00:00I grew up in a dysfunctional family where my mother was a, and my father was a hard-working
00:08man, but he was a violent man. I can recall at the age of six when they were having a
00:16disagreement and she called him out of his name and he punched her. That was the first
00:22time I seen him hit her. My father worked, like I said, he tried to provide as much as
00:28he could for the family. Many a times when he would go to sleep, my mother would take
00:33the money from his pockets and go out and drink. And my father would wake up, he would go down
00:39to the bar and they would start again. But did it come to the point where my dad would
00:43say, I'm not going to fight no more. I can't fight you no more. So they separated. The
00:48system wouldn't allow a girl child to go with the father. So I had to go with my mother wherever
00:54she went. When I went to live with my mom, her drinking was bad. She would leave me in
01:00the house by myself. Many a days, I didn't know how to take care of myself. I did the
01:07best I could. The system came in and separated all the children. Everybody went different
01:12ways. My oldest brother stepped in and he told the system what was going on, how my mother
01:17was leaving me by myself. So the system came in and took me out of the house and put me
01:23in a group home at the age of nine.
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