Jen - Age 25, An Orphan Who Found Home

   Jen thought her family was normal. That is, until the fifth grade. Then she realized she’d been abused emotionally, mentally, and physically.  It started with her mom but, before long, her dad and three brothers joined in, too. She was constantly being blamed for things she didn’t do. Jen remembers her mom tearing all the pages in one of her schoolbooks to get her in trouble with the teacher.  Her mom cut her hair in the backyard, chopping it off even shorter than her brothers’. She thought it was funny that Jen looked like a boy. By the time she was ten, Jen had to live in the basement, completely isolated from the rest of the family. Although sad and alone, she felt safer being by herself. At least they couldn’t hurt her if she wasn’t around them. Her family never called Jen by her proper name, instead using the terms “it,” or the thing that lives in the basement.”  Although her parents expressed love to her brothers, she received none. Though she felt alone, ridiculed, and dehumanized on the inside, everything appeared fine on the outside.

   On her thirteenth birthday, Jen was told she needed to be out of the house by midnight the day she turned eighteen. The locks would be changed and she would no longer be welcome. They said she had never been part of the family -- that they had made a mistake adopting her. (Jen had been adopted from an orphanage in India where she spent the fir ...

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