One in five youth aging out of foster care will become homeless immediately. [1] Up to half of youth aging out of foster care will become homeless within 18 months. One in four youth aging out of foster care will be in prison within two years. [2]
This is the true story of one of these…
Entering the Foster Care System
When I was just three-years-old, Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families came and took custody my sister. Then, my biological mother, in a desperate attempt to keep me from also being taken from her, kidnapped me and fled to the state of New York. During this period of “being on the run” I have several memories where I questioned what was actually going on in my life.
My earliest memories are of watching my biological mother snort cocaine off a chest freezer. I remember being handcuffed and locked in a closet. Then there’s the memory of being dropped off at a foster home.
I spent the next fifteen-plus years of my life trying to make sense of all this trauma. My way of making sense of it was to create stories to ease the confusion of what was actually happening. I created so, so many stories about who I was as a result of the trauma I had no control over.
“This happened, and as a result of this happening I am__________.”
Moving Through the Foster Care System
With each trauma and each move, my confusion increased, as did my anger and outbursts.
As time went on, I just wanted to shut off the confusion and pain of my past. By age 11, I started smoking marijuana to dull the pain. However, as my rebellious behavior escalated, the courts became involved, and placed me in my first of many institutions.
All this did was escalate my pain and confusion. All my acting out was my attempt to end my constant need to make sense of my life.
Turning to Drugs and Crime
After aging out of foster care, I began using drugs and alcohol on a daily basis, and became heavily involved in criminal activity to support my addiction. I was homeless for 4 years, and spent 7 years of my young life incarcerated. This lifestyle isolated me from any and all of my relationships.
On August 23, 2007, I was released from the New Hampshire State Prison where I had just served a two-year sentence for burglary charges.
Although I came out of prison sober, I was more confused than ever before, and overwhelmed with hopelessness.
Rehab and Transformation
The court ordered me into yet another institution for drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
This is where my entire life finally changed.
Here is where I met my mentor, Rob. Rob agreed to guide me through my recovery journey, and show me how he had broken free from his addiction.
However, I did not think recovery would work for me, because I did not know any other way to survive. I had been playing the victim of my circumstances for so long.
In our first meeting, Rob asked me to tell him my life story. I shared the most painful events of my life. I retold how my biological mom had kidnapped me, how she had burned me with cigarettes, handcuffed me and locked me in a closet, about being placed in foster care, and then institutionalized……. And so on and so on.
Rob listened respectfully and when I finished talking, he said:
“It has to be really hard for you to be living in a 21-year-old body, but emotionally stuck as a 7-year-old.”
This revelation stopped me in my tracks. That is the moment that I began my 12-plus year obsession with transformational change.
My most recent book Embrace Your Past Win Your Future details my life and exactly how I changed my mindset from being a victim to embracing all I’ve overcome in my past.
Today, I don’t believe anything happened TO me. I believe that everything happened FOR me.
Mark Crandall, LMSW, LCDC, is a motivational speaker, clinical interventionist, and the host of Purpose Chasers Podcast. Mark went from a lost boy with countless traumatic experiences to drug addiction, prison, and an undying self-hatred to building multiple a highly sought after motivational speaker, transformational life and business coach. His book, Embrace Your Past Win Your Future, shares his page-turning story of enduring childhood abuse, trauma, drug addiction, homelessness, and years of incarceration, and how Mark learned to turn his victimhood into victory.
