“And so it went on for years and years”… moving from location to location, house to house, parent to grandparent, and usually after the DFCS case worker had just completed one of their many inspections. Of course, prior to that inspection was a dash of meticulous cleaning the hour before they arrived…and then shortly there after was the next phase of the routine, when the family packed whatever would fit in their mother’s tiny sedan trunk and head to another town.
Meet Maranda. A senior at Georgia Southern University, she now reflects back on a life of obstacles, and her own words, can “be content” because it all worked together to get her where she is today. Maranda is a former resident of the Georgia Sheriffs’ Youth Homes. The story line of her life has been one with ups and downs, but she shares her happy ending.
At the age of nine and in the fourth grade, skipping town in the middle of the night usually without any explanation and more times than she could count, it all came to head after a two month “layover” in Savannah, Ga. Maranda’s mother dropped her and her siblings off with their grandfather advising them that she was going to look for an apartment to rent…but she never returned. After being picked up by a local police officer while playing unattended at a local school track, the four children were placed in a group home (the first of many). Their mother had been “hospitalized” for drug abuse. Of course in the mind of a nine year old, the extent and severity of that problem was unclear, so Maranda became fixated on reuniting with her mother.
Finally after two and a half years of getting “sober”, her mother was well enough to regain custody of Maranda and her siblings. However, she soon relapsed and the children were once again in the care of the state.
“I felt bad for her the first time she relapsed. But then I became old enough to know what she was doing when she made a habit of it. We watched her walk out the door with the little bit of money we had saved up from our first jobs to get her next fix. So it was easy to lose respect for her… and then she dropped the charade of being sorry for her actions,” shared Maranda.
That didn’t stop the “charade” though. Once threats from DFCS came alive again, they embarked on yet another middle of the night drop off …from one stop to the next: first her grandmother, then her aunt, whom they had only met twice. After a few weeks of living with their aunt, Maranda’s mother returned to pick them up and the children refused to leave with her. At this point, they had all been enrolled in a new school and found a glimpse of stability, a glimpse of a “norm”.
“My mother left and we were happy, at least for a little while. Then our aunt became cold and resentful because we were three extra mouths to feed and three additional bodies to pay for,” says Maranda. “The brewing resentment then escalated into verbal abuse towards the three youngsters to the point they ‘begged to be placed back in a group home’.”
That rocked on for three years and Maranda shares that as she looks back, she understands the “stress extra mouths could add” and is thankful for everything her aunt did for them, but for a long time she and her siblings were plagued with fear.
The unpleasant environment became so emotionally obvious that one of Maranda’s high school teachers offered to take her in. She and her siblings moved in and lived in their home for “one beautiful summer…the best summer of my life.”
At the end of that summer the children were introduced to the Georgia Sheriffs’ Youth Home for the first time. Although very apprehensive, Maranda found she was very grateful that her teacher had taken them in and then made the arrangements for her and her brother to join Herrington Homestead.
“Despite my anxiety at first, I realized this was the best opportunity I have EVER been presented with. Georgia Sheriffs and Herrington Homestead gave me stability… along with the means of securing a future for myself. Not once in the five years that I’ve been in the care of the youth home, did their belief in me waver. I am beyond grateful for the tremendous blessing that Herrington Homestead has been to me!” exclaimed Maranda.
Maranda says it best when she summarizes the chapters of her life’s story and writes her own happy ending: “The past can be acknowledged, but it doesn’t have to be in the fore front. Not once, since joining my family at Herrington Homestead, have I felt like I couldn’t do anything, simply because of their support. I’m living in the present and am at ease with my past. I’m grateful and proud to be able to say I have completed high school and am now about to earn my B. A. from GSU. I am so happy with the way things have turned out…”