My Mother - Original Writing

From the ages of 8- 14, I lived in a very volatile home. Coming home from school, I never knew if it was going to be a quiet day in my house or if the entire house would be engulfed in screaming. I dreaded the weekends, that meant that everyone was going to be home. Everyone home meant that things could easily go up to flames in just a millisecond. I tried my best to never be home, I would spend the days with my friends. I knew that when I got home there was a 90% chance of everyone fighting. One day in the summer of 2012, things got too heated, and my mom finally decided to move. We packed up everything in a few hours while my stepfather was at work. We moved into my best friend’s home for a few days until we found an apartment within the school district to move into.

My mother, Lisa Dawn Hicks Kern, was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Sunday, June 15, 1969. Her father, James Kenneth Hicks, was 28 at the time of my mother’s birth; he was employed at Red River Army Depot as an electrical engineer. Her mother, Sharon Lee Clark Hicks, was 25 when my mother was born, at the time she was the home maker. My mother had an older sister who was a four year old toddler at the time of my mother’s birth. Kimberly Ann Hicks was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Monday, August 30, 1965.

When I was a three week old newborn, Social Services decided that my mother and father were no longer fit to raise my sister and I. My mother was an alcoholic who would soon be in prison, my father was not yet an American citizen, and my parents were in the midst of a divorce. Instead of allowing my sister and I to be split up and sent to separate foster homes, my grandparents brought us into their home for what was intended to be a temporary length of time. This temporary length of

I lived in military housing a little distance from base with my father Richard, mother Susan, sister Jewelia, and brother Ryan. When Richard got deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, Jewelia, Ryan, and I were left in Fulda with Susan. Due to being young, knowledge of what was going on escaped me. My only thoughts were the absence of daddy and the world changing around me. Jewelia was three and doing what toddlers do, but Ryan was nine, going on ten, and starting to rebel. Ryan developed a behavioral problem, started showing signs of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, also known as ADHD, and depression. Ryan would terrorize the dogs, Jewelia, and me. During the time of Richard's deployment, Ryan would abuse Jewelia on a daily basis by slamming her fingers in the door or shoving her down. Susan would ask what happened, and Ryan would always blame me. Half the time Susan would believe Ryan, and the other times she wouldn’t. You could say that it was almost always a pull of the straw day, lucky one day but not so much the next. Ryan started stealing and sneaking out of the house. He even stole money out of Susan’s purse on Mother’s Day to buy her a Mother’s Day gift. Susan was so angry, but Ryan’s excuse was that “It was the thought that counts”, and he ate her chocolates. As we got older, Ryan worsened. He was in and out of juvenile detention for smoking weed, stealing, and destroying Richard and

As a young child, I was always closer to my father, so witnessing him do such horrible things to my mother had forever traumatized me. My parent’s separation during my prepubescent years was the worst experience I had in my life. I fell into a stage in which I resented my father for damaging our home and not only breaking my mother’s heart, but mine as well. I could not and would not grasp the idea that living in New York would somehow be better for us. I would spend night after night crying myself to sleep because all I wanted was my family to go back to what I considered normal for a long

My mother was in a relationship with a man, little did she know that this man was not the man she thought he was. I was about seven years old the first time I witnessed my mother physically abused. All I can remember was seeing my mother being pushed down a flight of stairs. The second time that I can remember is hearing an argument getting really heated. I went to the kitchen to see what was going on, he had a knife in his hand. I was so scared and felt helpless that I couldn’t protect my mother. I immediately called 911 in a panic. I remember a police officer questioning me. I don’t remember my mother ever talking to me about what happened it was just swept under the rug. Now that I am older I question why my mother dealt with verbal and physical abuse and stayed with this man. Of course, I can never bring my questions up to my mother. She’s just not that kind of person to talk about situations or just really talk about anything in

Me and my twin sister was all that was left after our other siblings were taken and placed into foster care . our father was in and out of jail a lot so it was up to my mother to take care of 2 twin girls . my father eventually went back to jail and my mother had a mental break down and left us on the porch of my grandmother kathy's house . me and ,my sister stayed there till we were about 1 year and some months old were we were being taken care of by my 2 uncles who were teenagers at the time . after a couple of months the state decided that the house we were staying in wa unfit and wanted us in foster care until my granny came to the rescue with the best lawyers and took us into her custody . we were living with my great grandmother at the ages of 2 as me and my sister grew things got more and more expensive and she worked an overnight job so as she went to work my big cousins looked after us till she was off we didn't have a car at the time so my granny was paying people to pick us up drop us off to my cousins house take her to work and was paying my cousin to watch us at work everyday my granny would be so tired after work but still made time for us and put us first she made sure we had something even if she didn't

