I do a lot of therapy groups, and one thing I have to state sometimes to people is that I was orphaned with living parents. I wasn’t raised by my biological parents, and turned 18 as a ward of the state. I have not met many people with this set of circumstances, so I want to ask if anyone here is comfortable sharing?
There are obvious negatives, I was homeless a number of times from 18-24 years of age. Stuggled a lot financially and finding my footing in life. I also have shit self esteem. Now in my late 30s, I never realized how much it effected me to not have an adult care about me as a child, well into adulthood and I still struggle. Also, holidays were rough until a few years ago.
The positives are I don’t have to deal with ass hole parents, dramas and such, and I don’t ever have to worry about their end of life care. I also learned what not to do when I became a parent myself, and have dedicated my life to ending generational trauma.
I guess it turned out ok. My parents were never married and because of my dad’s temper I lived with my grandmother until grade school when she died. I then lived with my real parents for two years, and then with my mother and her new bf for a few more before I ended up in foster care at the start of grade 6. ( I had run away from home and was living on the streets when Child and Family services picked me up.)
By grade 12 I had been in 10 different schools and 6 different foster homes, so I learned to not trust people much. I was a hyperactive kid (now they say I have ADHD but in the 80’s I was just “hyper”) and got in a lot of trouble over the years. One of my foster parents ended up having a nervous breakdown, I ended up in a youth jail, and was living on my own at 17. Later ended up in a provincial jail for getting mad and putting a cop in the hospital.
But then came my daughters, the first of which was born in 93. It settled me down a lot and made me start caring about things, and helped me focus on being less destructive. If it wasn’t for them, I’d probably either be in jail or dead.
I wouldn’t change any of it though. It was chaotic but fun overall and I learned a lot over the years.
I love the happy ending. I hadn’t planned to have kids, but when I had my son it certainly grounded me in a way that having a child didn’t ground my own parents. I felt such urgency to make a good family/life for him.
I moved a lot too, which made it really hard to make and keep friends. I’ve never had a “group” for long growing up. Switching schools/homes/gaurdians so often really makes life hard.
It’s tough as a young person who doesn’t trust any adults, to get support from said adults. Im really glad to hear things turned out okay in the end for you!