Tyreall, 37

If you don’t shut up, I will give you something to cry about.

As early as 9, my stepfather began physically abusing me. He would regularly tie me up and beat me. Once, he burned me with an iron. I would run away to escape the beatings. I spent cold and sometimes rainy nights sleeping in broken down cars, empty laundry rooms at different apartment complexes, and neighborhood parks. The streets of South Central Los Angeles were war zones.

I tried to create safety for myself by joining one of the many local street gangs. I was eventually taken away from my mother and stepfather at 13. I was moved to a coed shelter in Hollywood, California for kids just like me, followed by a multitude of group homes and lock down facilities. While there, I experienced the same treatment I had endured at home with my stepfather. Those beatings I endured as a child and throughout my teenage years have had lingering effects and symptoms of childhood trauma throughout my adulthood.

It was after I completed the Compassion Prison Project Trauma course that I discovered ways to see myself and others in a new light. After close to a decade in prison, grit is embedded in every fiber of my being. It is who I have been since I was a child. A survivor. I adapted to my environment because the fire inside me burns brighter than all the fires around me. We all have the inner strength to survive and adapt to our surroundings.

We are predispositioned to survive. I never give up on or quit anything positive in my life, whether it is a goal I am trying to achieve, friends, or relationships.

Forgotten
My experiences with growing up in
Group homes and lock down facilities
Mirror the challenges that I am faced with today.
The uncertainty about my future,
My inability to decipher what I am feeling
And the soul stripping regimen.
It is no different at 37 than when I was 14
Forgotten by my family and the world,
Nothing can save me from this fate.
My biggest fear was never to die
In my sleep, but was to wake up the
Next day and still be me.
Forgotten by my family and the world
Nothing can save me from this fate.