Amber has chosen to share her powerful story with us in hopes to inform and inspire current foster youth to see possibilities for their future, and know they are deserving of love. She is inspiring, resilient, and sheds light on what some youth experience in, and leading up to, foster care.
Amber's Story, part I: "A pretty face can get you anything."
“Your sister might die,” Amber overheard her Mother, Mary, tell her little sister, Ann. Amber was 7 years old lying in a bed at Loyola Children’s hospital in Chicago. She needed emergency surgery to correct Chiari malformation.
“Sir! you need to leave, sir…,” Amber heard through a cloud of anesthesia wearing off. She awoke from her surgery to her mother and father arguing, resulting in security escorting her father, Michael, out of the hospital. She won’t see him again until she is 14 years old. She was scared, confused and in so much pain, but being at the hospital provided a sense of safety that she didn’t get at home.
Since she was 2 years old, Amber lived with her mother, her sister, and her sister’s dad, Bill. Although neither Bill nor Mary offered Amber much comfort at home, Amber remembers Bill being very involved and taking videos at the hospital. “The hospital staff were all so loving. I remember the nurses telling me to slow down, but all I wanted to do is move; I was walking and talking the first day!” Amber vividly remembers the magic toilet paper in the hospital magic show, and being discharged on Valentine’s Day of 1999.
A few months later, her mother suddenly announced she was leaving Bill and taking the girls to Tennessee where Grandma C and Grandpa B lived. Soon after, Mary met a man named Derek at a bar and they got married the very next day. Amber, her sister, and mother moved into Derek’s trailer about twenty minutes from Grandma C and Grandpa B. This would be the start of two horrifying years of fear, abuse, and becoming the main caretaker of her 6-year-old sister. “There was no one else to make sure Ann was safe, no one to feed her or get her to school… there was no one.” Amber was only 8 years old at the time, an age marked and remembered by the first time she watched her Mother use cocaine.
“Sir! you need to leave, sir…,” Amber heard through a cloud of anesthesia wearing off. She awoke from her surgery to her mother and father arguing, resulting in security escorting her father, Michael, out of the hospital. She won’t see him again until she is 14 years old. She was scared, confused and in so much pain, but being at the hospital provided a sense of safety that she didn’t get at home.
Since she was 2 years old, Amber lived with her mother, her sister, and her sister’s dad, Bill. Although neither Bill nor Mary offered Amber much comfort at home, Amber remembers Bill being very involved and taking videos at the hospital. “The hospital staff were all so loving. I remember the nurses telling me to slow down, but all I wanted to do is move; I was walking and talking the first day!” Amber vividly remembers the magic toilet paper in the hospital magic show, and being discharged on Valentine’s Day of 1999.
A few months later, her mother suddenly announced she was leaving Bill and taking the girls to Tennessee where Grandma C and Grandpa B lived. Soon after, Mary met a man named Derek at a bar and they got married the very next day. Amber, her sister, and mother moved into Derek’s trailer about twenty minutes from Grandma C and Grandpa B. This would be the start of two horrifying years of fear, abuse, and becoming the main caretaker of her 6-year-old sister. “There was no one else to make sure Ann was safe, no one to feed her or get her to school… there was no one.” Amber was only 8 years old at the time, an age marked and remembered by the first time she watched her Mother use cocaine.
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