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What is your Normal?  A Former Foster Child Reflects

10/19/2020

2 Comments

 
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What is your normal? As a nine-year-old, emptiness and depression became my normal moving forward.

We escaped CPS to squat in an abandoned house. My sister was pregnant and my brother was preparing for a child at 14 years old. It gave us hope that my dad promised to restore the abandoned house we lived in. I dreamt of my dad fixing up our house and creating a resurgence within the neighborhood. Unfortunately, the bad influences of the community only worsened my mom’s drug use. My dad continued
selling drugs and addicts throughout the neighborhood regularly showed up at our house.

Michigan winter began and the Detroit winds became brutal. Without running water, we had to scoop snow off of the ground, carry it inside in buckets, and wait for it to melt to use as makeshift showers. Without a bed, we regularly piled up clothes to sleep on to avoid feeling the wood and sharp nails sticking out of the floor. To this day, the
smell of gasoline recalls those gasoline heaters we used to warm our dinner in abandoned housing.

My dad had been making excuses for months of why he couldn’t fix the house and
resorted to hiding from CPS. I began to lose faith in my parents. We did our best, but
my parents had no choice but to let us go.

One month later, I entered foster care as the youngest of five siblings. The feeling of
having my parents let me down was the beginning of my mental health issues. Filled
with anxiety I thought, “If I couldn’t trust my parents, I reasoned, who would I be able to trust?”
I entered into the system buried in emptiness. I was alone and afraid.

Though I had experienced homelessness, neglect, and living in abandoned housing in
my childhood, five years later my sense of loneliness would take a turn for the worse.
March 15th, 2011 would haunt me for many years to come.

I was in the seventh grade when I was walking home from school and brutally
attacked by three high school students, having a brick slammed into my teeth.

I ran into a random McDonald’s, asking anyone who would listen to call the
ambulance. People stared, covering their mouths in shock. I tried to remain calm.
Gasping, I dragged myself to the counter. All eyes were on me, but no one was
offering to help. People seemed paralyzed by shock, which only made me more
frightened of what had happened to me.

I vaguely noticed that blood was pouring out of my mouth, and that this made it hard
to speak. Finally, the cashier came from behind the counter and handed me a warm
wet rag. Once I looked down to grab it, I noticed the blood all over my coat, my
hands, and even the cashier.

In the ambulance, it was confirmed that I had lost six teeth, four of them partially
gone and the front two completely knocked out. Later on, I found out that a part of
the bone structure underneath my nose was damaged and partially gone as well.
Every day after school I was forced to walk to the bus stop, next to the McDonalds
where I lost my teeth. Every day after school I saw my blood sitting in the McDonalds
parking lot on my way to the bus stop. As I waited for the bus, I relived the incident,
every single day. Walking past the spot where I lost my teeth, I noticed pieces of
broken teeth in the parking lot that were probably mine. Walking home from school
was never the same.
​
Weeks later the Mcdonald’s cashier who comforted me during the incident came out
to the bus stop to check on me. She asked how I was doing and how I was handling
things. Sometimes the small things mean so much. She couldn’t have had any idea
what I was going through. The amount I was dealing with. She didn’t know that I felt
alone and was deeply depressed. In only a few minutes, she made my day and
made me feel loved. Something I had been unfamiliar with for most of my life.
Many Black communities have been deprived of information on positive ways to
maintain or improve mental health. Society has put a dollar value on mental health
and if you can’t afford a counselor, then you’re out of luck. Of course, mental health
support and the stability it offers help pull impoverished communities away from the
brink of destruction. Many impoverished Black communities have little if any access
to information about mental health.

Anxiety and depression are swept under the rug in Black communities, usually going
unnamed and unaddressed. Because I grew up in a household that lacked any
knowledge of how to resolve conflict healthily, I almost became a product of this
system. It wasn’t until I took advantage of the resource of counseling that I learned
how generational cycles could be reversed and how to disrupt the path of brokenness
set for Black communities.


-Justin Black

Learn more about how you too can redefine your normal in our new book Redefining Normal: How Two Foster Kids Beat The Odds and Discovered Healing, Happiness and Love available now at re-definingnormal.com and on Amazon beginning November 9th, 2020.

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2 Comments
tiana bonny
10/30/2020 03:00:17 pm

After 3 Years in a relationship with my Boyfriend, my Boyfriend started going out with other girls and showing me cold love, on several occasions he threatens to break-up with me if I dare question him about his affair with other girls, I was totally devastated and confused until an old friend of mine told me about a spell caster on the internet called DR Jumba who help people with their relationship and marriage problem by the powers of his gods, At first I doubted If such thing ever exists but decided to give it a try, When I contact him, he told me everything I needed to do and I did and he helped me cast a Love Spell and within 28Hours my boyfriend came back to me and started apologizing, now he has stopped going out with girls and he is with me for good and for real. Contact this Great spell Caster for your relationship or marriage problem.
Here's his contact  : Wiccalovespelltools@yahoo.com or whatsapp: +1 (908) 517 4108  WEBSITE:  drjumbaspellhome.wordpress.com      

Reply
Tracy
8/26/2021 12:50:15 am

PRIEST ODUNGA AT ODUNGASPELLTEMPLE@GMAIL.COM DID A FAITHFUL SPELL ON MY CHEATING SPOUSE.

Monica and I used to be best friends, and sometimes even lovers. We sang together in church for almost 10 years. I knew that she would go out on Friday nights and hook up with guys either in downtown Raleigh, or at Applebees in Knightdale. Her first husband  dumped her after about a year of marriage. Then about 4 years ago she married some guy she met online, an air force pilot, and moved down to Texas. Imagine my surprise when I stopped by the house one afternoon when I was supposed to be at work and saw my husband’s car and some strange car in the driveway. I snuck in and found them in our bed. Neither one saw me at the door, so I snuck back out without telling them. Later that night I even found dome sexy pictures of her on my husband’s phone. What a way to find out my friend had moved back to North Carolina, and now lives in Goldsboro. I contacted Priest Odunga at odungaspelltemple@gmail.com who helped me put a faithful spell on my husband. Not up to 3 days later, my husband came to me confessing how he has been sleeping with her for more than 8 months and how he bought her the new car which parked in our driveway the day I found out. I was happy with Priest Odunga. He is well reliable. I would advise anyone who need their husband back to Email this man at odungaspelltemple@gmail.com OR contact his WHATSAPP at +2348167159012

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    AUTHOR
    Dr. John DeGarmo is the founder and director of The Foster Care Institute, and is recognized as a leading expert in foster care. Dr. John is an TEDX Talk speaker, international trainer and speaker, consultant, author, and most importantly, a father.  He has been a foster parent  with over 60 children who have come to live in his home from adoption and foster care. He is the author of many books, including the  book  
    The Foster Care Survival Guide: The Essential Book for Today's Foster Parents.

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