My mother had it rough growing up. Forced to be out of the house nearly by dawn and only to return by nightfall, she was ignored and turned away by her mother. All throughout her childhood, and most of her young adult life until she ran away, my mother was

Abuse sends out shockwaves that touch every aspect of a person's functioning. A majority of the time it has always been that fathers should be the protector of the household, but that’s not always the case. There was a time in my life when it was sweet like the rich taste of honey, balmy , and blissful. At the age of nine years old, life was smooth; there were no bumps in the way or hatred. Life was lavish,cheerful, and this amazing feeling knowing nothing could go wrong. All of that changed swiftly like my life flashed between my eyes, swift like Usain Bolt running the 100m in the Olympics. My dad ruined that sweet life for me; he spoiled everything on how I imagined life was for me. My father's actions made me think of life differently. Not just about life but myself and people that I held close to. Having a mother that desperately wanted help and save her kids from hurt, pain, and harm but couldn’t extremely heartbreaking. But why does he do that? Why did my dad took his frustration on his kids and wife?

After being away from my father for some time, I used to sit down with my mother and we’d talk about the violence that occurred when I was younger. I remember telling my mother that I was glad to be away from my father so that he wouldn’t hurt her anymore. My mother always told us that we should never allow anyone to mistreat or abuse us but we were somewhat confused because she continued to allow my father to treat her in that manner. The actions of my father had hardened my heart and I’d decided that I would never allow a man to hurt me, the way that my he had hurt my mother. I would defend myself no matter what.

Mom quitting her job and staying at home was a good thing for me because after working she found my father fast asleep on the bed while I on the floor wearing a dirty diaper or no diaper and clothing and my face stained with dried tears. The rationalization he would give is it was too hot to wear clothes. There were other times I was left me alone in the apartment, or worse, left with a heartless woman. For all of these reasons, she never went back to work. She would never again wonder if I was being neglected in her absence, and she would never again have to explain the marks of abuse that on her face. It’s not that the abuse stopped, but at least she didn’t have to explain. My mother never knew what kind of mood my father would be in, or what he would do next, so therefore we all lived with constant insecurity, stress, and fear. Making matters

For as long as I remember I my father’s parents treated my mother like trash. They always felt that my father married beneath his social class. So because we moved so close to them the disrespect they dished out to mother became a daily ritual. I now realize that the stress of this problem led to my parents yelling, fighting and violent behaviors that ruled our house. I was only five so this is the first house that I really remember from my childhood. The strongest memories I have from that time is the way my sister would grab me and run with me to the next door neighbor’s house when my parents would start their yelling and hurting each other. The neighbor man was a police office in our town and he would take us into his house, clam us down and then go over to stop my parents from beating each other up. No one ever pressed charges; my dad never left the house. My mother would laugh it off it was like they were trapped in a vicious cycle that could not be broken. Later we would go home and pretend that everything was ok even though every dish in the house was laying shatter and broken on the floor. Society told us it was ok, because this kind of behavior was going on all around us and no one said it was wrong or bad it was just the way things were. When I married the first time I found myself in the same cycle of domestic violence that I had witnessed my whole childhood. But I did not leave or ask for help because I

I have experienced multiple unusual family circumstances over the years. The first that I can easily remember is experiencing what I would call visual abuse, or watching someone else be physically and emotionally abused. I was frequently a witness to my parent’s violent arguments, my father’s outbursts, and my mother’s deceitful behavior. Subsequently, I suffered through my parent’s divorce. This in itself was a relief in some ways because I rarely saw them fight in person any longer. However, it led to me constantly move between the two of them. For a time, I was evenly distributed between my parents on a week-by-week basis, though this changed when my father lost his full-time job in 2008 and had to move into my grandparent’s beach house

Furthermore, these experiences can be seen as liable for the condition of various relationships within my family. To begin, the relationship between my grandmother and mother became strained further after my mother had her second child. During this time, my mother had become dependent of both alcohol, and illicit drugs. Because of this dependency, my grandmother felt it would be in everyone’s best interest if she obtained custody of my older brother and sister. After my grandmother was granted custody of my older siblings, my mother and grandmother ceased communication for several years. This lack of communication had a larger impact than either assumed it would. As a result of their abrupt separation from our mother, my siblings began to harbor ill feelings towards her. They felt as though they had been abandoned, and she made no effort to remain in their lives. Currently, my mother and brother have yet to reconcile their relationship.

Of course you always hear people talking about how great their grandmother or grandfather are, I too feel the same way about my grandmother. I see her as more than my grandmother, she’s a role mole, my best friend and also like a sister when I need her. She’s always been a loving and caring person. Not for only her friends and family, but also strangers. People she has never met a day in her life she would be willing to go give her last too. You don’t find to many people like her too often.