10.18.2024

My Story: Savannah’s Life (Part 1)

By Savannah, Launch Success participant

This story contains sensitive content, such as domestic violence and sexual assault.

I was in foster care from the ages 10 to 18 and then I went into Extended Foster Care from ages 18 to 21. This is my life and my story, and I wanted to share it with the world. I hope it makes people see that they are not alone in certain things in life, and it is good to talk about it and let it be known—but only when you are ready. It has taken me 13 years to even be able to think about writing this. I have always wanted to. I just needed my mind to be ready to go through all the memories again. 

“This is my life and my story. . .”

Growing up was really hard. I never knew who my father was, and my mother was a drug user. I never knew a time that she wasn’t doing drugs. She had a lot of boyfriends and men coming around our house when I was growing up. Some of the men were not always the nicest. 

I have a little brother who is 2 years younger than me and has autism. We never really got to know what parents were. All I remember is that I was the one that took care of us from a young age. 

“We never really got to know what parents were.”

My mother would lock us in our room and not let us out, to where we wouldn’t eat for days on end. One day, I was thirsty but didn’t want to wake my mom with the sink, so I decided to grab water from the toilet. Another time, I decided to get a mug and fill it with ranch dressing, shredded cheese and pepperoni slices because that was what I could find in the fridge. There were days where we would try or were able to sneak into her room to snag some of the snacks she kept hidden from us, just so we could have something to eat.  

At one point, the school started sending us home with backpacks full of food. When we brought those bags home, she would take them to her room and hide them from us. Eventually we started taking some items from the backpacks before she had the chance to take them. 

One thing that I hated growing up was whenever we missed the bus. Our punishment was having to stay home locked up in our rooms. She knew school was our getaway. One day when I missed the bus, I decided to walk myself to school. When I got home that day, I got in trouble. 

“. . . school was our getaway.” 

All these things made me feel as though she didn’t love us and that we were just something there to ruin her life. She always made me feel trapped, even when I was at school. She made me feel as though drugs were more important than the life she brought into the world. 

One day, my mother went on a date, and she didn’t come home that night, leaving me and my brother all alone. The next morning, she had our neighbor come get us and take us to her. Fast forward some, not sure how long, and they got married. At the beginning, things got better. But slowly it started to go back to the way it was before, with us locked in our rooms. The only difference being that now she would have her husband tie long strings from our doorknobs to the bathroom door so we couldn’t get out.  

At that point, I decided to make a slit in the screen of my window so I could get out and play. All I wanted to do as a child was play with my friends. I ended up doing it to my brother’s window as well so he could join me. Whenever she noticed we were outside, we would end up in even bigger trouble. Then they stopped feeding us again. One day I found raw cookie dough and ate the entire thing. I hid the wrapper under a china cabinet so I wouldn’t get in trouble, but my mother’s husband found it. He was washing potatoes and threw one at me. It hit my thigh, leaving a huge bruise, and really hurt. 

“All I wanted to do as a child was play with my friends.”

After a couple years, they split. He ended up still being in our lives as our stepfather and would come get us every weekend. She ended up getting a new boyfriend. And things ended up getting worse.  

Eventually my stepfather stopped seeing us. The new guy was a real mean person. They would always get into fights that got super physical. After one fight, I remember her talking on the phone with someone about what had happened and all I saw was blood on the door frame.  

When I turned 8, that’s when the sexual abuse started. I told my mother about what the man was doing to me. She decided not to believe me and chose him over me. This made me feel horrible, sick and betrayed. What kind of mother believes a man over their own child when being told something like that? One who was a drug addict and was never ready to be a mother due to being a child herself. 

“[She] was never ready to be a mother due to being a child herself.”

On April 6, 2011, I was 10 years old and in class, doing my normal thing. My brother wasn’t there; he missed the bus that morning. Suddenly, I was called down to the office. When I got to the office, a CPS worker was there. She took me to her car, and my brother was already in there. In the car were also two Easter baskets, one for me and one for him. I was told that I wouldn’t be going back home that day. All I remember was being brought to my grandmother’s house; this grandmother isn’t blood, but she is more of a grandmother than my blood one.  

We were there for about six months and hadn’t heard anything about our mother trying to do anything to get us back. We didn’t even receive one phone call from her. My grandparents had some family things happen that made it to where they couldn’t provide the best care possible for me and my brother, so we were taken to my brother’s aunt and uncle’s house. I was there for almost a year before they decided they didn’t want me. They would keep my brother.  

“. . .they decided they didn’t want me.”

I got placed in a new home and had to change schools the next school year, which I had already done once. I was able to finish out the 6th grade with the family I was placed with, thankfully. Then I was placed in a temporary home with a Christian family who I didn’t know at all. This was my first-ever stranger placement. The whole time I was there, my grandparents were doing everything they could to get me back into their care and ended up doing it the summer before I went into 7th grade. We ended up moving in the middle of 7th grade, so I went to two different schools.  

I was a horrible child when I was with my grandparents, and taking care of me at that point in my life was a challenge. I didn’t have the support I needed, and I acted out in unhealthy ways. That ended up making them have to say they couldn’t take care of me anymore. My case worker showed up one day after school without me knowing what was going on. I came home to all my stuff packed in trash bags and being told that I would no longer be living here anymore. I didn’t want to leave. They were my family. I hated moving and being abandoned. 

“I didn’t have the support I needed. . .”

The way children find out they had a failed placement is hard on them. When leaving my brother’s aunt’s house, I got told a couple minutes before that a case worker would be coming to take me. With my grandparents, I had no fair warning that I was being taken away from a home I had been in for almost a year. I really hated it when this happened. It would happen a lot—not just to me but to other foster children as well.  

Growing up I had one thing that stuck with me, and it was the fact my brother was able to bring something from home with him when he was taken from our mother. And all I had with me was the clothing I was wearing and my school backpack. That made me so angry and jealous for a while, and I have no idea why it made me feel that way. 

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