One of my earliest memories was the night my father got arrested for physically assaulting my mom. I was four years old. I was eating microwaved Chef Boyardee raviolis while I watched the police come in and take pictures of the cut on my mom’s lip.

From that point forward, my childhood memories were filled with similar experiences.  We moved from place to place, sometimes in our car, sometimes in tents, once in a greenhouse. I had an older brother who had passed of SIDS before I was born, an older sister, a younger sister, and a younger brother. We were always on the move and never sure where we were going.

I was born in California and from there we moved around across the country: Alaska, Hawaii, South Dakota, Mississippi, Florida, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and then on my own I moved to Washington state after graduating high school and haven’t looked back. Despite all our life circumstances, my mom did manage to get through school and become a nurse. Shortly after graduating, she joined the Air Force. The culture shock from our hippy lifestyle to one of living on a military base was intense but more stable than we had ever been.

On August 24th, 2005, I turned 10 years old. We were living on Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, MS. Instead of celebrating, we were gathering up what we could and evacuating to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Adding to the list of traumatic experiences, Hurricane Katrina is definitely an experience that is hard to forget. What was supposed to be a short term evacuation turned into a cross country move to Montana. We had a small car that couldn’t hold much. We traveled with my mom and dad in the front seat and us four kids in the back sharing seat belts. I was enrolled in school for 2 weeks before my mom was told we could come back to the base in Mississippi. From there we were stationed to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. Life quickly unraveled after the hurricane. My mom cheated on my dad and began abusing drugs. She worked the night shift, but we began to see less and less of her as she stopped coming home.

My dad packed all us kids up and drove us to Oregon where we met his family. My parents got divorced and my mother signed custody over to my dad. Things took a really bad turn for my siblings and I as my father drank his way through the divorce. He was often extremely aggressive and angry when he was drinking and we spent many nights unsure of what our future was going to be. My mom quickly lost her nursing license due to substance abuse. I hated her. I hated her for what she did, but mostly I hated that she left all of us kids with an abusive, alcoholic father.

My childhood was nothing short of traumatic. The one thing that kept me grounded was school. School was my safe place. I connected with every adult I possibly could and did  everything I could to get recognized as being well-behaved and smart. I excelled in school. I began collecting certificates from every school I attended and 17 schools later I graduated from North Medford High School with a plan to escape the chaos that was my homelife.

I moved to Washington and attended Pacific Lutheran University. I pursued a BA in Psychology while working multiple jobs to get through school. Life didn’t necessarily get easier. I  struggled with my mental health and to this day am still processing and working through my trauma. I decided to go back to school and get my teaching license when I was living in a 5th wheel while my husband was going to school to become a farrier, and I was taking care of our newborn daughter. I struggled with postpartum depression and had many breastfeeding and postpartum complications. I was  emergency certified as a substitute teacher and I fell in love being in the classroom. I wanted to be and embody the many teachers that helped me get through life. I am now three years in, working as an elementary special education teacher.