Meet Mary.
When Mary was young, her parents became religious in a way that resembled a cult, deciding one day to leave everything behind and follow their beliefs. She said, “One day they just said, ‘we’re leaving.’ They left everything in the house, packed us girls up with only the clothes on our back, and packed a little trailer with a few things. We left everything, not telling anyone where we were going.” They headed out west towards the desert, slowly pawning all of their belongings to pay for food and gas. Soon, it was just their family, a 68 Chevy Station Wagon, and a community of other homeless people in the desert. Her parents, who called themselves, “self appointed missionaries,” moved their family from town to town picking up random jobs off and on for 10 years, having a few more children on the road with assistance from midwives. Even Mary delivered one of her siblings as just a young teen.
Eventually, they ended up in Florida. At the age of 14, however, Mary discovered the man she called her father was actually her stepfather, her biological father lived in Michigan. She explained how her stepfather was a manipulative person and would beat her for wanting to know more about her biological father. Over the next four years, her now stepfather began making sexual advances towards Mary. Mary remembers feeling depressed and fearful. She said, “He would say, ‘well there is no one good in this world, so when you are ready to have kids, I will take care of that.’ I knew if I stayed I probably would have been in jail for killing him. So I left.” Her parents threatened her with never seeing her siblings again if she left, but Mary needed to get away.
At the age of 18, a co-worker at a greek restaurant offered her a place to live while she was looking through the classifieds for rentals. After a few months, her roommate then tracked down her biological father for her. He drove down to Florida and brought her home to Michigan. She lived with her father for a while before marrying a man, moving in with him, and having two children. With her confidence still being shaky, she one day realized she married a man exactly like her stepfather and needed to leave once again. She said, “I hit a point it was like divorcing my stepdad, going through that whole thing all over again. I was like, ‘Mary, why didn’t you learn?’ But it only made me stronger. And I now have two beautiful children through it. They are my strength.” Growing up curious and educating herself, this drove her to learn and develop herself to be successful. When asked about her motivation, she said, “I do everything for my children. When I started seeing that their dad was a lot like my stepdad, I needed to do whatever I could for them. I still have situations where my confidence is low. We are always learning. I’m not perfect, I don’t know it all… but I strive to learn more for my kids and for me.” Mary is now a supervisor at her job, succeeding for herself and her children… healing and growing stronger every day.