Celebrating how sponsor families help

My name is going to remain anonymous. I had a really good childhood except for a few things that happened when I was a child. That is only between me and my therapist. We lived in a nice house in what at the time was a good neighborhood. After a while the neighborhood started to go down hill; it became the ghetto. Most of the young people that went to my school and lived in my neighborhood were statistics.

If you weren’t the one out of four that were graduating, you were either going to end up dead, in jail, an addict, a struggling teen mom, or a drug dealer and/or gang member. One of my middle school teachers gave us those statistics before sending us off to high school. He told us some of us might not live to see 11th grade or age 17.

My life has been bittersweet ever since age sixteen. Two weeks after my sixteenth birthday, I lost one of my best friends ever, my mom. Later that year, I was sent to live with a family member. It didn’t work out well. I hated going home after school. Sometimes I’d wish I could stay at school. I ended up running away. I hated being pushed around, teased and mentally abused. Families are not supposed to be like that.

I called a friend and told her I’d had enough. I ran around the empty house rushing to gather and pack the things I needed. My friend and her foster dad arrived shortly to pick me up. I crashed at their place for two days, and then headed to Reno where my best friend lived. You could say I did a lot of acting out at nineteen. I partied a lot, got my first tattoo, lost my virginity, and graduated high school.

In 2008, I moved to Hawaii. My best friend and I went to Waikiki to go to clubs, drink, dance, and meet military guys. I love Hawaii not because of the parties; the spirit of Aloha is all around. The people and the way of life are laid back. People are great and everyone’s friendly like family and it just feels like home. If you’ve ever lived there then you know what I mean.

When I was in Hawaii I met a guy named Mark, he was a handsome man who always knew what to say. I got pregnant shortly after we met. He really encour-aged me to get an abortion because he wasn’t ready to be a father. I told him I wanted to do adoption. Things didn’t work out between us. We both went our separate ways.

I contacted an adoption agency by the name of Jour-ney’s of the Heart. The agency flew me to Oregon on March 18th 2010. I picked out a family whom I adored so much. On May 21, 2010, at around 5:30 a.m. I went into labor. Later that day, at 8:46 p.m. I gave birth to a 4lb, 8oz baby girl. Afterwards I cried be-cause I knew I couldn’t do it. I’m not an emotional person, really, but I looked into her eyes and my heart melted and I decided to keep her.

So the agency had to cut me off. I began searching for places that could take me in until I found a place to live. A woman from the agency gave me a small list of numbers that I could call for help. One of those num-bers was Bethany House, a place that helps young women like me. I called Bethany House and talked to a woman named Beth and told her about my situation. Within days she called back and told me she had a family for me to meet.

On May 28, 2010, I moved in with the Bennett’s. They are a great family who help me out a lot. I would like to take time out and give them a big THANK YOU. Thank you Nancy, Jon, Shelby, and Macaela, you have done so much for me and my baby. Today we have hope and a new beginning.