When I was 10 years old my dad passed away. I felt like my whole world would fall apart, any one of you who has lost someone like this knows what I was feeling. But little did I know that my world would fall together. My mom had a hard time coping and began drugs soon after he passed. She began dating about a month later. She met someone abusive towards me, my siblings, and her but she stayed with him. She soon shut herself off from us. Now from the age of 10 to 11 I raised myself, fed myself, and cleaned the house. My siblings and I had a connection you would think could never fall apart. I was holding on to hope, hope that life would fall back to how it was in the spring but it never did and I never went back there ever again. We spent the night at the Dfax office, which is the children in youth for Georgians. I barely slept that night. I was barely holding on, how could life get worse? Why was God doing this to me? After a long dreaded night, I went to live with a foster family. I was nervous but I went. I was safe. Little did I know things could in fact get worse. My sister, her name is Morgan, and my brother, his name is Dane were there. I’m not gonna get into details about what happened but she did something, bad, which in turn removed all of us from the house because we were one in the foster care system. We went to a temporary house for a week then got kicked out and went to another house for a week. About 11 months had gone by and I had lived in three different houses with different families and I was barely keeping up in school. I never even learned all my multiplication tables or states because you learn those in 4th grade and 4th grade me didn't even have a permanent home. Now, I thought for sure we would stay at the new house when we got kicked out, but no. This time, she disobeyed again. And I developed trust issues, since I couldn't experience love because of her. I got judged at school because of her and I thought, how could this get any worse? Well After living at the new house for another 3 months I was moving to a whole nother state, but Dane didn't come, he stayed to graduate at his school in Georgia. Moving to Pennsylvania to meet my half-sister on my Dad’s side to live with for the rest of my childhood was new and exciting but Morgan was coming with me. And again, she disobeyed, badly. She got sent away to a mental hospital but she kept getting worse. How could she keep getting worse? Something happened and I was given the option, now, I was old enough to choose. Stay, or go with her? And I chose to stay. I needed to choose myself for once. I didn’t have friends, I had lost my siblings, and I was learning how to adapt to a new state with new people. I moved to Richland, which was a life-changing experience. I was my own person, I finally didn’t live in her shadow. I chose myself because sometimes that’s what is best. This experience led me to the passion of becoming a psychologist. I will specialize in trauma to help children realize that they can do good things despite their trauma.