Mother was a heroin junkie, died from h.I.V –Angela Curry, a foster child that beat the American system

JANUARY 24, 2015 BY AZUKA JEBOSE MOLOKWU 

   

 

In 1562, a poor English law allowed the placement of poor children, especially immigrant children, into indentured service until they came of age. This practice was imported to the United States and was the beginning of placing children in homes. Nearly thirty years after, in 1636, Benjamin Eaton at the age of seven became the nation’s first foster child. America’s foster care system is older than the United States.

In recent years, more than half a million American children, between ages of nine and 15, spent time in the foster care system, according to the 2011 Federal fiscal year (October 1st through September 30th). Majority of these children were black.

However, through the decades, the foster care system faced its challenges as an abusive system. It became a dysfunctional institution where children confronted hostile care, vices and exposed to vicious lifestyles.

Angela Curry’s life is an endearing story that inspires endurance, hope and happy ending. Angela is a third generation from her family that went through the foster care system. Her grandmother and her mother were placed in foster homes, an experience that turned her life into a “tumultuous life style” and also a pathway to healing. Inside her North Carolina home, Ms. Curry opened up about her life as a child without home, care and comfort; a child drifted by circumstance, yet survived the drifts against all odds: a story that some may relate to on planet earth.

“Jebose, I am from a family of three. I have two brothers. We grew up in a single parent household. My childhood was tumultuous. My mother was a heroin addict. My father abandoned us. I met him for the first time twenty years after walking away from us. Mother’s condition came with its own set of circumstances. I think growing up in the foster care system, being separated from her siblings, and not having a father pushed her into heroin use. She likely had a profound sense of abandonment and hopelessness. The same thing happened to her mother and her siblings (my grandmother, aunts and uncles), so the separation and being placed in the “system” was like a curse which is now broken with my generation. I knew my father briefly. My mother left New Jersey, where he lived, and moved around state to state. I had no contact with him for 20 years. She never told me why she got on drugs but I feel her past and upbringing pushed her into it. She apologised to us a lot for using drugs. She could not help herself. She never sought help for her addiction. She felt abused, abandoned and rejected. She was a great mother that felt the system disappointed her and she disappointed us.

So, she was always telling us how sorry she was for not being a great mother. But she never said why she used heroin. I suspect she was in a lot of pain and did not get the help she needed. Perhaps, she attempted to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. The streets have no pity for those willing to embrace her. In fact, the streets are waiting for unconditional love for anyone able to accept and ride them. But at your own risk! The streets are intoxicatingly attractive. It was from the streets that my mother got the family and love she always wanted from the foster home. But the street also took her life. My brother and I would come home from school and find our mother passed out. She was once very high; she jumped off the roof and broke her neck. Another time, we came home from school and she was lying in a pool of blood. Her eyes were swollen shut and her face and head were bashed in. The local drug dealer beat her with a bat and left her for dead. She survived it though.

“Mother’s addiction hindered her ability to care for us and consequently thrust us into the foster care system several times and eventually, on a permanent basis. My mother died in 1988 of full-blown AIDS due to her intravenous drug use. She was 32 years old. After she died, I experienced the foster care system as it was; a flawed system with ‘dirty little secrets.’ As a ward of the state, I was subjected to verbal and physical abuse and I was also separated from my siblings. To say that my childhood was traumatic would be putting it lightly. After I ‘aged out’ of the system (when you turn 18, the system allows you to do whatever you wished to do), I enrolled into Saint Augustine’s College in 1994 and did very poorly academically. I had never received any sort of grief counselling, therapy, or help to properly address the traumas I experienced. So I turned to alcohol, promiscuity and partying as a means to ease my emotional pains. That downward spiral continued for approximately 13 years. I hit rock bottom when my lifestyle began to affect my health. I was hospitalised for a heart condition caused by all the heavy drinking and smoking. Doctors advised me to quit. Eventually, I did. Later that year, I lost my job and had to collect unemployment. A great opportunity came out of an otherwise bad situation. I was able to go back to school and earned an associate’s degree in Human Services at a local community college in 2006. While I was enrolled in the Human Services programme, one of my instructors shared her story with me about how she triumphed over a 20 year crack cocaine addiction. Her story inspired and changed my life. Her story inspired me to do the same. With her help, I was able to get some ‘impromptu’ counselling and began my sobriety. I graduated from Wake Tech with a 3.6 GPA and wanted to continue my education in the helping profession. In 2009, I gave birth to my first child and experienced a minor setback. I and my daughter were homeless for 10 months. We were residents of a homeless shelter for five months and a transitional housing programme for another five months. When we secured permanent housing in 2010, I decided that I wanted to earn my bachelor’s degree in social work. I enrolled at Shaw University in the fall of 2012 and graduated summa cum laude (3.9 GPA) in the spring of 2014. I am also looking forward to graduate school. These days, I continue my healing journey by making the choice to be happy every day. I practise meditation, prayer, and other alternative healing modalities.

“Despite my upbringing and my past, I am committed to achieving my goals and being successful by virtue of my determination, discipline, and focus. I would like to be an inspiration and empower other people who have faced similar circumstances.

“America’s foster care system is flawed. Most times, the system made situations worse. Children, whose parents could not care for them, often faced horrors in the system that was supposed to protect them. I was physically and psychologically abused in the first home that I went to. The woman who “cared” for us was cruel and hated children. She would lock us outside when she went to work and would beat us often with her fists, broom sticks, belt and any other thing she could find. She even made us shop lift our school clothes so that she wouldn’t have to pay for them. We were removed from her home and separated. I was bounced around from home to home for several years, as were my brothers. There wasn’t much stability in the system. The foster care system was supposed to provide safe and caring homes for children whose parents could not care for them.

“Despite my past, I am committed to achieving my goals and being successful by virtue of my determination, discipline, and focus. I would like to be an inspiration and empower other people who have faced similar circumstances.”

source PUNCH.