EP020: The Skipping Rock - Part 1
Transcript is available here
After the release of Part 3, we'll have a follow up conversation with Casey to answer questions and comments. Please submit your thoughts by either filling out our contact form or leaving us a voice message here. By leaving a voicemail you agree to us using your voice on the podcast.
This is part 1 of a 3 part episode. ( Now available Part 2 and Part 3 )
In this episode we hear from Casey, a woman who will explore with us this idea of choice. What it means to fit in and find a way in life when choice is limited, or, removed altogether. When all you have in front of you are bad options .
While it is not always apparent in the moment, our life choices, all of them, the big complicated ones down to the little daily decisions, create the direction and opportunities of our life, our future, for better or worse.
When someone is successful we often admire them for their smarts, for having made all the right choices. And conversely, when people are struggling, we pass judgment, thinking, “They should have made better choices.”
But is it really that simple, to credit failure to bad choices being made?
What if everyone IS trying to make the best choice possible at every opportunity, and that the issue is not simply one of bad choices, but rather a lack of available good options.
If a 16 year old, living homeless, tells you he dropped out of high school and chose to run away from home to live on the streets, it would be easys to think, “Well, that’s a bad choice.” And if a year later he is arrested for drug use, our view is confirmed, that bad choices are to blame.
However, what if more information was available. What if this young man ran away from home initially because his father had been sexually abusing him since he was 10? What if he was self-medicating with drugs to cope with the trauma? Would we see his choices now differently?
To know if this young man is making good or bad choices, we need to first know what the available options were when his choices were made.
4 year old Casey at grandmothers house
13 years old right after leaving the school
Excerpt from the episode: When I came back from the school, I wasn't a normal kid. I was weird. When I came back, I just felt like I did all over again when I was a child. But this time, it was even more deeply rooted. I've just felt so alone again, no one that could understand what I had experienced. I didn't even understand what I had experienced. So I didn't know how to articulate it or communicate it to anyone. So I just held on to it thinking that everything that happened at the school was like, normal behavior. I was conditioned to be this crazy cult child. - Casey
Often, when housed folks see or meet young people living homeless, the assumption can be made that everything would be better if they would just move back home. In hearing Caseys’ story, you might wonder why she did not go back to her mother when things got so terribly bad.
Casey was in fact asked about this. It was maybe the toughest question for her and one of the few times she was unable to express herself while being recorded. She had blocked a good deal of the reasons, unable to really talk about it. Yet, she wanted us to share with you a little about what it was like to be home with her mother and why living with her was simply not an option.
Casey suffered sexual abuse from various men her mother would bring over to the house, something that began when she was 7 years old. Additionally, her mother was suicidal, attempting suicide numerous times in front of her, beginning when she was just 9 years old. There was psychological and physical abuse. One of the times she was attacked, her mother dragged her down the stairs by her hair. It was all too much for her.
Not always, but often, kids who leave home and don’t return, are not moving towards something when they leave, rather, they are moving away from something, something abusive in their environment.
Casey and her Mother
Casey right after she left the school
At 18 years old Casey working as exotic dancer
At 18 years old Casey working as exotic dancer