Before I went into foster care, I always looked up to my biological mother.
She was a woman of God, fierce and taught me a key lesson: There is always hope. It’s a lesson that sustained me and still does as I now prepare to enter college – something I would have never imagined just four years ago.
When I was 6 years old, my dad was deported to Mexico. My mother had to care for me and my three siblings – all of us were younger than 8. We lived paycheck-to-paycheck while she worked jobs as a crossing guard before and after school and nine hours per day at a fast food restaurant.
Things took a turn for the worse when my mother got a new boyfriend and they began using drugs. She stopped caring for us properly. We didn’t have much food or clothes, and there was only a single bed with plastic sheets. We had to fend for ourselves in the house while they spent most of their time in the garage out back.
It was difficult to function at school while worrying about what clothes we could wear or what we’d eat when we got home.