I believe that trauma can either make or break you as an individual and will either scare you to death or strengthen you to turn your pain into a platform until death.

Life has never really been easy for me. I was placed into the broken foster care system when I was just two years old and both of my parents have been incarcerated for a large portion of my life.

The foster care system failed me when they placed me into a home where I was almost beat to death at the age of four by my foster dad. I had to learn how to do basic things such as walk and talk again because of the severity of the head injury I sustained.

Trauma seemed to be a shadow on every sun shined day to me and the raincoat I thought would keep me warm from the cold wet rainy days. Rape is a four letter word I experienced before I could even understand how it fully feels to be loved by a man. As a body larger than mine pinned me down as I felt helpless and longed for my father or mother to come save me.

The father and mother who were imprisoned. Who trusted a society who puts money before the lives of children. Who are told if they trusted a person with the title social worker that because this individual went to school for a certain amount of years and accumulated a piece of paper the world calls degree that this person would have their children's best interest at heart and be the savior to the orphaned kids. As if there wasn't a cheat sheet called quizlet where these certified children saviors could get degrees without knowing a thing about a child and their needs.

Something only a parent or a person with a strong motherly and fatherly instinct could understand. Like the job of a social worker with a good heart. Who places children in the care of an individual they see as qualified. They make those children the poster kids. Look at their three beautiful brown faces who developed from teen parents who grew up in the "hood". So their agency can get recognition for being a hero, but how can you be a hero when your poster kids had their own heros.

They had an entire family fighting for them, wanting them, qualified to get them, crying tears from the separation. A grandmother who lost her daughter to the streets as she serves a life sentence for robbing a store to get money for her kids to buy them christmas presents so they can know that even though mama made bad choices and they no longer lived with her she loved them and would make sure they got Christmas presents.

She's serving a life sentence because things went the wrong way as she robbed the store at gunpoint and the man got aggressive with her and out of fear she shot him to death because she didn't just ask her family for help.

A grandmother who can't speak to or see the grandkids of the daughter who's stuck in jail for life. I am the granddaughter of a grandmother who died from a heart attack from the stress before I had the chance to meet her again because as she reach out to the agency and new family they ignored her calls in fear that she might  try to take us back from the new family and lady after she got attached and I called her mother. As she held me in a chair as I cried for my own mother.

I am the daughter of criminal teen parents who chose the street life over their own children by accident as they wanted to do life on their own and not ask for help from the family who tried to step up, but were denied by a agency with workers who have degrees to care for children, but with all their smarts and knowledge about children thought it was best to keep children who were small and afraid and confused away from their own flesh and blood. Grandmother, grandfather, and aunts, and uncles, and cousins.

I am my mother's daughter. I love hard and hate asking for help, but before I do anything that lands me in jail I will mess up my credit and take out loans in a world that looks down on black women who use food stamps, but how else am I supposed to eat when the job I work barely pays the rent and I'm a full time college student so in order to pass I can't work overtime because I also have to study.

I am a former poster kid of a corrupt agency who takes children away from their loved ones and pays a complete stranger to care for them while those same children's families cries out for them to return home.

While a caucasian  boy fifteen struggles to survive because his parents are both dead. I am the black girlfriend of a white man who didn't get the same messed up opportunities I got in life. Who turned to the streets and pulled a gun on cops and got shot by them because he no longer wanted to live in a world without his mother and father. They sent him to jail instead of rehab.

Where a woman older than him who was supposed to help him, married him while he was still in jail. Not giving him the opportunity to experience life a little, make mistakes, be the young adult he didn't get a chance to be because of the years of imprisonment. He is the father of two precious little girls, but struggles without the guidance from his own father. While his teen sister, pregnant, struggled with her older boyfriend slept outside of a walmart. Where her grandparents saved her under the condition that she gets rid of her boyfriend.

I am the woman of a world that expects smart women not to ride or die for men they don't see  fit for us. While those same men thug the struggle out with us. While we're faithful and they cheat and we tolerate it so we don't have to do life alone.Some would call her weak-minded, but I see her as strong, and loving, and look up to her as she tries to survive in a world without her mama and daddy.

I speak for the fatherless women. I speak for the motherless women. The orphaned, the abused, the single mothered, the foster cared women who crave love.

I gave my life my life to Christ when I was 12 years old and became a Godly woman. 8 years later I am the Godly woman I wish I was 8 years ago. A woman that would tell the younger her that the only man that would be 100% faithful to her is Jesus and to find a man that would at least try to be faithful is to only chase after God himself. I am the woman that would tell the younger me that when you are devoted to chasing after God the right man will have to find God to find me because I would be so far ahead spiritually only God himself would be able to say here my daughter it's time to build your own family with a man that's fixed on me. 

I am the woman that would tell myself to wait for God to show me my one because it would save that young girl hurt from many.

I am the Godmother of a little girl who needs an additional mother figure. Although the system did not fail her by allowing her Grandmother to take her in when her life was a hurricane with both of her parents spending time in and out of jail.

I am the Godly woman who will break generational curses. I am the Godly woman who  will break down racial barriers. I am the imperfectly perfect Godly woman that God uses in spite of my imperfections. I strive to bring justice and love to the motherless and fatherless children. I strive to advocate for the raped and abused.

Isaiah 43:2 says

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

I am the woman who sees the fire of life and walks towards them instead of away because God stood in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and I have faith he will stand with me through my fires.

I am the woman who sees the water she can't physically swim through, but knows that God will part the seas of life and make way for me just like he parted the red sea for the Israelites and when my enemies try to follow me into those waters I know that God will drown them because what's on the other side of those waters were designed for me by God.

I am a woman that hates storms, but knows that God has the power to calm the storms with just his words. God put Noah's whole family on a boat and kept them safe because of their obedience to him so I will trust him and obey him knowing he will always protect me.

I am the woman who sees a lion or problems and situations as big as a lion and doesn't get scared because God protected Daniel and then got the same lions his enemies created for him to eat his enemies after they saw God protect Daniel.

I am a woman who is grateful for all the imperfectly perfect women who have helped me get to where I am and taught me something along the way that made me a stronger woman.

Our traumas either breaks us or makes us. I am the woman who was scarred, but not broken by my traumas. I am the woman I needed as a little girl. Who are you?