since she was 16 (she's 34 now) I heard her laugh. She called her
mother and told her she's forgiven her. Her mother doesn't, to this
day, think she did anything wrong. R has held down a job since May 8 -
almost 4 months - 3 1/2 months longer than she's managed to hold a
single job since she's been an adult. Except for 'exotic dancing' and
prostitution, she hasn't been able to hold a job in spite of having been
sent to cosmetology school (from which she got expelled when she trashed
a classroom because a teacher wouldn't give her an extra day on an
assignment), few months in a community college (which she just decided
not to go to), and a class in Word (which she failed by one point
because she was concentrating more on her boyfriend who offered to move
her to Chicago with him than on her class).

Anyway, she's given up drinking and abusing drugs. She figured that
having a year headstart (the year she spent in prison) gave her a good
way to quit, and she's been going to meetings and getting her urinalyses
and seeing her parole officer and paying her bills on time, and doing
all the things a responsible adult woman on her own should do. She is
living in a half-way house because she can't earn enough money to
support living on her own, but she's been able to pay her rent
regularly, and next week she has an appointment to see a therapist.
She's seen many therapists in the past, and none of them seemed to do
her any good, but she says that now she's ready to deal with some of the
issues she's never been able to share with a counselor; she's ready to
be healed.

You cannot imagine how good it was to hear her laugh! You cannot
imagine how good it was to hear her say she's her own person now, she
doesn't HAVE to be her mother's daughter.

I know it's not customary to brag about someone else's success, but I
just have to crow: I'm so very proud of her now. She's done what many,
many people have never been able to do: get on with her life anyway.

Hug yourselves often!

Blessings,

Terry S
--
"Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the
sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." - Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970