I just saw this video and comment on my friend Heidi's Facebook page and it made me teary. Here's the video:
Here's Heidi's comment:
OMG This makes me crazy! The most often unbroken cycle of poverty. We're products of how we're raised. We don't know what we don't know. The assumption that when you're a poor single parent, you're neglectful or abusive. The inability of some to look at, help and encourage this family like a family unit. The amount of anxiety she endured as a rape survivor with PTSD, wondering who was around her children...every single day. (That part actually makes my chest hurt). The money NJ taxpayers spent paying three separate foster parents...rather than helping one family. The "I'm always ready to fight" mantra of this mom haunts me. That's the mantra of a person who hasn't yet had time to live. She's still checking the locks, looking outside, worrying...and just surviving, even when her mind tells her she's safe, her nervous system doesn't believe it. That's scary. I want to buy and run a home for mom's like this, someday, and help every one of them move from just surviving to actually living and feeling good about that life."Heidi Aylward
I hope she does because she's been a mom at 16 who is poor and has an ACE score of 9 and who has had to fight to become and to feel safe. We need people like Heidi running programs and organizing support because getting it, having lived it makes one know things those who haven't don't.
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